What if?
What if it’s all a lie?
What if what I believe in is all a lie?
Does my faith mean nothing?
Have I lost anything?
A few weeks ago I held on a study camp run by Crusaders so we got to open up the Word with campers in a series of talks and also in discussion groups. In my discussion group one day, I asked the campers that same question: If, when I die, it turns out that there is nothing more than the life I just lived, did I lose anything by believing in Christianity?
One of the non-Christian guys spoke up and said, “No. No because you have, what is essentially, a family of people who believe the same thing. You have a community of people who all share the same idea. And you know that you will be accept and cared for when you need. Even if Christianity is all one big lie, then you still have a this network of people worldwide who you can depend on.”
How amazing is it, brothers and sisters, that we are all one in Christ?! We know that there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. So if we are united by faith and share the same purpose, then why can living out what we believe be so difficult??
I have found, and I’m sure many other have found this as well, one of the hardest parts about being a Christian is being unapologetically so. By this I mean not being sorry about your faith, my faith, our faith in the truth of the gospel. And, yeah, this is hard. There is a saying that is often thrown around church circles when we start talking of persecution: “In many countries, Christians fear the raised fist, but here in Australia, we fear the raised eyebrow.”
But the raised eyebrow is just as powerful as a raised fist. The loss and rejection of family and friends because of your faith is one of the most painful things you can experience for being a Christian. I have friends whose families have said they want nothing to do with them because they are Christians. But I think that more often than not, it will be our friends who abandon us because of our faith.
Brothers and sisters, do not worry about this though. We do not believe in Christ to be popular or to be liked. We believe because the truth lives in us.
Our brother Paul wrote to the Romans this: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Amen.