An Eye Opening Experience

Working for a Christian organization can be a blessing and a bit of a curse. The blessings should be obvious -- common beliefs & purpose, pleasant atmosphere, etc. But, the downside of being around only Christians all the time is that you lose touch with those who don't follow Christ. And, once you lose touch with them, you no longer have the connections necessary to bring people to a salvation relationship with Jesus.

That is the boat I'm in. Being in Christian radio, most of the people you come into contact with are fellow believers. But, this week a cousin of mine has allowed me to participate in sharing Jesus with a self-proclaimed liberal, atheist. The young lady does not believe in any god or religion, and views herself as having been set free with her understanding that god is a myth. She claims to have been spurned by organized religion, and it has been clear through some of her comments that she has a lot of assumptions about the Bible, but hasn't ever really explored it.

I'll ask you now to please pray for this young lady. She's the type of person that believes she has it all figured out, and stubbornly refuses to accept the possibility that God may actually exist. However, she has opened herself up to the thinking of the Wicca religion, and I can see where that has influenced her some. Thanks for the prayers for her.

Now, back to the point of this blog post. Dealing with this young woman has been a very eye-opening experience. It has been a wonderful experience delving into the mind of someone who is convinced that if there is a god, she is her own.

For me, personally, I am being stretched in ways that haven't happened for some time. I'm seeing that some people out there have no idea what Jesus was really all about. They see what organized Christianity is, and want nothing of it. But, they assume that Jesus just set up another organized religion. They don't see that He came to free us from that stuff and to build a bridge back to God. They don't see that Jesus shows respect to the lowest of people that the world would rather trample on.

What they do see are all the man-made rules and regulations, power trips and failures, and political infighting that comes when man forgets to put Jesus in charge. And, they want no part of that. Sadly, they assume Jesus to have been the same way, since His followers are all messed up.

One last observation for this day, if you are a Christ-follower, be sure to read your Bible. If you don't know ALL that your Bible says, there is no way you can answer the questions a "liberal atheist" might have. In fact, their skepticism will eat you for lunch.