Confessions of a Christian Gossiper - Lets Talk
Have you ever talked about an event so much you feel as though you were actually there? We can even talk about people and assume we know their motives without ever speaking directly to them. Some of us may find ourselves making brash assumptions about why a person did this or that. We generate ideas and stories to frame our thoughts in an easily digestible way. Sometimes we do it with good intentions when we want to see the best in people. We will ignore flaws and obvious signs of error to cover up the underlying tone. So, are you a Christian gossiper?
Regardless of the motive, we end up becoming a Christian gossiper through our speech.
We will use the narrative of another, change it or fix it to fit our own narrative and goals, then display it for the worldto see. Personally, I rarely talk about other people. However, if I'm honest, the one person I talk about the most, who I rarely talk to is Jesus.God is so good and his word is so potent, it's safe to say there is a majority of us who are living off of a word God gaveus 10 years ago instead of the word he wants to give us today. We speak of a God who wants to do so much for us, yetwe rarely speak of the things we want to do for him.
We're consumers.
We're the prodigal son who begged for his inheritance immediately only to leave and waste it all.
We want the knowledge of God now.
We want to know his will now, we want our future now, we want patience... now.The reality is, when you get down to it, we may not want God as much as we say we do. We just want the rewards of being in his posse. If we're honest, we just want to live the way we want to with no consequences. This causes us to seek God when things are rough, assume he's there when things are great, and forget about him when things areincredible.
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In the midst of all of this, we still find ourselves quickly to speak of Jesus when we're around our Jesus friends and we jump at an opportunity to feel valued and given a platform.
We often find more value when given a stage to talk about Jesus to complete strangers than we do to sit down and talk directly to Jesus.
Yet, we have the opportunity to speak directly to him any time and we pass it up.It would be the equivalent of having a direct number to Justin Beiber, but refusing to ever pick up the phone and call him or send a text. If all you ever do is read about Justin the the news, like his posts on Instagram or share his tweets can you really say you know him?Some of you would say yes. You could give me a whole laundry list of intimate details of his life. You probably know which cereal is his favorite. (Which has to be Frosted Flakes as they are the G.O.A.T.). You may know his favorite movie, which has to be Fievel Goes West. How could you say no to that? The question though is do you know Justin personally? Could you tell me stories with you both in it?
I love personal stories. I'm not interested in the mainline stories. I'm interested in the personal.
We've heard it a thousand times, it's one thing to know about someone, but do you know the person? It's great we know the story of Jesus and his life as it was written in the Bible. Genuinely, it's amazing. But, you need to remember, the story isn't over yet. People here and now are not concerned about there and then. They want to know why you believe in Jesus. They want to know why they should pray. People want to know how God could be real.Too many of us are just Christian gossipers. We love to talk about Jesus, we love the brand of Jesus, we love the famousness of Jesus. Some of us may even say we want to make Jesus famous, but bro come on, he's famous already. All the catch phrases and Sunday morning services we love too, but if we don't love Jesus when no one else is watching, none of it matters.I don't want to talk about Jesus anymore. I just want to talk to him and create my own stories with him. After all, if I ever expect the world to be changed by Jesus, I have to first let Jesus change me.