While reading this morning, I caught this towards the end of Galatians 1:
21 After that visit I went north into the provinces of Syria and Cilicia. 22 And still the churches in Christ that are in Judea didn’t know me personally. 23 All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” 24 And they praised God because of me.
We live in a culture that is skeptical. Daily, we are bombarded with news cycles which are hyped-up and presented as entertainment. In our communities, we bump into the super skeptical–the Moon landing never happened!–. We live in a time where our discernment muscles are worked to a fatigue. This causes many of us to be swept along with the cultural tide, bobbing along the surface of noise.
If our world is skeptical, Christian culture can even be more so. I think back, a few months ago, to Kanye West’s “supposed” conversion. Twitter was a mess with Christians initially calling his new relationship with Christ false. How many times have we done that ourselves with those in our own churches? I am not calling for blind acceptance here, we need to be wise. But I can’t imagine how our modern Christian culture would react to someone like the Apostle Paul. The churches in Christ that were in Judea behaved this way (verses 23-24):
23 All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” 24 And they praised God because of me.
Which makes me ask:
- Do we praise God when we hear about a brother or sister coming to Christ?
- Is our first reaction one where we are skeptical? Taking a “we’ll just see how this turns out” approach?
Personally, I want to react with awe and wonder at what God has done and is doing. I am not 100% there yet though. Being honest, I am skeptical most of the time. Nevertheless, I want God to change my default setting.
JohnnyBGamer 