Differences

* Another post taken from the archives of way back in the day, a whole 1 1/2 years ago. :)

The more God changes me (and He's done a whole whack of changing in this girl) the more I feel alienated from everyone around me. I will admit, embarrassingly so, that I do not really have any relationship on any level with a professing non-Christian. It's hard to when I'm always home with the kids or grocery shopping, not really a whole lot of time to make new friends. I do have 4 little people in my charge that I am responsible for disciplining to the end that they will know Christ one day, but outside of my little sphere I am not witnessing. That has got to change!
But I have also been on the other end and had many unsaved people I spent time with. My hubby and I spent lots of time just being around unsaved people over the past few years while he was pastoring and I didn't really notice that it made much difference to them and it certainly wasn't a good environment for the kids to be in. The times when we had opportunity to speak about Christ with them was usually one on one, helping them out with fix-it jobs, giving them drives into town, having them over for coffee etc. The times we 'hung out' with them on their own turf was a completely different story. Nobody was interested in listening to 'God talk'. They were drinking, listening to ungodly music, smoking, horrible language, and the stories they like to tell are not worthy of the "whatsoever things are pure" verse. After many years of trying to meet them on their own ground we realized that wasn't what God had purposed for us to do. He wants us to bring them out of it, not get in there with them.
And lets face it, if we were truly living the sold-out kind of Christianity that God calls us to they wouldn't want us around. "What fellowship has light with darkness"? Yes, Jesus spent time with sinners but He used every single opportunity with them to witness and lead them to Himself. Let's be honest, how many times have we as Christians sat down and really shared Christ with our unsaved friends? Not just a "I go to church on Sundays, would you like to go with me?", or "I'm praying for you", or even a "Jesus died for you". Do we take every opportunity to speak about Christ or are we talking about how much we love shopping or the latest movie we watched?
I'm not saying we have to walk around yelling on the street corners that people need to get saved, but I do mean that we do not live with eternity in mind. These people are going to hell, how can we be best buddies with someone who is going in the complete opposite direction as us? We should desire to 'spend' less time with them and desire to 'use' the times we have with them more wisely. God doesn't bring unsaved people across our path so we can have lots of friends, there's a much bigger picture here. He brings them to us so we can lead them to Him. That's very difficult to do when we do everything they do and go everywhere they go and look no different than them. If that is the case why would they think they have to change, if we're good they must be good?
I believe from reading about how the disciples were treated that when we are living for the Lord and we meet people, the will either be drawn to us because they want what we have or they will shun us because we aren't like them and we make them feel uncomfortable.
I am so thankful for my life. This new thought sprouts from an invitation my sister & I had from our new neighbors to their 'house-warming' party. We have enjoyed talking to them a bit and getting to know them over the past 2 weeks, they are nice people. But when we were invited to come over today I had forgotten that we were not going to a church function. Since we moved from Ontario I haven't really spent very much time around unsaved people and I had a wake up call all over again. I will not say any more about those we met and spent a whole 1/2 hour with this afternoon but I will say this: I am so thankful for my saved family. I am so thankful for my church family. I am so thankful that we know how to have fun without alcohol. I am so thankful we have 4 kids. (apparently it's 'sick' to have a lot of kids, as we were told today) I am so thankful that the women we spend time with know how much skin should be covered when in company with anyone other than their husband.
I found out that there are things that we have in common with the unsaved. We all eat, drink, work, and play, but we do those things completely differently. I must ask why anyone who is truly saved would want to spend time in the company of those who are not. They don't listen to good music, they like to go places that are ungodly, they think kids are baggage, they don't care about anything we should care about. If anything, spending time with unsaved people pulls us away from everything that's worth anything.
I think I'll just avoid communing with unsaved people and just keep chatting with them and throwing out the seeds God wants me to plant along the way. I am so glad I'm saved and I'm so sad that these people have no idea what they are missing out on.
When we get together with other Christians we get so excited. I know what I will see before it even starts. There will be my whole family there. Dad, Mom, all the sisters and cousins running around. A whole bunch of church family coming with a snack or two and lots of smiles. Probably a hug or two going around and punch bowls being filled a number of times over. Kids climbing in the fences and adults actually having conversations with the children from time to time. Women by the sink doing up some dishes. You may here a 'God has been so good!' or "I'll be praying for you." here and there. I can say all that, but there's nothing to describe the whole overtone of an event with a bunch of other Christians. There's just something special about it and I'm glad I can be part of it.
Keep near the cross.