Jesus In Me. Jesus In You.

"Salvation is not an addition to your life. It is a radical change."

WHAT TURNS people to Jesus is seeing Him as He is. Is Jesus being revealed to them.

It isn’t church. Too many get invited and accept to please a friend or acquaintance then run out, uncomfortable with what they don’t understand. It is that people see Jesus in our laughter, our smiles, our patience, our peaceful demeanor. Our lack of anxiety about the nation and the world, our lack of worry about needing money, our lack of fear over our children and our health.

Our lack of hate.

We don’t hate their appearance, their habits, their choice of entertainment, their language, their food tastes, or anything else they do. We don’t show hatred for their sin. We don’t even readily think of them as sin.

There are those who never attend church or synagogue who serve Him with their whole being. There are those who, without knowing Him, know Him better than most do. He is seen in the things around us. And many have found Him in cultures, in lifestyles where He isn’t known (Romans 2:14-15).

We don’t need to bathe them in church culture. The church is the completeness of Christ (Ephesians 1:23). It’s people worshiping Him. It’s changed people, who overflow with the love and kindness of God who cares for them. When they sleep. When they eat. When they go to work. When they interact with others. It’s neither being social or being unsocial but being in union with Christ. So close we hear His heartbeat and know what isn’t His heartbeat.

Jesus ate with sinners and was criticized for it by the “church.” Jesus criticized the “church leaders”, that being religious scholars, then died for them because God SO LOVED the world (John 3:16). He took the thief hanging beside Him on a cross to Paradise that day. (Luke 23:43) We need to remember these things and not use Jesus’ words in the Temple when He cast out the moneychangers or His words to the Pharisees, who ignored the Law they purported to believe, as an excuse for us to be vocal and hateful. “Well, He said ‘hypocrites’ and ‘vipers.’” But He never sinned, not even in thought, and no one else can say that (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Salvation is not an addition to your life. It is a radical change. What we must do is lay down our will and surrender to His, so that the church culture reflects the heart of God, and not the heart of men, denominations, or doctrines. We’re not trying to get people in Jesus, we want Jesus to live in people.

“At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.” (Ephesians 1:22-23 MSG)


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com