Food for Thought

Sometimes Christians can be their own worst enemies. If the Bible can be summed up into one word, it would be the word love. God loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. Jesus demonstrated love when he walked the earth and went through agony and the most gruesome death because of his love for us. As Christians we are called to be Christ followers, and sometimes love is the farthest thing from what we show to those around us. With the exception of +Gracie Scott and her sweet family, it is very rare that I see this love reflected. Myself included, Christians are not reflecting the love of Christ but instead are reflecting greed, judgement, hate, and hypocrisy. The reason why I am on this "soapbox" is because of an incident that happened a few weeks ago at work. The restaurant that I work at on the beach, has a room called the VIP room, which is a private room with a table, chairs, and a t..v. A lot of times customers will have small Birthday parties or meetings in the room. A few weeks ago a church group came and stayed in the hotel and ate breakfast during one of the mornings they stayed. When they came down for breakfast, they acted as if they owned the restaurant by not waiting to be seated and just sat themselves and then complained when they had no silverware. They were very needy and demanded a lot of attention, thus taking away attention that us servers could devote to our other tables. When they left, they did not tip any of the servers and there was at least 60 members in the group. What made matters worse was the pastor insisted that him and his family sit in the VIP room away from everyone. This does not reflect the love of the Lord. Jesus did not put himself above his people but instead walked with them in love and even visited their houses!  Unfortunately, many of my coworkers want nothing to do with Christianity or God in general. I honestly can't say I blame them after this incident. This situation only confirmed why they wanted nothing to do with Christianity. Why would they want to be apart of a religion where they belittle people and are rude to them? Why would they want to listen to someone preach to them who would not even sit in the same room with them? Why would they want to listen to people who have "Jesus loves you" on their shirt but showed no love at all? As a Christian, this made me ashamed and dissapointed in our generation of followers. Why have we allowed ourselves to get to this point? Are we as Christians turning into Pharisees instead of disciples? Are we content with knowing the Word instead of living the Word? Are we too busy arguing about trivial differences instead of ministering to those around us? Are we judging when we should be loving? Myself included, Christians can be our own worst enemies. We scare away the same people we are trying to minister to because we focus more on ourselves than those around us. Jesus was homeless, incurred much mocking, pain, and suffering for us. He showed love,compassion, and sympathy when people needed it the most. Are we doing the same for His children?

Verses for the week: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. Who, being in very nature God,did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature  of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!" Philippians 2:3-8