Taking on a Label

 

            If you are one who calls himself a Christian, why do you take this label and on what are you basing this claim? To build a foundation for the basis of this question, one will label oneself in certain ways under the influence of the culture in which he lives. One person can make claims about himself based on his interpretation of reality, while others may look at them and come to different conclusions.

               One can easily deceive himself into thinking certain things, while others will see through the self-deception and understand you differently. Simply attending an American Evangelical church service once a week does not make one a Christian. Our thoughts, our words, and our behavior will define us in ways that should correspond with our claim to being a follower of Jesus Christ.

               If we sit and are entertained in an American Evangelical service for an hour, that is hardly grounds for labeling oneself a follower of Christ. Does the way you talk about others, the way you treat others, and your lifestyle during the rest of the week align with the life that Jesus and the apostles teach in the New Testament?

               Are you loving? Are you judgmental? Are you kind and generous? Or is your life centered around making yourself comfortable and distracted? Think of your life in this way. Jesus taught his disciples, who became apostles, who then taught the first generation of Christians and that pattern has been ongoing since the first century.  What one sees and hears in the most American Evangelical services is nothing like what one sees in the last two thousand years of Christian history.

               Is your life in alignment with Jesus’ teaching, the apostles teaching, and the examples of holy people through the last twenty centuries?