What is a Christian?

Three ‘Christians’ go to church each week, one volunteers in the nursery, one is an Elder, the other a member of the choir.  Each has their own story, each continues in their chosen sin unabated.  Which leaves this question?  Is the woman who is having an affair with her best friend’s husband a Christian?  Is the man who sells illegal drugs to pay for his daughter’s education a Christian?  Or what about the man, who divorced his wife because he wasn’t in love with her anymore, is he a Christian? 

What is a Christian?  If you were to ask 100 “Christians” you would get 100 different answers.  I think the reason for that, is partly because we have a lot of anemic, shallow preaching today, which has left the church with a generation of people who think they are Christians but really are not.  These are people who have been told to believe, but they have never been told to repent. They have been promised heaven, but they have never been warned of hell.  They have been told that God wants them to be happy, but they have never heard that God wants them to be holy.  I wonder whether a lot of these people even know what the genuine gospel message is. Recently there was a survey that revealed that 7 in 10 American adults have no clue what John 3:16 means “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (As I have pointed out before believes means to obey, for even the devil believes, yet he is doomed)  

The same study also revealed that barely one-third of all adults know the meaning of the term, "the gospel."  Thus it should not surprise us that the fact is, what is considered as Christianity by many today would not even qualify as such in the first century.  However the Bible is very clear about who is a Christian.  According to the apostle Paul, a Christian is someone who has put his or her faith in Jesus Christ, and Christ alone, as Savior and Lord and God.  A Christian is someone who has turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God “to open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.  Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people, who are set apart by faith in me.’” Acts 26:18.

It is not for me or you to decide who is a Christian and who is not. That is ultimately up to God.  We are told however that we will recognize them by their fruit.  I do know one thing, what we don't need more of today are 'sort-of Christians'. What we need are 'no-doubt Christians'—people about whom you could say, "There is no doubt in my mind that person is a follower of Jesus Christ."  Could you say that about the three individuals mentioned above, could you say that about those you know, more importantly would they say that about you?  

Rules for Life - Six Little Words

I was reading an essay by a noted author the other day on the rules for life, and he had come up with over 100 of them.  So I started searching and discovered that tens of thousands of “authorities’” have written up "their" rules for life (a Google search turned up over 937 million pages).  Which got me thinking, what are the rules for life in their most fundamental form?  Amazingly they come down to six little words.  If you don’t get these six correct, every other list that has ever been devised is meaningless.  Six simple words …

It does not matter if you choose to have faith in God or not,

“He is”

It does not matter if you seek to know His word or not,

“It is”

It does not matter if you like or obey His rules on life or not,

“They are”

What matters is what you do with those simple six little words in your life,

“He is, it is, they are”

Because at the end of your life there are two more words that apply to everyone, regardless of what you did with those six little words in your lifetime.

“He judges”

Entitlement = Resentment = Anger = Death (Part 5 of 5)

This is the final destination of resentment.  You don’t have to have read the headlines about the studies showing dangerous ill-health effects of anger; some call it the heart attack emotion.  Instinctively you know it is true.  But here is what you miss; this is what the articles don’t point out, what they usually don't tell you is that the harmful effects of anger come not from their frequency or intensity.  Rather they come from duration: how long it lasts.  Unhealthy levels of anger are those that last longer than a few minutes.  In other words, the real culprit is the seed of resentment, which quiets now and then but never stops.

For a model of how anger is supposed to function (in a normal well adjusted person), you need look no further than common house cats.  When your cat gets angry, he'll arch his back, hiss, slash at the drapes, run through the house, jump off the walls, etc.  However, within five minutes, he's licking himself like it never happened; if he was angry at you, he'll rub your legs and purr.  The animal responds to his perception of a noxious stimulus in the environment.  Following his natural instincts about anger, he either corrects his perception (there's not really a threat) or adapts to it - the dog has to live here, too. As quickly as it came over him, the anger is completely gone.

But we don't do anger that way.  We think about it afterwards.  We dwell of how things should be and how unfair they are, how we were disregarded, devalued, disrespected, or wrongly rejected.  We fantasize about things didn't happen: "When he said that, I should have said this.  Then he would have said that, and I would have said this!  He would have replied with...and I would have...." Such imaginary dialogue can recur, off and on, for days, months or even years.

The end result of this is predictable, long-lasting resentment can cause depression and lower immune system efficiency - if you're resentful a lot you probably experience lots of little aches and pains - headaches, stomachaches, muscle pain, difficulty sleeping, etc.  You may get frequent colds and bouts of flu.  Admit it, you know someone like that, it might even be you.  Left to go its course, chronic resentment puts you at higher risk of hypertension, stroke, heart disease, and cancer.

But that isn’t the worst of it, the resentment-laden consciousness cries out to be altered by something - a drink, drug, someone else’s wife or husband,  large doses of caffeine or nicotine, or some compulsive behavior that will ease the tension, dissipate the sour feeling, energize the tiredness, or relieve the leaden mood, because after all “you deserve it”.  Affairs, drinking and drugging, new toys, new thrills create an illusion of power that mitigates the powerlessness of resentment.  It is this illusion of power that twelve-step programs target as the primary barrier to recovery - the first "Step" is admitting to powerlessness over the drug.  

It is the illusion of power and entitlement that traps you into a lifestyle of unrepentant sin, a lifestyle that becomes progressively more self-center, and more destructive to yourself and those around you.  As opposed to reality and truth, resentment greatly distorts thinking - through oversimplification, confirmation bias, inability to grasp other perspectives, and an inability to distinguish thoughts from reality.  Over time, resentment becomes a world view and a way of life.  Because the resentful have to devalue others to protect their fragile egos, resentment inevitably leads to some form of verbal or emotional abuse and, eventually to contempt and disgust.  In the end is the illusion of power that traps you into fooling yourself that you are somehow owed all that you steal, that you are somehow entitled.  When in reality and more importantly in God’s eyes, it is your lifestyle that has become contemptible and disgusting.  

For the originator of entitlement simply look at Satan, he believes he is entitled, is that really who you want to pattern your life after, all the while professing to believe in God?   Entitlement, such a dangerous thought, the seed of much of the sin that you choose to commit begins with one simple thought, "I am entitled".  Painful as it is to admit, you are not entitled, no more than Satan is.  Don't let that truth get too far away from you in life, or you will receive in death exactly what you are entitled to.  

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