Back to Blogging, Dec.26,2009

I'm back to blogging because it gives me a venue to express thoughts that I can't express anywhere else, and that is very therapeutic for me! I sometimes think I don't have time to blog but that's like saying I don't have time to think, and that is a really pitiful condition.

Today I'm thinking that I am a wimpy Christian, and I want to talk about that for my own excoriation of spirit and consequent edification of soul! We have just got through the Babe in the Manger part of Christianity and I have slobbered along with everyone else over the beauty of the Babe in the Manger, the loveliness of the creche, the warm, fuzzy feelings we have toward the whole Christmas setting, and then toward mankind because the Angels sang about peace on earth and good will to all men.

And then the rest of the year, I am a complete wimp when it comes to letting those in my small world know how I really feel about being a Christian. First, I fail to declare my faith that it is Jesus, who is God Incarnate, who is my personal Savior and who is the potential Savior of the world. I quibble along with other believers who try to be politically correct and affirm that there might indeed be other ways to God than through the Cross of Christ. I don't dare say to believers and non-believers alike, what C.S. Lewis affirmed so strongly, that "No, either Jesus is the Divine and Unique Son of God, or He is a mad man or the greatest con artist the world has ever known." And if He is indeed Who He Claims To Be, then He is the only Redeemer of men's souls.

And the love that He has for all mankind is a redeeming love, which means to me that it is a costly, sacrificial, strong and everlasting love that reaches to the pits of hell to draw me out of the enslavement of my sin, and cleanse me and re-make me into what He desires me to be.

This redemptive love is not a warm, cosy, pathetic, self-abnegating, "you didn't mean to be bad" patting on the head of a "sorry I did it (and got caught)" so-called repenter. It is a love that cost the Everlasting, Eternal, God of the Universe, everything that He had and was!!! And that kind of love, if it is to redeem me, must be accepted by me on my knees before God and saying "I give You all that I am; all that I will ever be, and I trust you forever with all of my heart and soul."

The Christian faith is a gutsy, husky, all-or-nothing-at-all faith and it is not for sissies, or quibblers, or abnegators, or compromisers, or pie-in-the-sky-ers, or anyone who is unwilling to submit, finally, to the God of all the Universe, who does, in fact, love us redemptively.

This is what I really believe. Will I be courageous enough to share my faith with anyone who happens to enter my small, small, world, and will I let Him who is God do in my life what He wills to do?

I hope so.