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| Image credit : www.masoncontractors.org |
For the umpteenth time I have been mistaken for a supermarket attendant manning an isle. It's no longer even funny. It's a disturbing trend that should stop. In my attempts to look dapper, but not too dapper lest I appear on Fashion Watch because I don't desire too much attention, my ensemble has mistakenly being viewed as 'supermarket uniform'. Why people see me in a sweater, shirt and tie, looking at a row of items and conclude that I work there is beyond me? Maybe I should drop the whole tie, shirt and sweater thing, and carry a trolley for good measure.
Away from my supermarket chronicles, with even more regularity, the Christian faith has been mistaken for something it's not, a religion, when it is in fact, a relationship with Christ. Christianity, not a religion you say? I know, I know....it sounds preposterous, but let me try my best to explain.
You see, like so many, I had that view of the Christian faith, as a religion. I didn't outright label it as a religion but it was evident in my outlook and my behavior. When I gave my life to Jesus as a teenager, my main reason for doing so was for fear of spending my eternity in hell.
I watched the play, "Heaven's gates, hell's flames, and I just didn't like the thought of spending eternity in an inferno with the Devil, so I got 'saved'. I honestly couldn't grasp the gravity of my decision at the time. I just feared hell, so I chose the better option( not Safaricom, but life with Jesus).
Before I reached a point of discovering Christianity as a relationship with Christ, I made the honest mistake of viewing it as a religion. I was a young believer. A kid. I thought that Christianity was about keeping a balanced score-card with God, so for every lie I told, I needed to drop a coin in a beggar's bowl, I needed to pray, I needed to read the bible, I needed to faithfully give offering. My righteous acts were my security or down payment to God, in exchange for consolidating my place in Heaven.
Moreover, I viewed my righteous acts as the basis for feeling entitled to God's blessings of success, prosperity, finances, good health, a girl-friend. When I didn't get them, I whined and complained that God was unfair. When I did get them, I felt God owed me more. My Christian faith was purely about going to church, seeing what right I could do to earn God's favor.
Then, gradually, as I grew in the faith, it all unraveled, rather dramatically I may add. When God purposes to make you his, he makes you his, but he does it in his way that just leaves you awestruck at the change he can produce in an individual, even yourself.
That's God's love. He loves us too much to leave us just as we are so as I continued to follow him, he continued to change me; my altitude, my thoughts, my mentality, my heart. I guess the first part was realizing how much he loved me.
It began with the sermons on love, that slowly become embedded in my mind. Thereafter was the visual illustration of that love, cue in, Passion of the Christ and the John 3:16/Train video which you can check out through this link click here
However God wasn't finished there. Then came the big one. The experience. While I was in campus, I got insanely attracted to a lady, let me clarify what insanely attracted to a lady..is. By insanely attracted, I mean when I saw her time seemed to stand still for a fraction of a second, when she smiled at me and said hi, right there and then, just that one moment made the whole day perfect.
For the longest time I struggled to understand why her? Sure she was pretty, light and voluptuous at that, smart, witty....but there were other ladies like her, so why her? Why did my heart go gaga for her? When recently I stumbled upon the story of Samson and his first wife in Judges 14, in particular verse 4, it hit me, perhaps God was scripting this love story with a greater purpose in mind and as you will see from this subsequent explanation, it's easy to see why.
I tried a poem, I tried chocolates, I tried surprising her with a bouquet of flowers on Valentines Day. I tried compliments, showing her I care through texts, whether it was her birthday, or she was due to defend her project but to no avail. My attempts hit a brick wall, or as we would say when I was bush, ' Niligonga Ukuta!!'
Worse, that she would never call or text. It was frustrating. Being consigned to that zone, the friendz...., it hurts just writing about that forsaken place. I took solace in some Rock/Pop songs like Franz Ferdinand's- No You girls. Katy Perry's-Wide Awake, Bruno Mars and Cee lo Greene's-The Other side and the feeling's- love it when you call, which, dominated my playlist. With it, they gave me untold bitterness and resentment towards the lady in question.
