The Stigma of a Lifelong Christian

You ever feel like your Christian faith is lacking something because you were baptized as an infant? I'm not addressing "the love going cold" that can happen to a person even if they haven't been Christian all their life.

Last night in Bible Class we took time to read through the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke. Both the births of John the Baptist and Jesus were miraculous. John's mother was barren and old. Jesus' mother was a virgin. John the Baptist also had the distinguishing mark of being filled with the Holy Spirit even from the womb. John did not have the opportunity to live a time in rebellion before God saved him. This, the Bible says, is something special.

We have not had the Holy Spirit from the time we were in our mother's womb (Psalm 51:5). We did receive the Holy Spirit through water and word (John 3:5). Dead is dead, whether we were dead for 9 months and 8 days, or dead for years. Our Christian faith is not composed of various ingredients one of which is how far we had fallen, but it is completely an act of God through His Word.

The Church is Broken

Come, Lord Jesus, and fix it.

You're scattering the precious Gospel all over the place. Sloppily you give the Gospel to people who may grow cold to it. Carelessly you give it to us so we can twist it and use it to create factions and confusion. You run the risk that we won't trample all over it with our dirty stinky feet thinking it is ours to do with as we please and not the precious pearl from heaven.

You designed it this way. You preserve your church, fractured and broken as it seems to us. You see cohesion where we see chaos. You see strength where we see weakness. Your Word will endure, and through it, your church.

You'll fix it on the last day. Then we'll see that you really knew what you were doing. We'll marvel at how you preserved those bruised reeds so that they weren't pulled up with the other rebellious weeds. May today be your fix-it day.

Amen, Come Lord Jesus.

And I'm back

After a few (ha!) months of thinking, this blog is my professional devotion blog. No one's reading it anyway, and this way it will force me to actually follow through on my random devotional thoughts.