From Sour to the sweetness of Christ

We have been having our weekly staff meetings on campus this semester to increase our opportunities to meet with college students and it has been great. Every week so far we have friends stop by and say hi. However, I have been mulling over some of the conversations that took place yesterday about nothing in particular as we sat in a little coffee shop on the U of A campus. I will try my best to explain what I am talking about so this will make more sense. As we sat talking about the weekend and the short week of classes I was taken back by the tone of the conversations out of the mouth of those at the table. It was not specific to this group of people, it is more specific to a general outlook on life. Somewhere we (even Christians) have bought into what we would consider to be our rights to a worry free, ease laden, don't inconvenience me lives as followers of Jesus. I am not angry about the direction these conversations went, I am heart broken. I am heart broken that the love we profess for our Lord and Savior does not flow out of everything we do as followers of Christ. I do it too by the way! I was on my way to my son's soccer practice yesterday when I was rear ended by a car that had drifted into my lane previously and then got behind me and was not paying attention when she rear ended my new truck. I struggled with emotions of anger, unbelief, and all the ways she was a bad driver and I was so wonderful. The realities were many in that moment...the perspective came later; 1. I got rear ended...so what? I wasn't hurt and neither was she. 2. It is my new truck. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein..." (Psalm 24:1). This includes my truck, my person, and the lady who made a little mistake. 3. I did not respond in a way that honors God in my heart. Outwardly I was annoyed, frustrated, and put out and inwardly as I drove away I was rebuked, and given perspective only He can give. (2 Tim 3:16-17). 4. Who do I think I am and what do I think I deserve in this world? Satan will attack anything and everything I love and care about including my family, my temptations, and yes even my nice truck that I enjoy, and God will allow it to happen...why? God knows that there are more times than not that I love lesser things more than I love Him and if it takes my truck being wrecked, my roof falling in, my kids getting sick, an argument with my wife, or my scorning and wickedness being exposed HE is willing to do that to help me remember that He alone is God and He alone is worthy to praised and worshiped. So, as I sat in the coffee house yesterday and listened to a group of people who profess love for Jesus and I believe genuinely love the Lord, how could I sit by and be silent about what we think we deserve in this life? So your Razorback game didn't come on until the 2nd quarter? So what? I am confident that no matter where you were it wasn't user error that caused the outage...it was a satellite problem from the cable provider. Instead of being ugly to whoever was offering the game that you were going to get to watch for free, what if we saw them as someone who needed to hear the gospel as one created in the image of God just as you and I have been created. So the insurance people were doing their job and serving you breakfast this morning trying to get you to sign up for renter's insurance and you were NOT buying, but were happy to take their hand out. Why not instead of making jokes about how the joke is on them b/c you aren't buying anything from them anyway, what if we chose to see that person handing out breakfast as someone who needs to hear the gospel? What if we forged ahead and were actually grateful even for the provision of God through secondary means to provide you with breakfast. What if we decided to care enough about that person to ask how their day is going and wish them a great day? Here is the point, if you are still reading, it may seem as if I am picking on a select group of people that came to hang out at the coffee house on campus yesterday, I'm not just picking on them...I am picking on anyone who takes an attitude like I did yesterday that thinks I deserve something from this world. Consider what Jesus told the disciples they should expect from the world in John 15:18-19, ""If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." You know what you deserve from this world? HATRED. But this certainly is not to be our response back, we are called to proclaim the love of Christ to the ends of the earth and grow believers up in the understanding and love for Christ until we die or until Christ returns. The hatred of the world can come in various shapes, sizes, and varieties but it is all rooted in the schemes of the devil that are very real and seek to rob you or your joy and steal from you that which you have in Christ.

How will you respond to them? I pray you will respond more positively than I did yesterday at least initially, and you will take a breath and choose to see what God may be doing in you through the hatred of the world or even the inconveniences of you schedule. What trial or inconveniences will you choose to see today through your understanding of who God is and what He desires from your life? Maybe the application for you is that you need to understand more about who God is and what He wants for your life. Maybe the application is that you need to die to some idols in your life big or small. Maybe the application is that you need to be training yourself to identify other people that you have never met as an image bearer of the Creator God and someone who needs the gospel extended to them.