Fighting with the Choir

I recently read this article by Kristen Howerton about how women can fight with each other about so many things that are unnecesary, but yet we should all be instead waging a war to fight for children's safety and futures! It's like women have to pick apart every other thing that other women around them are doing. I can remember when I had my first baby this one friend of mine went on and on about babywise. How her perfect child slept through the night and how perfect her life is. Me, having a child who gagged in the hospital and continued to act like she was choking to death the first year of her life AND developed excema at 4 months and scratched her head until she bled, I was doing ALL I COULD to hold it together and not pull a Marie Osmond and take off driving up the coast without telling anyone for four days!

The next child that same friend had, guess what? Babywise didn't work on this child. Same schedule, same procedures. But it didn't work. I can remember my friend saying how wrong she was to tell everyone that it would work on anyone. I appreciated her humility. It just frustrates me so much how women can tear each other down. It starts young.

But I see this same thing happening in the Body of Christ. Howerton's article was entitled The Only Mommy War Worth Waging. There is an only Christian war worth waging. Winning the lost. For so many Americans when you are a life-long Christian after you learn all about God and the Bible and you get to know everyone in your church then you sometimes can get bored. And when you get bored you have to either rebel to have fun, or you start critiquing the people around you...who are Christians...because you've been a Christian for so long. So then you can get caught up in this horrible game of judging everyone around you. How they raise their children, what foods they eat, what church they go to church, when they go to church, if they speak in tongues, if they play baseball on Sundays, if they eat at All-You-Can-Eat buffets at casinos, if they bring their Bible to church or use the Bible app on their iPhone. Get the picture. Gee, the possible discussions and disagreements are endless! Certainly able to keep us busy and totally NON-BORED until Jesus comes back!

Our good friend Aaron Stern, pastor of Mill City Church (www.millcitychurch.org) in Fort Collins, Colorado, helped me understand something I had been struggling with.  He said that when someone gives their life to Christ, we figuratively give people two bags.  He would first give them a little bag.  In the little bag would be all the non-negotiables of Christianity.  Things like salvation only through Jesus, the infallibility of God's Word, the triune nature of God, etc.  You get the picture.  In the second and much bigger bag would be other things that the person wouldn't need to concern themselves with immediately as they just got born again.  This big bag contains things that differ between denominations and churches.  Things like healing, tongues, predestination, etc. The second bag is full of subjects that can have more than one conclusion. Even though there may be differing conclusions, they come from a responsible handling of Scripture. The things in the small bag are worth fighting over and the things in the big bag are not worth losing your Christianity or friends and family over! The size of each bag is important, because if we fill the non-negotiable bag with things that belong in the second bag we can end up fighting over things that are discussible with the same passion for those that aren't.

This makes SO MUCH SENSE TO ME!!!! It helped me so much. Most of my family and friends from my childhood attend Baptist churches or other denominational churches. After I went to ORU most of my friends went to non-denominational churches. But in those non-denominational churches there are SO many different churches with different styles and mission statements and...big bags.

I'm sure the world must just laugh and make fun of the Body of Christ the way we bicker with each other. We can certainly see it in the way they make fun of us in Hollywood and the music industry. I know that when Jesus returns for His bride that we have GOT to look different than we look right now. And it sometimes scares me to remember that the times that people have come together and worked in like mind and heart is greatest during great tragedies. I wonder if that's what will happen to the Body of Christ. Will it take something devastating to draw us closer?

I've made a decision that I'm not going to get caught up in the game of fighting with other Christians! Done. I'm over it and have wasted time in my life concerned about what others have in their big bag. The only Christian war worth fighting is winning the lost.

The other day as I was driving to my sister's house and reflecting on tragic circumstances of some dear Christians I know and how bad things happen to good people who love God, I had a revelation. I imagined God in Heaven looking down on every person ever made. He saw me. He put a check by my name. Amy Renee Bass, check! And He kept looking at the rest of His children. None loved more than any other, but all loved to the greatest measure. And I thought about the parable of the lost sheep. It's not that He loved me any less than the stray sheep, but that His eye is on that one to bring him back into the flock. Jesus came for this reason. To seek and save the lost. And it was almost as if I could hear my Heavenly Father saying- You get it! You are mine and I am yours. You love me. You serve me. You get it! Eternal salvation is yours! As if in response to my thoughts about why horrible tragedies happen to firm believers. (No matter how much I believe, and do not doubt God, every time a great tragedy occurs, a young person dies, I always find myself a bit shocked that it couldn't have been prevented by God.) And so I just had this thought, Why can't we as Christians just be grateful for our eternal salvation. Isn't that enough? What an incredible gift we have been given. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus! But yet it's so hard not to continually ask God for MORE MORE MORE. More protection, more love, more money, more clothes, more houses, more cars, more grace, more healing, more chances, more breath. We cannot forget that we have already been given MORE than we could ever ask for. Eternal salvation.

And since I am so grateful that my name is written in His precious book, then my heart wants to help Him with His mission. Winning the lost. Winning the lost. Winning the lost. Not fighting over churches and mini-skirts and Lady Gaga. Winning the Lost. I have to be honest and say that I have found myself in such frustrated states that I have asked Husband for YEARS now to move our family overseas. China, Africa, just for starters. I've begged him and told him that I just want to get away from the way the Body of Christ looks in America. And I just want to help bring people to God through Christ. I think about Mother Teresa. What an honorable life! I've asked him to just move us to India and let me help the people there as she did. To raise our children in a drastically different atmosphere than American popular culture today. But Husband reminds me that to go overseas because I want to get away from America is not a good reason to go. And he is right. I don't want to run from America or the American church. I want to be able to love and live here without getting into discussions about Katy Perry or the Gospel of Grace and getting upset.

Nothing will matter when we step into Eternity except our decision to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and the people in our lives that we touched. And maybe my problem is I don't have enough lost friends. My life is so busy with school and kids and church that I will have to make a concerted effort to change this. But I'm all in. For life. Winning the lost. Being a light for His good news to spread. LOVE. Love. Love.

Winning the lost. The only Christian war worth waging.