Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: The USA (01/08/09)
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TITLE: It's Your Choice | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lucas Fyeld
01/13/09 -
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There are many Christians is the USA. There are also many Muslims, Mormons and believers in Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Scientology. The USA is a free country, and that is its greatness. You are free to worship who … or what … ever you want. Or if you don’t like any of the myriad of options you already have … you are absolutely free to start a brand new religion.
Jesus is Lord of my life, but not of most in the USA. Many don’t claim Him as Lord. Many others do claim to be Christians, but don’t live with Jesus Christ as their Lord. They put money as a priority in their life. Or alcohol. Or sex. Or video games. Anyone who puts anything as a higher priority than Jesus Christ … is not living a Christian life. The Bible is clear about this. Jesus doesn’t “sweet talk” anybody. Once he said basically, “If you must take the time to go bury your dead father, then you are not fit to follow me.”
….Or books or booze or bargains or barnacles or Barnabas or “Batman.” If anything is a higher priority for you… anything at all … then you aren’t truly Christian. I happen to enjoy several things in that “B” list, but none more than Christ Jesus. The Bible says desire these other things also, but not more than you desire Jesus. “Seek first” (Matthew chapter six). “Delight yourself in the Lord…” (Psalm thirty-seven).
The USA is awesome. I have the freedom to be a Christian here, and I have the freedom to be something other than Christian. The USA is impressive; it is my chosen home and it always will be, but it is not a Christian nation.
….And I don’t think that I want it to be, because we would lose the freedom. We would lose the variety. We would lose the choice. There are mission fields here for Christians who don’t want to travel. Or for young Christians whose parents aren’t yet comfortable with them traveling abroad (into areas unfriendly to Christians).
Our daughter is eighteen, and talking about whether she wants to go into the mission field in Malaysia … or Seattle Washington. I’ve heard it said that Seattle has more dogs than Christians, and I wouldn’t be surprised. I lived in King County Washington for about ten years myself, and in the first seven years I went to church about twice. Not twice a year. Twice … in seven years. I played “Ultimate Frisbee” very religiously every Sunday morning. Rain or shine… or sleet, I was out chasing around a plastic disk.
Jesus was not Lord of my life at that time. It wasn’t “Ultimate Frisbee” either – but it was some of those other things I mentioned, rather than Jesus Christ. I still would have said I was a Christian if you had asked me; it’s just that those other things were more important to me then. Most of the time I spent in Seattle, I spent in need of a relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, while I was there, someone did come to me and help to drag me back to Christ, but not because he was working with Christ in his heart. It happens that this person, unfortunately, had his wallet on his mind. He saw me as a way to increase his own personal income. That’s the reason he invited me to church… in one of the most non-Christian states in our entire USA. Surely, I had been given plenty of opportunities to choose to come back to Jesus, but that’s just it. I was given … the choice.
God lets us choose to make our own mistakes, and so does the great USA.
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My only suggestion is to put an extra space before paragraphs, for easier reading.
Love the alliteration in your "B" paragraph!