Sound of Surviving Blog

One thing I feel as Christians, we often struggle with is being open with others about our faith in the way we live our lives. I’m not talking about in church or within our bible study. It’s easy to do those things. It’s outside of church, within the real world, that we struggle with being open about our faith in Christ. But in life, we as followers of Jesus are held to a much higher standard than the rest of the world. We are called to love others, no matter who they are, no matter their imperfections; we are called to love others the same way Christ loved us (John 13:34-35).

Christ tells us that by loving others, this is how the world will know and see that we are his disciples. I don’t think we struggle so much with our faith itself, but rather the fear. Fear of approval, fear of coming off as too much, fear of turning others off to God. So instead, it’s easier and less terrifying to just sit back and stay silent. But shouldn’t we want others to see Christ in us? It is time for us to stop pushing our faith to the side, and start putting our love for God on full display, in doing so, we allow others to see the joy and light inside of us because we know Christ. We are called to be a light on a hill that cannot be hidden.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know how to talk to others about God, because we don’t want them to think we’re pushing our beliefs on them. That’s where we can ask God for help. We can ask Him to put the right words in our mouths each and every day so that others will see Him and glorify Him also.

There’s a song I love by TobyMac called “Steal My Show”, whose lyrics are: “So now the crowd is hyped that you showed up tonight, anticipating, craving something more than smoke and lights, so I’ll step out the way, I’ll give you center stage, alright, spotlight, give ’em what they came for, if you wanna steal my show, I’ll sit back and watch you go, if you got something to say, go on and take it away”.

 I’ve always loved the verse where he says, “craving more than smoke and lights”, because it emulates so much of what our human nature is, how God designed us, to desire something bigger than ourselves, Him. Especially in our world today, people are hurting, and so lost, trying to latch onto anything that promises to relieve that pain, that longing. If we have something that is the true solution to all of that, and we have more than enough of it to go around the world and back ten thousand times, shouldn’t we share it with everyone?

We are not called to judge others or condemn others, but to love them as Christ does. Everyone, no matter who they are, or what they’ve done, deserves to know Christ and that he died for them.  Why are we holding back? We shouldn’t be afraid to stand out as the light of the world, offering God’s grace and love to everyone, no matter who they are. After all, if we have a chance to lift others out of the fire, shouldn’t we be there, holding out our hand to them, showing them the way to safety, and leading them to the chief rescuer?