If I look at you, I should see God.
Now before you get out your pitchforks and burn me at the stake
for heresy, let me explain. And seriously, get rid of the pitchfork. We have
guns now. Get with it.
Instead of leading you through a seemingly
irrelevant metaphor or taking
you an a ridiculous rabbit
trail, I'm going to lay all my cards on the table right away:
We need to be transparent.
2 Corinthians 5 says the following:
"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us."
So,
what I'm about to tell you may not come as a shock if you've ever had any
church background (or pitchfork background) but, according to this passage,
Paul is telling us that the God of the universe is reaching out to the world
through those He has already saved. He calls us to be glass cages containing
His Spirit, so that when people look at us, they see past us directly into the
face of God Himself.
Because
you might be the only example of God's qualities your friend ever sees.
As Marty
McFly would say: "That's
heavy."
Does
that mean we are to lose our individuality and identity? No way, stake-burner.
It means that as we grow in God and start to "be conformed to the image of
his Son," we begin to take on His attributes of love, grace, faith,
and glory and reflect all these things back to our Creator. (Romans 8)
My
suggestion?
Let's
start praying that our daily, hourly, and "minute-ly" actions,
behaviors, and attitudes display the characteristics of God. So that when you
need to go twenty minutes out of your way to pick someone up so they can come
to church, you do it with joy. So that when you get demoted at your job, your
coworkers see that you handle it with grace and patience. So that when you have
to walk out of a movie because it's ridiculously raunchy, your friends see your
passion for purity, despite how much they'll make fun of you for it.
So
put down your pitchforks (or guns, if you've been busy) and put on Christ.
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