I knew there were Christians in my school and I waited for them to tell me about Christ. I think I used that as an excuse.
Looking back, I know that Christ was knocking at the door of my heart. I didn’t need anyone to tell me. I just needed to open the door.
In many ways I’m thankful that nobody talked to me about Christ. I don’t have a model of how it should be done. Nobody hounded me. Nobody pressured me. Nobody tried to talk me into becoming a Christian. In fact, nobody talked to me about Christ. None of my peers even invited me to go to church. I knew some of them went to church.
Was it their example that made me want to be a Christian? Was it something they said or did? I can’t point to anything. They were nice people, that is the ones that I thought were Christians. I think I could tell, mostly. But it was not the desire to be like them that led me to make the decision to be a Christian. It was a personal life choice.
For awhile I separated myself from the Christians, maybe out of a rebellious heart. All of our hearts have some rebellion, I think. We hesitate to cross the line and give control over to God. It’s a pretty scary thing to decide to follow Christ. It means crossing over. Leaving the crowd.
I sat on the fence for awhile. I wasn’t really a bad person. I lived a basically good life. But it wasn’t a surrendered life. I was OK with people believing I wasn’t a Christian. Then one day I decided to change that. I decided to take a public stand. There were things about me, outwardly, that looked like a rebel. One was my dark demeanor. I didn’t have the joy I had after I committed my life to Christ. We choose to live in darkness or light. Darkness is where self and sin rule.
There is a song that goes, “We are all God’s children,” and it is true in the general sense that we are all God’s creation and he loves us all. But we are not all “disciples” of Jesus.
I knew it would cost me something to be a disciple, and I was right. It has cost me a lot. I’ve had to stand against the crowd. I haven’t had friends when I might have had them, if I would have compromised a little. I’ve been mocked. I’ve been misunderstood. I’ve been shunned. I’ve been criticized. But I have not yet experienced the extremes that many believers have been subjected to. Thousands of Christians, worldwide, die every year for their faith. Many are tortured. This is something I have not experienced.
Becoming a Christian required that I counted the cost, in other words, what it would cost me to stand in opposition to the thinking and the ways of the world. It’s not popular to be a Jesus follower. I’m glad I didn’t continue to use the excuse that nobody told me about Christ. One day I saw, that it really was just up to me. What will you do about the claims of Christ?
Faith Insights 