Some thoughts early in the morning ... have you ever met a person or been friends with someone that every night would leave you praying that if they could just be a Christian, that would be it. they're such a good person! they're nicer than my Christian friends! (etc. etc.) I have more than a couple friends of mine that are closer to being like Christ than people in my church that claim to have an "intimate" relationship with Him yet are unable to back it up with their words and actions. and occasionally that leaves me thinking, if they would just believe....
Why is it that this frustrates me so? that i believe that they are "depraved" and yet those that claim to be seeking after God are further away than those that have no care for Him at all? I must apologize, this is a difficult topic for me to convey in mere type, but do any of you get what I'm saying? I feel ashamed to say it, but there are times when I come across a non-Christian who shows Christlike character and I think "They are more deserving of God's saving grace than I am!" Anyone relate to this?
4 comments:
Hey Thunercatt99 -- Glad you stopped by at my blog. And now, I'm even more glad I stopped by here, at yours. Yes, I know how you feel. One comforting thought I've had is this: God loves these friends even more than I do. He doesn't ask me to save anyone, only to point to the Savior. Keep on lovin' your friends!!! God is in control.
Yes, I have had those thoughts as well, and have particularly wondered about my mother in that light. She's basically a deist, yet one who seems to "get" so much of what it means to love God and love others. I don't know, but I hope Romans 2:12-16 might somehow apply to her:
"All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares."
Of course, this verse deals with a somewhat different set of circumstances than my mother--who has heard the gospel and yet embraces a "higher power" of her own creation--faces. So I suppose it is just my fool's hope grasping at straws ...
I certainly relate to what you are saying. I have known plenty of non-Christians that modeled the fruit of the Spirit and the Beatitudes far better than many people I have known that profess Christ.
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Sadly, that often includes myself.
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