All the while, God was still working behind the scenes. A convicting Sunday Sermon about getting rid of all malice and bitterness(Ephesians 4:31) had me deleting the above songs from my playlist. Perhaps this was to marinade my heart in preparation of the barbecue of God's scorching love which would follow soon after.
True to form, soon after, I watched the movie, Fireproof and In main character Caleb, found someone I could relate to. Like him, I was trying to show my affection for a lady and like him my attempt to show my affection hit a brick wall. Like him, the lady in the question just so happens to also be called Catherine, coincidence? I think not!
One day, upon having my Quiet Time in the morning, I realized what Caleb went through in the scene as he talks to his father was the story of my life, click here to view the Fireproof scene.
I realized that God relentlessly pursued me in love in spite of me rejecting him, ignoring him and taking him for granted. Like Caleb, that realization brought my knees, because it became crystal clear that God loves me a lot and I could only respond in tears, saying 'Thank you' amidst the sobs.
From that point on, My faith became a response to that love. Jesus gave his life for me, I give mine back to him in return. Sharing Notes on Facebook about God was my thanks to him. Giving that tithe, whether it was 10 from 100, 20 from 200, 350 from sh 3500 was out of love just showing my appreciation for all he had done for me. What does a God loving a man and a man doing things to love in him return spell? R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P, that's what.
A mother does not wake up at 2 am in the morning, to tend to her baby because it is stipulated. " that when baby cries, thou must cease all things sleep and take care of baby." Neither is it stipulated in the book of matrimony, "thou husband will make breakfast and serve breakfast to bae when she is in bed." Both instances aren't obligations, both mother and husband do such loving acts because they are in a relationship and wouldn't have it any other way.
The mistaken belief is that the Christian faith is just about religiously sticking to a list of do's and dont's lest your place in heaven goes to the dogs. Sometimes Christians themselves can ascribe to this belief, and their life with Christ is just one of going through the motions, just serving God in the choir, or as an usher, because it's what church expects them to do. Sometimes attending church is just an obligation for some, it resembles more of an appointment with the Dentist, act all nice and promise to follow his advice to keep off sweets, then upon leaving his clinic, sugar rush pap. The Christian goes to Church on Sunday, sings the songs to appear religious, promises to repent then scurries off after the service to do the exact opposite of repent till the next Sunday appointment.
The Christian faith is not about what doing what the Church says, nor doing what the Pastor says,nor is it about doing things so that other people see that you're spiritual; it's about responding in love to a loving God dying on the cross as an atonement for your sin to reconcile you to God.
People do all manner of things in the name of love, or being in a relationship. The Christian faith isn't any different. As relationships are based largely on honor and trust, so is a Christian's relationship with Christ, which will reflect how he/she responds to God's love.
Fat pay-check, fame, success, yet he leaves it all behind because he feels called to help the less fortunate in Africa and be a living vessel reflecting God's love for the downtrodden, who honors God by caring for the plight of the less fortunate. That's a Christian responding to God's love not the church.
Or perhaps take a Christian, who decides not to bet, because his relationship with Christ, based on trust, has him trusting that God will provide money for him in other ways than gambling.
Maybe, it's a Christian who chose not to sleep with every Tom, Dick and Harry, striving to honor God with her body as her way of saying thank you to Christ dying for her. She trusts him to wait and while feeling the need to work on herself in preparation for when God gives her a man, because the relationship she has with Christ has proven time over that God is faithful.
I can list a host of responses in love, like me typing this long blog-post because I just want Jesus to be known. No need for that though, because ultimately , the bottom line will be that, for the christian's faith and subsequent behaviour , a relationship with Christ is the motivating factor. The focus is a love relationship between God and the Christian.
As I said earlier, people do all manner of things in the name of love, or being in a relationship, Christians are no exception and that is Christianity for you, not religion, but men and women who realize God loves them and respond to that love as a result of their relationship with God.
