Sunday, 5/3/09, Day 172, Reflection

"To Love or Leave Unbelievers?What is your attitude toward those who don't follow Jesus? Do you struggle more in speaking to them about your beliefs or in treating them with love and kindness? Pray that the apostle Paul's words would become real in your life: 'Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect' (I Peter 3:15)."

I think the answer is the same for most people of today's culture, and that's the latter--a struggle to speak to people about our beliefs. Everybody nowadays is so afraid of hurting anybody's feelings. To "offend" anyone is one of the greatest sins in today's society. Keep the status quo (yo). What if we, as Christians, kept quiet? There's that often-told story: A car full of teenagers crashes and all of the passengers are killed. In front of the magnificent gates of heaven, one of the teenagers are about to enter when the others say "Why can't we come in?" "oh...it's because you didn't believe in Jesus." "What?! Why didn't you ever tell us?!" "I don't know...you never asked...besides, I was afraid you would reject me or wouldn't like me anymore." All of us have people we know that don't know God, and when we're with them it's the hardest thing to talk about Jesus because it means risking awkwardness and judgment. But "I was afraid" doesn't seem to make sense anymore if at the end we don't see in heaven those we neglected to reach out to. We need to rely on His strength to talk to these people about Him before it's too late.

I really love that verse that MTB puts in the daily contemplation, especially the last part that mentions the "hope we have" in Christ. Right there, there's yet another challenge to us: that we actually live lives that display the hope we've been given! I mean, people won't ask us about the (capital-H) Hope we have if they can't see we even have it. Sometimes I go to school, anxious about life, complaining about teachers, blah blah blah, and there's no sign of hope at all. We should live like we do have hope in Christ! The next step after that is directing people to God/Jesus when people finally see a difference between their lives and ours. *peaceful sigh*Thank God for every tomorrow He gives us, a new opportunity, to live it out =].