Why am I a Christian?
I sometimes ask myself, and to be perfectly honest the reasons reduce to two:
(1) the lack of good alternatives, and
(2) Jesus.
Jesus… Brilliant, untamed, tender, creative, slippery, irreducible, paradoxically humble…
Jesus stands up to scrutiny.
He is who I want my God to be.
–Philip Yancey
Amen.
Jesus is who I want my God to be too!
Have you ever felt that your life was a mess, perhaps even chaotic?
Have you ever felt that life was empty or dark?
A lot of us have felt these things at some point in life and have wanted to find someway to fix us.
In fact, a lot of people have spent a lot of time, energy, and money chasing after some fix for the problems, but winding up feeling just as lost at the end of their search.
Fortunately there is an answer:
The Word of God is quick and powerful.
In the beginning He spoke to nothing, and it became something.
Chaos heard it and became order;
darkness heard it and became light.
–A. W. Tozer
If God can call something into existence out of nothing, then He can certainly speak fullness into my empty life.
If God can create light out of darkness, then He can certainly speak joy into my darkness.
If God can take chaos and turn it into order, then He can certainly clean-up my messed-up life.
The Word of God is quick and powerful.
Use it to transform your difficult life.
God has a plan and a will for your life, and He has revealed it for us in His Word.
Live according to all that it says, and you will find your life transformed in an amazing way.
You and me, we have been blessed in some amazing ways. We live in a country with great freedoms. We have material wealth and financial resources that are unheard of in other countries.
As we hold this wealth, then, we must ask the next question:
“Why has God so blessed His people in America?”
Again, the Word gives a clear answer:
“God be merciful to us and bless us and cause Your face to shine upon us so that Your way may be known on earth and Your salvation among all nations” (Psalm 67:1-2).
God’s principle that His people are blessed to be a blessing is established in the covenant He made with Abraham ).
— Neal Pirolo
Pirolo makes the point that God has blessed you and me in so many ways for one reason – that we would now bless other people by making Him known throughout the other nations on earth – telling them about His great salvation. Are we using the wealth and resources and freedoms that God gave to us on ourselves?
Or Are we using them in a way that pleases Him – using the blessings He has given us to impact the nations for Christ?
At the end of the day we have to trust that if God asks us to embrace obscurity — of heart and/or of position — we can also trust that “He will look after those who have been pressed into the consequences of our obedience.” We can’t know what lessons God intends to teach others; only those He’s teaching us. The good news is that we can be confident He “causes everything to Work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Rom. 8:28).
Not “might cause” or “will cause if…”
He does cause.
Now, how He does that is up to Him, and we may never be privy to His rationale. But —dare I say?— we were never promised obedience would be easy.
–Anonymous author of Embracing Obscurity
Obedience is often difficult. But God promises us that if we will choose obedience, then He will cause goodness and blessing to come into our lives. Do you trust this promise to be true? Do you trust God to be faithful to His Word? If so, are you choosing obedience at ever turn? Have you “laid your ‘Yes’ on the altar”?
We know what kind of life Christ calls us to; we often preach and talk to each other about it. But do we live it? Well, look at the churches:
We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times.
–J. I. Packer
How well are you living the Christian life that you know about and talk about?