My church in Swindon gave an great preach today, calling on us all to wonder 'is our faith in Jesus Christ genuine?'. Such preaches have the chance to condemn if they aren't too careful, but the passage of James that the premise comes from is actually meant to challenge and lift Christians out of settling for a mediocrity in their lives, when we consider that Jesus offers 'life in its fullness'. During this week I had been doing some heart searching about what really makes me a Christian, and how I would be able to say that I am Christian. What the guy speaking today helpfully put across, is that making a dedication way back when, just the once, when I was six years old to follow Jesus, is not enough. Why is it not enough to justify that I am saved? Because following Jesus is continual, and that when we give our lives to Him we give it all, the present and the days to come. So Christians continually give it to God, otherwise we are only giving a part of our timeframe to Christ, making up only a part of our life. So, every day is a conscious decision whether or not to live in fellowship with God and in the good of his ways. We don't have to do works in order to attain salvation, but we can work his ways out because we just actually want to. Every day, we can choose to die to our old selves and old patterns of behaviour, and nail it to the cross again. We are raised with Jesus into life again, not bound by the day before, or of sins past gone, but by what God has in store for us next.
After all, the people around us who aren't Christians won't care much about what I was like when I was little boy when I first wanted to become a Christian - what they see now is what they will make their minds up about, as to whether there is anything in it or not. Ultimately, challenging people to ask themselves if their faith is genuine helps God's purposes, by urging Christians to be the people that actively let other people see God's love for all mankind. It lets God be far bigger than we might previously allow him to be in our lives, and in the other lives that are impacted from us as a result.
"If Christ be anything, he must be everything" - Charles Spurgeon
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