daily java

Daily Java:

For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”  (Romans 1:16-17)

You are sitting at a table of people that are beginning to deride Christianity. One of them is a person who hates to be told to do anything and he sees Christianity as nothing more than a list of rules and regulations. So off he goes.

He is a popular guy, so there is one more who does the same because he sees the popular guy doing it. Now there are two.

A third chimes in because it seems the whole table is going that way and he is the one that is afraid to take any contrary stance anyway. He isn’t going to buck the majority.

Pretty soon the entire table is ragging on Christianity. And now it comes down to you.

You haven’t mentioned anything or agreed with anybody so far. Someone says to you, well, what do you say? You’re not one of those Christians, are you?

What is your answer? It is easy to imagine the world coming to a stop to hear what you have to say. You can almost imagine a spotlight on you. It is a tense moment.

Everybody has expressed negative thoughts on Christianity. Now you can make it unanimous and everybody can be “happy.”

That is a very real problem. You have two choices to make. Well, maybe three. You could fake a heart attack and have to leave. But mainly there are two.

You can 1. Join the crowd and take the burden off your shoulders to be the sole apologist of Christianity in the room, or 2. you can say “I am one of those Christians.”

It depends on how strong you are. Kids have a problem there. Young people are terrified of looking outside the norm and will do pretty much whatever they need to do to fit in.

But older people sometimes get caught up in this, too.

I read an article in which a man went to a seminar at which the other attenders were ten women. They sat in a semi-circle. The woman giving the seminar was an old-fashioned school teacher. When it came time for the break, she said that there were donuts on the table and that everybody could go one at a time and get one. she started on the end opposite the man.

The first woman declined, not wanting to be the first one up there. The second declined since the first had too and she didn’t want to be the first. The third one went with the trend until all ten of the women had declined to go get donuts. They were all afraid of looking foolish in front of the others.

When she came to the man, he said, yes I think I will and got up and got the first donut of the morning. The women were almost shocked that someone had bucked the trend. After a moment or two, one of the women said, I think I will too. She did, sat down, another got up and soon all ten women had a donut.

It was the power of bucking a trend. Everybody is doing something and you are afraid to be different.

The apostle Paul said, in essence, no matter how many people are against Jesus, I am for him. No matter how many turn away, I will turn toward. No matter how many people are shamed, I will be proud of him and boast in him.

Contrary to what the first guy at the table said, Jesus did not come to tell us what we could and couldn’t do. He came to set us free. This “Good News” tells us how God makes us right in his sight. He came to make us right, not make us be right.

There is a lot of difference there, the difference between freedom and a new different kind of bondage. Jesus came to bring freedom. And all he really requires of us is faith.

The next person at the table is you. What do you say? Are you ashamed of him or will you boldly acknowledge him even though nobody else did?