Monday, May 14, 2012

Unchristian behaviour from those you least expect

Recently I have been absolutely shocked and stunned (and many other adjectives besides) by the behaviour that I have witnessed or the things people have said. The most astounding thing is though, that it is people who call themselves God-fearing Christians who have been indulging in gossip, slander, lying and deceiving.

Now I know I'm not perfect, I will happily be the first person to point that out. I have lied, gossipped, slandered deceived and committed numerous other sins. To claim I have never done any of those things would be an outright lie and no one would believe me because I mean really, deep down everyone knows they are flawed and imperfect; only one man ever was perfect, and that was Jesus Christ.

However as a Christian we have been freed from the bondage of sin. Whereas an unregenerate person has no choice in the matter and is a slave to sin, we do have a choice, we also have God on our side and we can do all things through his strength:

I am able to do all things  through the one who strengthens me. Philippians 4v13

But more importantly it is our duty to strive to be as Christ-like as possible, we are to be imitators of him. Being a Christian is not about having a ticket to Heaven that you whip out of your pocket and redeem when you are on your deathbed. We live to serve God, not ourselves, and God doesn't promise an easy or fun life. Trials, yes. 
Temptation, yes. 
Pain, yes. 
But nothing we can't bear. 

1:9 For this reason we also, from the day we heard about you, have not ceased praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 1:10 so that you may live worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, 1:11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of  all patience and steadfastness, joyfully 1:12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the saintsinheritance in the light. 1:13 He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, 1:14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.                        Colossions 1v9-14
 We are supposed to stand out from the crowd. Not for the wrong reasons, being a notorious liar, having loose lips or being two-faced; but for the right reasons, being kind, caring, looking  out for others, being self-less, etc. 

Recently my family and I have experienced the worst treatment imaginable from the people you would least expect, our 'church family'. I don't want to go into details. It's not really necessary and to be honest I want to forget everything. But I am sadly dismayed that non-Christians seem to understand the decent way to treat one another better than Christians these days, and these 'fake-Christians' give us all a bad reputation. 

Here is a link to an article I read earlier today - How to avoid spreading gossip in 5 easy steps
 Hellogiggles is a secular website and it has not Christian links whatsoever, yet there I found this gem of an article. 



 

Friday, May 11, 2012

This week I bought a flight to LAX

Yes, I did, there's no going back, and although I know it was a wee bit premature to book a one way flight to Los Angeles when I haven't obtained my visa yet, I still think it was wise. Well, my parents thought it was a good move to make, and I always listen to them, no really, *wink, wink*


You would not believe how cheap my flight was, especially for the middle of August. I felt that it would have been stupid not to book the flight. The way I see it is that God has already fixed everything up this far, in that I was offered a scholarship, then everything else just slotted into place, I needed something, I somehow obtained it, etc, etc.

I also bought my international student card at the same time! It arrived in the post this morning! I was so excited, I've never had a student card before, and I can't wait to start using it. Whoooo!!

And in other news, I've started reading a brilliant devotional book on the Psalms. It's really encouraging. I had no idea how relevant they were for us today, this morning I read about Psalm 3, and the chapter heading was 'advice for insomniacs'. But I won't go into that in this post, I'll post about it later.

xxxxx


Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Just something that caught my attention....

This popped up on my facebook a while ago;



This kind of thing makes me shake my head and wonder. So many Christians seem to think that the devil is some creature who is easily defeated and can be inflicted with pain by simple actions we do each and every day.

But the devil is strong and he is powerful. The world in which we live in is his domain; just look at all the sin that goes on all around you. You only need to read the book of Job to see what he is capable of inflicting on people.
Job was a righteous, god-fearing man, and he was blessed for this. Yet God allowed him to suffer at the hand of Satan.

 1:7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” And Satan answered the Lord,  “From roving about on the earth, and from walking back and forth across it.”  1:8 So the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a pure and upright man, one who fears God and turns away  from evil.”
   
 Jesus himself was tempted by Satan while in the wilderness. 

4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

 Satan is a powerful being, who are we to 'stomp' on him? He is powerful, and we need to guard against him, however the above is not the way to defeat him. 
Only by studying the bible, praying, staying close to God and living what we learn can we have any hope of resisting him. We are weak on our own, we cannot 'beat' Satan on our own. Carrying a bible does not worry Satan, forgiving someone who has treated you badly is more likely too. 
 We are incapable of saving ourselves from hell, so what makes us think we can 'crush' Satan? 

Just some thoughts.... 

What do you think?