Dan's Place

I was talking to my next-door neighbor Brian yesterday, as I do often. Brian is one of those guys who'd give you the shirt off of his back one second (without being asked, mind you) and lay down a string of cussing that would make a sailor blush the next. I told him, "Brian, you're a Christian, you just don't know it yet." to which he said "you know, I was raised in the church. I went to church every Sunday; went to Sunday school; I even got saved. The thing is, when I got married the first time, the church we attended was so overrun with hypocrites I just didn't see the benefit." I asked him what he meant and he told me that a lot of the church deacons were having extramarital affairs and out of wedlock births from those affairs were nearly epidemic. I told him that church hurts are the worst because you're among people who you think you can trust and then you find out that they're people, too, just as capable of slipping up as anyone else. I don't think I convinced him - those kind of disappointments last a long time.

I say that to say this - many of us are concerned with our oral witness - what we tell people when the Holy Spirit prompts us to mention the name of Jesus - but we pay little attention to how we live our lives! I say, our personal witness, i.e., how we go about living everyday, is just as powerful, if not more, than what we say when a "Jesus moment" arises! We are commanded by the Savior to "be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect," yet many of us leave perfection to the saving grace of Jesus and forget that just as many are watching how we live just as are listening to what we say. - Dan