Four Things

We watched this video (well, DVD) when our group went out this morning. Apparently Dianne's recorder just randomly recorded a chunk of the God channel and in the middle was this hour long bit by J. John (think that was his name...). Anyway, the gist of it was that there're four things with being a Christian.

1. Admit. When he said it, I thought 'oh no, here we go, sin and how terrible we all are'. Now, don't get me wrong, that is true. Until you become a Christian, at which point all of your sin--past, present and future--is wiped out and nullified in the eyes of God, cos when he looks at you you see Jesus. But he started out by saying one of the things you gotta admit is that God is God and that he's in control. Then he moved on to saying how we'd sinned and stuff and that had to be admitted to, but the first thing he came with was how it's so hard to admit that God is in control, that there is a God, and that it's his job, not ours, to control the world an all of that.

2. Commit. Now, it's all well and good to admit there's a god and to admit that Jesus is his son, but you have to commit. You have to do something with that knowledge. You have to make a decision to commit your life to Jesus, to following him. That's what committing is all about. It's about saying 'yes, this is what I want to do, this is what I want for my life'. It's about making a decision based on your admission that God exists and that you can't do without him.

3. Submit. The speaker used this to illustrate. If you ever go into a throne room, there's only one throne, not a bench for a couple of kings to sit on, one throne. You bow down to that one throne. Basically, it's like Jesus says. You can't serve two masters. You serve the world or you serve God. You have to choose to follow God, you have to choose which way you want to go, what you want to follow, where you're going to put your time, effort and money.

4. Transmit. This is about telling other people, about making it clear to the world that you've done the other three, about spreading the good news. This is about not keeping your faith inside, about not being afraid to stand up and share about what you believe.

Everyone's at a different point in this walk with God. We were talking about it at the end, how you can be transmitting but not doing any of the others, about how some people pretend to be Christians. Now, to be quite frank, I don't see the point of pretending. Why pretend when you can be? And if you don't want to be, then why pretend that's what you are? Anyway, that's what we were talking about this morning.