The world doesn’t need the super-Christian
one of the good things about having a blog that barely anyone reads is that i know who my readers are for the most part. i have a general idea of the type of people that read the things that i write. i know the types of jobs that you guys have. i know where you’re coming from when you’re reading this.
and if i’m not mistaken, i don’t think a single person reading this works in a church full-time.
you all have “real” jobs. you have to do something other than talk about jesus all of the time to make a living. you all spend much, if not all, of your time, energy, and money working on your job or your schoolwork or whatever it is that you do.
the idea of going out and trying to reach the world for jesus on top of all of that other stuff is simply exhausting to think about.
you have to get up early to go to work. then when you leave at five (if you’re lucky) you are dead tired. when you get home you’ve got to cook dinner, pay bills, clean the house, wash clothes, or one of 100 other things. there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done that needs to get done. how are you supposed to find the time to be super christian?
i’m right there with you.
i know that i should do more. i know that i should share my faith more. i know that i should do more in my church. even more than knowing that i should do these things, i know that i want to do them. i know that i want to do more. i know that i want to share my faith more. i know that i want to do more in my church.
but that night i have an event to work.
and i can’t go do that because i’ve got a paper i need to write.
and yeah, i’d absolutely love to help with that, but i don’t have the time to do it this week.
does that sound familiar? i’m guessing that it does.
on sunday i was watching the superbowl. i was just hanging out by myself at home relaxing and watching the game. i was pulling for the colts but didn’t really care who won. i just wanted to escape and be entertained for four hours.
on one of the first media breaks, cbs ran a doritos commercial. it was the one where the man was telling the dog to bark for the chip. the dog couldn’t bark because he was wearing one of those shock collars. the dog decided to get even with the man and put the collar on him and then started barking.
it was made by a liberty grad.
when the next media break rolled around, cbs played another doritos commercial. this one was one where a guy faked his own death and was laying in a casket full of the delicious nacho cheese flavored chips watching a game. he ended up getting too excited and blew the whole prank.
it was made by mosaic church in california.
soon after that, the colts had a fourth down in field goal range. they trotted out their field goal kicker to try and get three points on the board. they snapped the ball, the kicker kicked it, and the ball went through the uprights. after the kick, the kicker pointed to the skies. the announcer in the game said that the kicker points to the skies as a religious symbol on every kick no matter if he makes it or not.
in a span of 45 minutes, a record audience saw three things from three christian people.
three people used their job and their abilities in a way that reached millions upon millions of people.
mosaic church knew that if their commercial got aired people would be talking about their church. they knew that with people talking about their church, they had a wide-open door to walk through and start talking about jesus.
the kicker for the colts knew that publicly praising god no matter the result of his kick would draw the attention of the people around him. he knew that when they saw that over and over, they would ask what his deal was.
they were intentional.
and that’s what we have to do.
we may not have time to go out and volunteer with these events. we may be too busy to do all of the things that we want to do. we may not have the resources to become the super christian.
we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought that all of the people that we work with are christians. that’s just dumb. it’d be awesome if that was the case but i highly doubt that it is. if we’re going to be stuck at work, or stuck in school going to class, or wherever else it is that we’re stuck, we need to at least make the best of the situation. we need to be open about our faith. we need to look for opportunities to show jesus to the people around us.
it doesn’t take much to do this. maybe it’s simply having a better mood and being encouraging to other people. maybe it’s bringing someone coffee just for the heck of it. maybe it’s just being there when someone wants to vent. eventually the people around you are going to wonder why you are the way that you are and bam, there’s your door to start talking about jesus.
when we’re intentional about looking for open doors, god is intentional in opening them.
the world doesn’t need the super christian. it simply needs the intentional christian.
say your prayers and take your vitamins.
have a nice day.
-jonathan