Making a difference

I have been seeing a lot of news reports lately about fear and hate and holy wars and other scary stuff in every part of the world. I wonder what will be the condition of the world that my generation will inherit. I have even heard Christians and the like talking about how there is a theological invasion coming and if we, being the Christians of this country, don't stand up and fight then we will loose our 'church'.

So as I look at what Jesus did while he was going from town to town and what he was accomplishing I do not see anyone standing up to fight. In fact, I see just the opposite and the one time someone did stand up to fight he was rebuked by Jesus. So if we are going to stop this 'theological invasion' then what will be the weapons of choice. How will we make our stand and set ourselves apart? How will the world know that we are Christians?

In John 13 Jesus told his disciples this, "Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." Jesus also told us in Matthew 22 to "love your neighbor as you love yourself."

OK, application time. The other day the Impact Church staff went to a park in Lake Elsinore and grilled 40 lbs of chicken for the homeless in the area. We met up with a group of people that do it every Monday and have been for years. They needed a little help that day so we came out in force. While this was being planned Jeff found out that a coworker at Applebee's who happens to be Muslim missed one of her fasting days, its Ramadan right now and you can read about that elsewhere. So to make up for it she can feed to poor. Jeff invited her to come along because we happened to be doing just that Monday night. We were talking about it and we wondered what would happen if during Ramadan we made it a point to do something like this every week, inviting local Muslims who needed to make up points to come join us. We get to know them this way and they get to know us. They get to see us for who we are and get to observe us loving and caring for people.

How many relationships would be formed from that? Do you think that some walls could come down? Do you think that the love that we have as believers of God would be apparent to them? It seems to go 90 degrees against what mainstream American Christianity thinks but isn't that exactly what Jesus did with the mainstream of his time?

Maybe making a stand in our community is the first step. We are in a war of attrition, person by person we can win.