My Declaration

I am a Christian! I'm a Christian in my walk and behavior, not just a Christian in name only. I'm not a Christian because I say I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian because of the way I live my life. By my attitudes and behaviors toward others. I will state my beliefs and my faith, but I will never try to force anyone to believe the way I do. I will not try to make others have the faith that I have. I refuse to use the Bible to beat people over the head. No one has ever become a Christian because someone beat them up with the Word of God. None have ever truly given their heart to Christ because someone preached how much God hated them, or their sin. In fact, every Christian I've ever known to be recently saved talked about the LOVE they felt when they gave their life to Christ. The love in the church they were in, or the fellowship they were at when they made that decision. Never have I once heard someone talk about getting saved because the preacher, or the Christian who led them to Christ, were screaming at them about their sin or calling down death and destruction on them. To be quite blunt, you cannot scare the hell out of the lost; you have to LOVE the hell out of them.

I know many who disagree with me, and that's fine. They're entitled to their opinions and their beliefs. And it's not my place to say whether those opinions and beliefs are wrong or not, because I am not the Judge. I can only live my life according the way I understand the scripture. And, I can honestly say that over the past 29 years I have read the same scripture at different times and gotten something completely different from it when I was an older, more mature Christian than I did when I was a newborn Christian. Why is that? Because a baby doesn't understand the way an adult does. And, as our walk matures, Holy Spirit will reveal things to us that we couldn't accept or understand at an earlier time. But the one thing we must all understand is this: Jesus Christ is, was and always will be the ONLY JUDGE. I'm an imperfect creature, therefore I have no ability or right to try to judge another. Christ, being the perfection of man and the incarnate God is the only One who is worthy and justifiably able to judge, because only He can see the heart, and it's the heart that will be judged. Our motives and attitudes toward God, others and even ourselves are what we will be judged by.

So, I will live my life according the understanding I have of the Bible. I will make mistakes and I will miss the mark, but I will keep getting back up when I fall and keep pressing toward the mark. In the meantime, I will remember that it is my actions and my heart that are most important, because my words will never make much of a difference if they're not in line with what I'm living.