Sunday, September 21, 2008

What has God done in your life lately?

One of the things I have always struggled with is sharing my faith in Jesus with others. Yes, I have told other children about Jesus through CEF, but I tend to freeze when I am around a group of adults, especially people who are my age! Since I have been convicted by this to a certain extent, Daniel and I have prayed about this in the Bible study we have been having.

So check this out....I was on my way out the door and over heard two people talking how the engineers they work for are such jerks! Of course, I had to get a piece of this conversation! When I was able to get in a word, I told them that I agreed that most engineers are jerks and that I also had first hand experience with this! I continued by saying one thing that keeps me humble about being an engineer is that I know God is the one that gave me the ability to get through the engineering program in the first place. I can't take credit for that!

Second, I was working yesterday, when I talked to a guy and his girlfriend. I asked him what kind of music he listened to and he said classic rock along with Contemporary Christian music! I told him I listened to Christian music as well and asked him some specific questions on what kind of Christian music he liked and what church he went to. I suppose that this does not technically count as sharing your faith; however, you could call this a "moral victory" since I was not embarrassed to ask him these questions and answer many of the same questions he had for me. After our conversation, I noticed that this guy and his girlfriend were talking to someone else while pointing their finger in my direction.

While I can only speculate as to what they were talking about, I am almost certain that they were saying something like....we were talking to this dude and guess what? We found out that he is a Christian! How cool is that? And most of us know that when you randomly meet people, the percentage of those people who are serious Christians is pretty low! :D

So while I am certainly not an expert at sharing my faith, I honestly hope that this is the beginning of a good change.... when I feel like saying something Christian that I would say it and not be afraid!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

How could God send a good person to hell?

I often hear about how hateful it is that christians believe that God would send someone like Gandhi to hell. After all, Gandhi was a good man...probably better then most of us...so how is God justified in sending a man like that to hell?

The problem with our society is that we use the wrong yard stick to measure if a person is good or not. We have a tendency to use the human yard stick in which we compare ourselves to others around us. For example, I don't smoke pot or have premarital sex like these other people are doing, so I am a good person. By comparing Gandhi to the other people around us, yeah, he is a pretty good person.

However, if we use God's yardstick as defined in the Bible, even Gandhi comes way short. There is no comparison if one were to try to compare Gandhi to a righeous and holy God. When we use that yard stick, we see that God is justified. Using this yard stick in our own lives will allow us not to be satisfied by being better then the people around us...but to never be satisfied because in this life, no one will ever be as perfect, righeous, and holy as God.

I thought I would end this post with a few of my favorite quotes form Gandhi!

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
"Be the change you want to see in the world"
"I like their Christ but I don't like their Christians"