Wednesday, 02 July 2008
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The Bad Witness I Gave
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we Christians advertise our faith: fish-emblems on our cars, Christian books for lunch-hour reading, Christian music coming from our computers, the crosses on our necks. So what happens when we surround ourselves with all this and then do something that contradicts those advertisments? It's as bad as an AA member "witnessing" at a bar with a half-full beer mug in his hand. I said stupid things this weekend, nothing bad or abnormal as far as the world goes, but stupid things I wouldn't say in church. As I hear often-said in the Christian community, "I blew my witness," and unfortunately I did so before I could even make a witness. So now what? Can I still convince them I truly follow Jesus and his teachings?
We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. - 2 Corinthians 4:7, NLT
We're human, and the very best of us screw up. So how do we recoup? What do we do when we realize the next day what we've done and know that we'll face those people again? How do we fix it? How do we prove through our actions who our Lord is?
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Comments (15)
apologise and ask for forgiveness like Jesus would have us do....
oh so right ! there is nothing i hate more than hypocracy, but there is nothing i love better than forgiveness. and hey, im a middle school girl. I make mistakes! I'll lie to my parents, gossip about annoying girls, and snub geeks at one point in my jr high career for certain. but what makes these incidents a small part of my life instead of a downward spiral and major event is that i repent and ask God for forgiveness. My friends all know im christian, and i think the most important message to show nonbelievers is that christians arent all high and mighty- we make mistakes, just like them, which makes them much easier to minister to.
like the above people said, apologize. what i add is to do it with the same humility Christ preached and showed. be real. in a world where pride is so prevalent, true humility is indeed a powerful witness.
1 pet 5:5b-6 (niv)
all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.
i like the jars analogy
We fix what we have done by setting a better example next time. Everyone makes mistakes- heck I made plenty in my lifetime! But when you realize the mistake, I do think you should address it to those around you.
To start with: Don't boast about how Christian you are. Don't lie. Don't speak Jesus's name every other word and talk the talk of piety if in the next breath you are going to use your tongue to hurt someone else. Don't fall victim to the sin of pride. If you screw up, apologize and don't make excuses or justifications for yourself. Don't encourage someone to lay their heart bare to you and then proceed to exclude, or judge, or ignore, or make them regret opening up to you. I've had so many so called Christians crow about how Christian they are and then do something racist or hypocritical or just plain old fashioned mean. And it seems to me like they are just liars. And even to another Christian like me, it's like, is this what being Christian is about? Is dealing this junk even worth it? Is this how my God sees me? It really damages my own walk with faith when others give bad witness. So I'm glad you are asking this question. If there is one thing that drives many, many people far away from Christianity, it's this.
This is something I struggle with a lot, too. It's something to be taken seriously that we as Christians bear the name of the Most High God. It's an honor and a terrifying responsibility. But at the same time, God's grace is bigger than any mistakes you can make in representing Him. God is too transcendent to be taken down by us being a bad witness. Sure, He prefers to be glorified in your being Christ-like, but He's rigged it so that He still gets glory from when we fail because of His incredible grace to us. So be honest about your mistakes. Learn from them. And pray for God to use them to make for all those around you a glorious example of His grace. :)
It depends on who you messed up with. For most good people, just your being real and owning up to it will be enough.
The down side is that you can lose friends over it. I had "bad witness" as much as good throughout my 20's. But the bad had a longer lasting effect. I lost several non-Christian friends because of it. I learned that, when you profess to stand for something, people expect you to stand consistently. I was hurt at the time...I behaved just like the friends I lost, the non Christians, and they didn't want to be friends anymore. But they wanted to watch me do everything right and be who I said I was: a Christian. They wanted to razz me and watch me turn the other cheek about it, too. A year or so ago, I complained to some people at church about how extra-judgemental those non-Christian "friends" were. One of the men said to me, "Well, you stood for something. You should have behaved like it." He was right.
Meanwhile, you can't take actions back, but you can put your best foot forward and be real about what you've done.
There's a psalm or a proverb that talks about how a righteous man falls and gets up every time. It says it's the evil one who stays down.
I really feel for you here.
i heard a sermon that I try to live by and it's a concept that's hard to grasp because of our lowly theological conditioning...
victory is understanding and embracing the concept that if you are in Jesus... you are a saint... not a sinner... and not even a sinner saved by grace... sinner being our identity... but when one recieves Jesus and the mercy and forgivness of God through our faith in our repentance... as we recieve Jesus, our identity is changed from sinner to saint... paul started many of his letters by stating "to the saints..." "to the holy ones..." then talked about their terrible sinful lives...
sinning and sinner are 2 points that I think are important to grasp if you call yourself a Christian.... Christians SIN.... but if you call yourself a Christian, you're a saint... a holy one... not sinner... I'll sin, you'll sin... but if Jesus is your Lord, Savior and Treasure, then you're a saint of God...
victory comes when we realize that we DO choose whether or not to sin... if we are tempted, we have the choice marked with grace... and the further and further we CHOOSE to walk away from indulging in sin... the more victorious we find ourselves as God grows us up...
the reason for hypocrisy is that while it's dispicable... i think we need to come to grips with it because Christians aren't perfect... you're dealing with broken human beings fallen by soul stained with sin.... left broken and in need of restoration... and Jesus offers and grants us that... but even in our reception of His love and His Cross... we're still human and our flesh is still present... so hypocrisy is rampant... but even so hypocrisy is a choice....
you big fat bunch of saints... stop sinning and start embracing the truth that nothing is better than Jesus....
It's for that reason my Dad said he wouldn't have Christian fish or a license plate cover that says "pastor", because you never know, perhaps when you are driving and you even accidentally cut someone off, and then they see the fish or "pastor" thing and think negatively toward it.
Who did you wrong? Your friends? Our Father? Yourself? How were they wronged? Apologize where apologies are due they way they are due.
I've seen folk apologize to non-beleivers for screwing up their witness. They had no clue what the Christians were apologizing for, and it was never explained to them.
Receive Abba's forgiveness to the point of forgiving yourself.
Examine your heart with Abba to find why it was so easy and natural to behave the way you did. Let Him shine a light into your innermost being so that wounds may be healed, believed lies reveal, and Truth replace them. Rope that calf, then move on. Accept no condemnation - that only comes from the enemy.
I used to feel the Baptist mandate to witness. I forced witnessing from myself (flesh) and made Abba more odious to those I witnessed to than before they knew me. I did this for years before it occured to me that the kind of witnessing the church prescribed for me was not prescribe by my Father. For those not gifted with evangelism, the lifestyle witness is far more powerful. It also requires the kind of self-examination you are now engaging in, which brings greater purity as it is examined with our Father.
All you can really do is repent and apologize for what you did and hope to make things better in the future. You can't go backwards and change what you did.
God bless!
Ellen
I agree with all of you about how to rectify the issue.
Not long after writing this, I heard Marc Driscoll say the most wonderful thing regarding us Christians: that we need to let the world know not to judge Christianity by the Christians but by Jesus. He said it better...
Miss Goldenrod
The big error here is to create this concept that 'Christian' means perfect, or shiny or some crap like that. You can't witness by blaring music or a stupid fish on the back of your car. It's a great way to be obnoxious, but it doesn't evangelize anything. God works through communication- witnessing happens on its own time. I find it ironic how people will say 'it will happen in God's time' when talking about their own troubles, but somehow think that witnessing involves placing the label Christian on everything to see, hear, read and do to make a witness happen, ignoring that all things are in God's hands.