What comes to your mind when you hear the word… Christian? Is it positive, negative? I know plenty of people who say they are Christians, they really believe they are Christians ….how they talk, how they treat others or are known to treat others, how they respond in difficult situations, what they post to their facebook wall…well it makes it a bit more interesting of a topic. Maybe in a sense, living in a free country we are just so comfortable that we’ve forgotten the  radical teachings of Jesus. Some of us don’t memorize scripture or even read scripture daily. I heard someone say once, the Devil doesn’t take a day off in attacking you so why would you take a day off from prayer and reading his word? If I were hired to be on a NFL team, let’s say the starting quarterback  I am not sure I’d get far without reading the game plan every week, or learning the play book. You wouldn’t want to hire me to be your investment adviser either if i didn’t have a weekly subscription to the Wall Street Journal and followed the trends of the market place. How would I be learning and staying current?

I am no longer comfortable calling myself a Christian. I just honestly believe it doesn’t represent who I am trying to be, I am calling myself a Christ Follower instead. Being a Christ follower, tells me all I need to know every single moment of my day..FOLLOW CHRIST. Jesus said “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.“(Matt 10:38). Did you get that? We aren’t even worthy of being his if we choose not to take up our cross and follow him. What does that mean, follow him, it means follow his word, follow his heart, his way of living, crucify your will and live God’s will, or in easier terms, pick God’s game plan everyday and leave YOUR game plan at home. This is pretty significant because the difference can be seen by others. The early church, the one talked about in the book of Acts was becoming known by their love for one another and because they were living lives, similar to Christ, they were preaching, teaching, reading God’s word daily, baptizing people, attending to the sick and poor….so people associated them with Jesus Christ and began calling them…”those Christians.”  We are talking about upholding the name of Jesus Christ by how we live. Let me add this here, we aren’t perfect, no one is…but we are being perfected by grace. My favorite Bible verse is in Phil 1:6, it’s God’s promise to continue improving our lives until we are ready to join him in heaven, the question is are we allowing him to perfect our lives, is there a sign of progress and improvement?

Jesus said “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.” Is Jesus judging a person? No. He is simply stating facts, when we hear the phrase, “don’t judge a person” we are trying to convey that we may not know everything about them, but based on what we DO know, here is the verdict. My desire is to live and glorify God in all that I do, with Jesus being my example, his word my guide and his spirit my strength. Yeah, I am a follower of Christ, radically saved, drastically obedient, I am a follower of Christ.

Which describes you best, Christian or Christ Follower?

Deep inner strength is required to hold on in life. We take things as they come and some of them knock us over. We can prepare ourselves for trials and tests, making us stronger mentally. We begin to get used to pain after a while, becoming tougher emotionally and we acquire what some say is “thick skin.” I have discovered that some of us are stronger than we think, we can take some pretty tough blows from life. Sometimes we are so good at being strong, we actually form a bad habit, a habit of holding on too long. We never get past some things and end up keeping them very near our hearts. I heard this said once, “when we don’t forgive, we allow the people who have hurt us to live in our hearts, rent free.”

The same amount of strength required to hang in there is the very same source of strength that allows us to let go. Problem is, we forget how to let go well, in fact we might actually forget how to rid ourselves of emotional baggage sometimes. As the years of struggle, pain and testing pile on, we end up carrying things around with us, things that reside in our past but because we don’t heal properly, we carry them around in our present, making it feel and seem like the incident is happening over and over, when in fact it happened already, it’s in the past.

In order to be really healthy, we need to be able to sit alone, meditate, pray and clear our minds from some things that have kept us back from emotional maturity, some things that just aren’t worth carrying around anymore. Maybe we hold on because it just feels better to still have someone else to blame, maybe we like being the victim. Either case, only in silence, getting on touch with spirit that lives inside can we find these things, address them, bring finality to them and once and for all decide that it’s time to let go.

Have you learned how to let it go?