Skip to main content

Unashamed no more.

At first blush I would look at my life, and comparatively speaking wonder at all the things I am missing out on? I could go into detail and list all the things that I have not yet achieved, but this would be a lie because over the past year, there has been many things that I have done! The question I want to ask myself at this point is "What do you have to do, to be called a man?" Don't feel underappreciated ladies, you can ask yourself the same question. Status and status updates have been the way that I communicated to others how I am feeling, and how I am doing. I am sure you can relate. Just what is on your mind? This question is becoming harder and harder to answer, as I turn 44 this year. Birthdays are a time of great joy for me, I take great pride in turning one year older and I am not ashamed of telling people that.

I don't like to hide my age because I feel that with age comes wisdom and experience. When we flip flop around in life, I really don't think it is our fault as humans. Life can become complicated at times, and that is why I like to believe in grace. Two very important realities in my life right now are grace and compassion. Christianity likes to throw around the word grace, but it has lost it's true meaning over the decades. I don't think that grace can be described like it used to, and that is too bad. I don't think we need to redefine the word, I just think we need to take it more seriously. When God gives us grace, it is a precious gift. Compassion on the other hand must be fought for at times. The church is fighting for doctrine (which is right!) but they also must be fighting for compassion and truth!

Finding the balance is very hard now, and if people are to wake up, it will be their own doing. When someone is asleep, a metaphor for ignorance, we must show them compassion. Finding out what we believe or what the church believes at this point, would just confuse the matter (let me explain.) When we are deceived, or have a mistaken belief about our identity, we don't need people telling us who we are! It just won't help to tell people what the bible says, if 'lets say' they are lacking food! We must feed that hungry person first and then if they are up to it, we can take them to church with us!

Another way of saying it is, compassion comes before grace! When we meet someone who is blind, do we scoff and laugh at them? No, we show them compassion! Anyone in their right mind would agree. So when I am lost in life, or my brother or sister is lost, it doesn't mean that I am lost too. I might have been found many years ago and am just waiting for the opportunity to show someone the way home. This is Mike.    

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On Christian Marriage. (Short)

On Christian Marriage. (Short) The modern co-habitation crisis has produced a lot of single moms and dads, and has fractured "family units" allowing other family members and relatives to take a bigger role in these "Separated families." There isn't a "one cause" why families have separated or divorced, it is a complicated issue, sometimes resulting in very hard emotions for Society to process. Things like the "millennial sexual revolution" have contributed to the widespread "non-committal" attitude, which in turn has given the traditional marriage the "black eye" it currently has and has turned many Christian men away from seeking a life partner. The more society devalues "traditional marriage" the more co-habitation you will see in all the other generations as well as the Millennials. This is Mike.

Why Christians must show Mutual Concern for One another.

  Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. Psalm 142:4. Christians in the church should have mutual concern for one another, this is what it means to be part of the body of Christ, 1 Corinthians 12:25. It’s takes good pastoral leadership to foster this sense of concern, and where it is missing, individuals who are suffering in the church are overlooked and not supported. Every believer needs support and encouragement, but when this is missing, the church divides and loses it power and testimony. Christians live like the world, and become vulnerable to Satan’s attacks when nobody is supporting them outside the church. I used to belong to an evangelical church which had great leadership, and something called small groups. This church felt like a family and I had people who shared my Christian walk with me when I was not in the church building. I have been attending a different denomination that doesn’t hav...

Age of Brokenness.

  We are living in an age of brokenness, no matter what age you are, you probably have been touched with relationships falling apart, which causes more and more people to live in isolation. In this generation there is less of an incentive to heal and reconcile relationships, but that doesn’t excuse the amount of people who are broken. Why people don’t seem to be motivated to heal relationships is because our beliefs about faith and God have changed, really giving us less of an incentive to do what our religion says. If I act from my personal beliefs, but the person that I am responding to has abandoned religious beliefs, than the response to my wanting things to be better can be misinterpreted and rejected then by someone else. Generally when a society has expectations about broken relationships, loneliness and isolation, and the beliefs are generally accepted, society becomes a more compassionate society, because all value the same things. When religious values are undermined and ...