[Faith-talk] blind sence child birth.

[Debby Phillips]

Okay Andrew, this is the other reason I'm not thrilled with 
churches.  We all sit around and judge each other and where does 
that get us? You know why non-Christians think we are phony? I'll 
tell you, and this is after talking to a lot of them lately.  
They don't like us because we seem to be arrogant.  They don't 
like us because we seem to have so many disagreements about "what 
is right" to believe.  They don't like us because we act like we 
are holier than they are, but are hypocritical.  Plain and 
simple, they don't like us because they don't see the love of 
Jesus in us.  What drew you to Christ in the first place? Was it 
"the perfect right doctrine" or was it because someone told you 
about how much Christ loved you that He was willing to die a 
terrible death for your sins.  In the early Church, people were 
drawn because they saw that Jesus made a difference in people's 
lives.  People were healed, the church fed the hungry and poor, 
and the non-believers said, "See how they love one another".  But 
it wasn't love that was cliquish.  The people were loving of 
everybody who came.  Now in many churches you have groups of 
people who are just little cliques and they don't want to include 
anybody else, anybody new.  Sorry, I don't want to offend anyone, 
but I'm being as honest as I know how to be.  If Jesus isn't 
making a difference in our lives, what do we have to share with 
anybody? And now, I speak to myself as well as you all.  How is 
it that we go along day by day and people aren't drawn to the 
Lord by us? Because most of us don't really love Him, (Jesus) and 
we don't love each other either.  We need to be so in love with 
Jesus that His love overflows from us to other people.  We need 
to be so steeped in His Word and in walking with Him that people 
will know that we are different.  I'm certainly not where I want 
to be in all of this.  I don't know that I will ever reach that 
point.  But I know a genuine Christian when I see one, and I 
wouldn't want to embarrass him in any way, but our own Tom 
Anderson is such.  He loves the Lord and it shows in the way he 
treats people.  Yet he isn't so removed from folks that lots of 
people can relate to him and love him.  I have seen people drawn 
to the Lord because of him, heard students ask questions about 
Jesus because of Tom's genuineness.  But he doesn't sit in 
judgement of people.  We will never win people to Christ by 
telling them how bad they are and condemning them.  We will only 
win people to Christ if we can show them that we too are sinners 
saved by grace.  Well, I didn't mean this to be so long.  Sorry 
about that.    Blessings,    Debby