I wish I could go up to every person I know and let them know that there is a God, a God whose image they were created in, a God who loves them, a God who wants to give them abundant life. I wish it were easier to do this without people looking at you as a freak. Obviously if a stranger came up to me and started talking about a god like that (and I had never heard of this god) I might think they were a little crazy. I feel like such an inadequate representation of that God. I continually wonder why God chose flawed human beings to bring his gospel to the world he loves. Wouldn't it be better if he made christians perfect upon their salvation so that they would never make Christ look bad? Paul tells a powerful truth to the Corinthian church, he says that he was sent "to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:17-18 ESV) Verse 18 brings me the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow. The fact that the wrath satisfying work of Christ on that cross is the power of God. It is the reason that souls will even have the chance to come near to the throne of God! I heard a preacher make the point that Paul, unlike people today, was not concerned about how God could allow bad things to happen but he was wondering how on earth God could allow a sinner to be forgiven. He was just amazed that God would give adulterous people the chance to get off scot-free! That is the joy of that verse. But the sorrow is in the first part of the verse when it shows that people that are created by God to love God and enjoy God see the saving work of God's son as foolishness. I just want to weep sometime thinking about how some people who are living right now and will never embrace the abundant life that is offered through Jesus. I want so badly to see people embrace the beautiful savior and it pains me to see them walk away. I also feel anger toward myself because of all the times I have make Christ look unattractive by the way I live and the words I say. I feel like part of the problem, I sometimes feel that it is Christians who are stopping this glorious life-giving gospel from getting to people.
I just want to scream: "why the heck would God want us to be his representation?"
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1 Corinthians 2:1-5 is my favorite passage of inspiration when I feel inadequate to share the gospel.
"And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God"
its so amazing to me that even Paul wasn't eloquent and bold, even though he was practically a genius, yet he was able to lead people to Christ by the thousands. Reading about that time period in Acts just blows my mind.
As for how we live, trying to represent Him, um we suck, but that’s why God is so incredible. I don't get Him. It seems like He goes out of His way to find the most "foolish" way to accomplish his perfect will. Like when he had Samson kill those thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. Totally unnecessary. Or when He had Noah make an idiot of himself by telling him to build an ark. And now He is being represented, a perfect God, through people guilty of infinite iniquities. I always wonder if He laughs about things like this.
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