Let Others See Jesus In You
"These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." -- Matthew 15:8
My Great Aunt Murl had a wonderful saying: Pretty is as pretty does. We all heard it again and again over the years. Her meaning was clear. It doesn't matter what you say you will or won't do. What matters is what you actually do.
Jesus talked about something similar. The Pharisees were far more interested in their rules than they were in actually knowing and serving God. It's like showing up for church every Sunday and forgetting all about God the other six days of the week. One day a week doesn't make you a Christian. It just shows you to be a hypocrite.
How do people know you are a Christian? Can they recognize you by your actions, by the words you speak, for the compassion you show? Or do they turn away from God because they see someone hard and unfeeling, focused totally on self and gain at any cost?
Probably they see someone who is somewhere in between. We all slip up. We all get impatient at times. We don't always show our happy face to the world. Sometimes we don't want to be bothered by someone else's problems. Imagine what our fate would be if Jesus had shared that attitude. Pretty horrifying, isn't it?
My cousin has a church tag on the front of her van. She says that many times she's wanted to react to another driver but she tries to remember that tag. She represents her church and, really, all Christians. We all do. People who don't know Jesus look to us to see what He looks like. What are we showing them? It might only take our having one bad moment to turn someone away from Christ forever. That's scary.
Don't be the person who speaks Christianity with her mouth but fails to live her faith day by day. Live your life in such a way that others see Jesus when they look at you.
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