The verses I read today made me think of the saying, "Live your life in such a way that if anyone were to say something bad about you no one would believe it."
I love this and I want it to be true of me. Now, it isn't to say that you have to live perfectly. We all mess up, fall down and have to back up every now and then. But it is how we deal with those times that shape who we really become. If we own up to our mistakes and seek to learn from them, people respect that. If we try to cover our tracks or claim perfection, people see that and know better.
John is talking about Demetrius and how everyone speaks highly of him and how it is the truth in 3 John 12.
As Christians we are not living for the approval of other men. We should only seek to please God. But, frankly, if we truly live our lives to fully please God, men will speak highly of us as well. There might be a few haters out there, but just as the saying goes, no one else will believe them.
And to be frank yet again, you can't gain followers of Christ by having a bad reputation among men, either. You must first establish a good relationship with them before you are really going to have the opportunity to share Christ with them. One of the most frequent things I hear from non-Christians as to why they don't want to be Christians is that most Christians are hypocrites. We say one thing but live our lives a different way. If we lived our lives following Christs' will and owning up to our mistakes, perhaps Christianity wouldn't look so contradicted.
No comments:
Post a Comment