A while back I felt the need to create for myself a Christian litmus test. I wanted to be able to gauge my faith and walk with Christ by a different standard, something that would show without error the strengths and weaknesses in my Faith. I looked at several different methods but settled on three rather simple criteria:
If you ask the Members of my Church to describe me, what would the top 5 responses be?
If you were to ask people who know me outside the Church how they would describe me, what would the top 5 responses be?
Now go one step further and ask the people I work with to describe me, what would their top 5 response be?
If I take these 3 lists and compared them side-by-side would they be very similar or would they be completely different? Would faith in God and or that I’m a Christian be mentioned by those outside of the Church, making an entry somewhere in the top 5? My goal was to make sure it would be and hopefully very high on the list. As a new Christian I was always hearing people talk about Christians being hypocrites. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and if these 3 lists were very comparable, I didn’t see how anyone could say that. One of the greatest gifts I was given was a new me.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17
I like the new me and I don’t really care for the old one. I’m proud of my Faith and want to be known as a Christian. So much so that I feel confident in my assessment and that it would make the top 5 descriptions about me on all 3 list. I hope that one day that fact being #1 wont be in question.
I hold no one to this light other than myself, but it is very important to me and I check myself against this scale often. It’s very important to me that people see me the same on Thursday afternoon as those that do on Sunday morning. I feel that if the people I work with or those that know me outside of Church aren’t aware of my Faith and the value I place on it, I have denied Christ.
We all have different things that we find important in life. But whatever they are and whatever values we hold need to be adhered to and we need the ability to measure them. Without an individual “code” to live by we will just slide around in life. The fact we are Christians and more importantly that we have a strong faith in Christ should be evident to everyone who spends any amount of extended time with us. My greatest desire in life is that the code or measure I have for myself will be the one my children adopt for themselves in their lives. I can promise you they are aware of it and I know where my faith stands should they be asked to make this list about me.
How are the people you encounter today going to view you? At work or around others today think about this and what traits they would note about you? We talk about Faith as a walk with Christ so He’s right there with you. Would He be proud of this list or would you be ashamed to share it with Him?
Grace and Peace
Jeff
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