What are we doing with our lives?

This afternoon I was taking a walk and listening to some Christian music. At one point, I decided that I really wanted to focus on God and so I decided to close my eyes so that I could block out everything around me so I wouldn't be distracted (it was a quiet street with no traffic or activity). As I was walking with my eyes closed, all of a sudden I felt myself begin to trip and immediately opened my eyes and caught myself before I fell to the ground. Then, I suddenly realized that what had just happened to me is a picture of how so many Christians live their lives.

As a Christian, there are many times that we want to only focus on God and block out the rest of the world. Naturally, there are times to do this. We need to focus purely on God. We need it in order to know God. We need to know what He is thinking and feeling. We need to tell Him how we are doing. God desires these times with us and we should desire and even desperately seek these times with Him.

We should always have intimacy with God, but not to the extent of blocking out the rest of the world. What I mean by that is that while we are not supposed to be "of the world" (John 15:19) we are still very much living in the world and we need to stop hiding behind our Christianity. So many times I have heard, oh I can't be around this person or that person because they ____ and as a Christian I need to stay away from them. When someone uses their Christianity as a guard against allowing someone "in the world" in their life they are doing the exact opposite of what Jesus wanted. After all, who did Jesus hang out with while he was on Earth? Did He restrict Himself to only being around men and women of God? NO, He was constantly around the sinners, the people that we immediately shut out of our life because they don't know Jesus. Let me ask a question, how will they get to know Jesus if they are never told, or even better, shown His love? If we don't show them who Jesus is and that they need to get right with God, who will?

It is time to stop hiding behind our church walls and go out and be little Christs (Christians). We need to start doing what Jesus did, which was be around all people. It is time to stop being afraid of the devil and start believing that our God is bigger and much more powerful than him. That we have nothing to fear because we have God on our side. So who's with me?