Us and Them

Immanuel – God with us. Jesus didn’t just come down and join us, he became one of us. He was part of THEM – the trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And He became one of us.

If you are a disciple of Jesus, you have been called to follow him – do what He did.  For some of you, that thought is very scary. I’m going to become one of THEM.

You’ve spent your whole Christian life staying away from THEM. In too many churches, it’s all about us and THEM, the evil, nasty sinners who reject God and stand against everything we believe.

The truth is, most of them just ignore most of us. In fact, according to the Barna Group, most of them can’t tell any difference.  Most of us, live our lives just like most of them – but we don’t cuss. That was the one noticeable difference between believers and nonbelievers.

Somewhere along the way, we got it wrong. God doesn’t want us to hide from them in our church buildings, but live our lives like them in the world. He wants us to spend our time out with them in the world, but live our lives like Him.  Him…the one who became one of them…one of us.

How can we ever love our neighbor as ourselves, if we don’t know THEM? How can we truly take care of the orphans and widows in their need if we don’t spend time with THEM? How can we go and make disciples if we don’t walk with THEM – the ones who aren’t already disciples?

Honestly, most of us don’t. We’ve decided being comfortable is more important than being obedient. What we fail to realize is that while we sit and sing hymns about God, our failure in this area shows how little we really love him.

Jesus said, “If you love me, you’ll obey my commands.” And then He followed that up with, “This is my command: love one another.” “One another” includes THEM. If you don’t love THEM, you don’t love HIM.

It’s not easy becoming one of THEM. It’s even harder loving THEM. Jesus did it. What about you?

Follow Him with me,

Darin