« Kids’ Meals Aren’t Good for Kids | Main | One of a Hundred – page 105 – Feeling All Mopey »
A Christian Life: Living Open
By Julie | August 6, 2008
Last Sunday the church sermon we heard was on living an open life as a Christian. Living an open life means reaching out to others, and trying to be transparent, being real in who we are and in our faith. It is a hard thing to do. Because the more open we are, the easier it is to get hurt, to be ridiculed, to be unaccepted. But, to be an imitator of Christ is live an open life. A life open to Him allows us to be used by Him, and be authentic for others.
Wow, is that ever hard. One harsh criticism of something important to me, and swear I’ll never put myself out there again. I wish I were better at living open.
Another thing mentioned in the sermon was that even though there are consequences to living open, to be vulnerable, there are also great rewards. The person who boards themselves up at home, and never acknowledges someone else, never has a friend. They never have someone to help them in hard times. They go through everything alone.
All this reminded me of people who have lived an open life to me, to my family. Last year our car died. We decided we could get by with one car. It took some adjustments, but we were managing. Then, my Dad offered to let us use his pickup. We borrowed it for 2 months. It was a wonderful blessing, and humbling. Then he needed it back, and we got used to using one car again. Later, out of the blue, a wonderful family from our church told us they were dropping off their van for us to use. They had just gotten a new pickup, and would not need the van until their son turned 16 and got a drivers license. We told them over and over we were fine, it wasn’t necessary. They insisted we’d be doing them a favor because no one would be driving the van if we didn’t. They dropped it off at our house that afternoon. I have never been on the receiving end of something so selfless from someone who was not family. It still chokes me up to think of their generosity.
This spring Marc and I knew we needed to find a new church. The one we were attending had been our church home for 4 ½ years. We didn’t want to leave. We had a lot of friends there. We were proud of the church in many ways. But things were happening we couldn’t ignore longer; we felt God wanted us to say something. Talking to the people involved was horrible. Calling the minister to tell him we wouldn’t be back was worse. We left. We knew we had to find another church. We were upset, and don’t ever want to be involved in another mess like that again. Our first thoughts were to find a church we could go to and be invisible, not befriend anyone, or get involved in any way. That’s not really the openness God wanted from our lives.
And God got his way. We have ended up in a church, much different from where we were. With people who are so much more open, and more real then where we were. For some reason, they have reached out and made us feel so accepted. We’ve been invited to home Bible studies, to the park to watch the kids play while the moms talked, to one home from supper, to a men’s campout, a talent show to sponsor a mission trip, and other events we haven’t been able to make. None of those things were going to happen in our last church. There were really kind, wonderful people there, but it didn’t breed that type of environment. The leadership tended to be suspicious, and I think that prevented real openness.
The point is, we didn’t want to confront the issues. We prayed God would send someone else to step up and deal with it. It was a hard thing to go through. We lost friends and a church home because of it. But, just when we were ready to close ourselves off, and hide, because we were hurt. God sent good, honest people to really love on us. He really rewarded us by putting us in a better place. It’s much easier to live open when someone loves you.
Topics: Faith, Life and Living | 1 Comment »
August 6th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
We are associated with the type of
Church you now attend. It is sad to state, but they are not easy to find. They are there but the concept of loving the Lord and loving your neighbors (Luke 10:27) is not always a basic doctrine. Why?????? Why do we get lost in lesser directions and lose track of direct undeniable directions from The Christ.