Dude, Where's My Shirt?

Years ago, during a Disciple Now conference at Kirby Woods Baptist Church, I led a group of teenagers who were eager to share their faith in the community. We traveled door to door, hoping to find people at home so that we could tell them of Christ’s love for them. It was a particularly hot day, and we arrived at one address where a middle-age man was sitting in a lawn chair in a front yard covered with withering grass.

When we began to share the Gospel, he cut us off. “I don’t want to hear anything about that church business,” he snapped. “Church people are hypocrites who would steal the shirt off your back!” Since the man was shirtless at the time that he made this statement, I could only assume that prior to our visit that someone from another church had attacked him and stolen the shirt off his back!

Of course his accusation was a mere straw man of an excuse for not embracing the Gospel because there are many godly Christians who walk with the Lord on a day-by-day basis. It is true, however, that there are many who claim to be believers but deny Jesus by their lifestyles. May this statement never be made of us!

Here are a few quotes that are worth consideration, but before making them allow me to offer a disclaimer. In my personal walk with Jesus I often disappoint Him and fall short of His expectations, so I speak not as a sanctimonious person who never errs, but as a believer who desires to follow Him more closely. For this reason, the following quotations are meant to edify all of us who are believers to walk authentically and more faithfully with the Lord.

"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." –Brennan Manning

“Practice what you preach.” (based on Matthew 23:3)

But someone may well say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." (James 2:18)

"Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?” –Jesus, Luke 6:46

If we call ourselves believers, let’s live like believers for His glory so that He may use us to reach others with His glorious Gospel!