You see, the reason for our issue was that my husband has a partial hearing loss that causes him difficulty in hearing the exact decibel level that my voice happens to be in. Too many years of listening to loud music and working around loud machinery has caused this. (Yes, I did see the report from his last hearing test that verifies this.) Unless I am right in front of him, facing him, when I speak, he must try to translate what he thinks I said, by listening to the vowel sounds he hears and what little bit of the consonant sounds he can hear. So he got "Another yak on the bounces?" when I said "Are you letting her be active and rambunctious."
This had me thinking. I got to thinking about the many people in the world that have heard of Christianity, and they think of it as a "religion" instead of a "relationship." How often do non-believers hear "Follow the rules." instead of "God loves you."? Or "Be as good a person as you can be." instead of "Jesus died for you and me."? Now, I'm not saying that following the rules and being a good person are bad things in themselves, but I do think it causes this mistranslation from "relationship" to "religion."
Let's take back the meaning of Christianity and not let it get lost in translation. Those non believers, and even some believers need to hear it straight from our mouths, and read it from our lips. Judgement and condemnation will not bring them to that meaning. Let's show the love of God and what having a relationship with Christ means. Meditate on this today.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Galatians 5:22-26 NKJV (emphasis mine)
--Lord, I pray today that I can minister or witness to someone that sees following You as a religion instead of a relationship. Let my love of You, and my relationship with You shine through, so that they don't lose the translation of what being a Christ follower is all about. I pray this for the readers of this as well. I pray these things in Jesus' Holy Name, Amen.
What did you say?
ReplyDeleteJust kidding! This is a great post. Let them that have ears hear!
We were talking about this in class on Tuesday night. There are many religions that believe and display strong moral character. But this difference is that we do not do this in order that God will love us. We do this because he loves us!
A lot of people read that passage you wrote but don't really know how to "walk in the spirit". John 6:63 tells us that his words are spirit and they are life. So then walking in the spirit would be walking in the word. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us that if we seek his will in all we do then he will direct our paths. So then seeking his will in all we do is in essence walking in the word. And his will for you is obviously spreading the good news about the relationship he desires to have with us.
Great Job! Enjoy your walk!
Thanks for you comments Michael. It gives me great pleasure to share the Word of God with everyone possible, and will go to great lengths to find an application for everything. :) Blessings to you.
ReplyDeletegreat blog! i wrote about the very same thing a few weeks ago. if loving God and loving others is fulfilling the law, why is there not more focus on that? it seems we've committed a lot of the same errors as the pharisees, thinking we could find God in our own morality instead of in His grace and love alone. its an interesting premise, none the less.
ReplyDeleteI have the same type of hearing problem your husband has! I tell my kids its because a firecracker exploded near my ear back when I was in high school. Any time my kids or my husband says something to me and I answer with "What? What did you say?" they'll roll their eyes and say, "Yeah, right mom. We know. The firecracker." They'll walk away with me calling out, "But what did you say?!"
ReplyDeleteThank God, HE is willing to keep repeating His message of love to me!