By Samuel M. Smith
 

The world is a place of confusion and turmoil in the year 2002. People everywhere are searching for peace and harmony. For far too long the many and varied churches that each claim to be the representatives of the real Church of Jesus Christ has claimed that there is peace and joy and happiness in Jesus Christ and yet a very great many of their members who call themselves Christians are just as worried and fearful as any of their unsaved and sometimes ungodly neighbors. Oh me? Is that you? Many of you have probably heard one preacher or another ask the question, "If it were a crime to be a Christian, would ,there be enough evidence to convict you?  If you lived in the old Soviet Union while being a Christian was an anti-state crime punishable by death, would you be able to survive without anyone suspecting you were a Christian based on your present lifestyle?  During the early Stalin years,  neighbors and even the children and brothers and sisters were paid and trained to report any suspicious Christian leanings of even parents or dearest friends to the KGB secret police or Communist Party officials, usually resulting in the arrest and either execution, imprisonment or deportation to a gulag or labor camp in the frigid Siberian wasteland. Given the way you live right now, other than going to church on Sunday, would anyone have any reason to turn you in? Can you think of any reason why anyone who works with you or is closely associated with you would want the kind of Christianity you show by the way you live and act? The Apostle Paul said, "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."  (Colossians 1:27). In other words, by our godly actions, others should be brought to a place of desire to want to be like us in serving the Lord.

Can those around you see Christ in you, the hope of glory? (Colossians 1:27). Why would your friends or even your own sons and daugheters want to be the kind of Christian they see you being? Do they see you full of the hope of someday being with Jesus forever? Or do they see you wanting to prolong your days on eart for just as long as you can? Do they see you really looking forward to the "blessed hope" of the  "catching away" of the church to be with Jesus forever, also known as the "Rapture?"  When there is a need, do they see you respond in the confidence that truly: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28). How about your health? You say you really trust the Lord for your healing and health, but is your medicine cabinet full of Anacin and aspirin and Nyquil and Robitussin and all sorts of antibiotic medicines to kill germs and Darvon and Librium and whatever the latest medical fads and TV commercials are promoting? Do you run to the doctor every time you have a sniffle or a scratch  or some little ache or pain? Your children see you as you really are. Do they see in you, their parent, someone who really does trust the Lord for healing and rebukes the imps of Satan at the first sign of any kind of sickness and then never really get sick. Or do you come off to your children as a hypocrite who claims to trust the Lord for your healing and health, but show little or no evidence of such a trust? Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why so many children of church-going parents become at best careless about their Christianity and at worst, absolutely hostile to the Gospel and Christianity? Of course many of you will lay all the blame at "peer pressaure" or the bad

influence of their school classmates or teachers or television, but stop and think a moment. Of course we do live in a modern generation that has many frills and bells and whistles that simply did not exist when you and I were growing up, but human nature still much the same and that is for children to follow the lead of their parents and trust their parents for sound advice. "As the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined," is both a very old saying and very true to life.  Parents have at least the first several years of a baby's life during which they have or should have almost exclusive "bending rights" to their child or children.  If the parents demonstrate godly love and caring first for the Lord Jesus Christ, then for others, then for their children and lastly for themselves the little ones soon learn that order of priority in their own lives.  But if they see selfish, uncaring parents, they may also become selfish and uncaring children and eventually uncaring adults.  Some church members are so busy doing their own thing, or even "the Lord's work," that they have little or no time for anyone or anything else and their children learn as infants and toddlers that that is the attitude to hold.  So what is the difference between your child, who behaves most of the time and someone else's who misbehaves most of the time?  Probably the attitudes they have seen in you from birth or even that they heard in their mother's womb before birth.  And how do strangers perceive this good conduct of your children as compared to their own children's misbehavior? Can they see a true reflection of the Lord Jesus in your children's reflection of you? And do they want to know what makes the difference in your children and you and see real Christianity at work? Or is the reverse true and they think, "My! They claim to be Christians but I can't see where they are any different from me! Why should I waste my time going to their church or becoming a Christian like them?" Oh, I know all the television "sitcoms" would have us believe that all children distrust their parents, but this is not a real generality. If your children do not trust your word more than the word of any other person, it is probably because

at some time they have observed you telling a "little white lie" whether by actual word or by saying one thing and doing another. Do you tell them to always obey the law, yet they know you speed whenever there isn't a "cop" around?  Do you tell them to always be truthful, yet you call in sick when you really just want the day off?  Do you tell them to never steal, but they see you steal from your place of employment by bringing stuff home in your lunchbox or chat about non-company related matters for lengthy periods of time while you are "on the clock"? I well remember on my first missionary trip to the Philippines,  we travelled by van, bus, ferry boat and motorcycle powered tricycle from early morning to after dark before arriving at a river where we crossed using a dugout canoe attached to a steel cable to prevent the current from pushing us downstream as we crossed.  We then had to walk back for about a mile through jungle, stepping over branches and logs that had fallen across the pathway and skirting huge mudholes called caribou wallows.  Our only source of light was a bottle of kerosene with a little rope wick sticking out a hole in the top and which at best provided a flickering, yellow light. But it was enough to keep us from stepping on any cobras or other poisonous snakes or falling over any logs and we made it safely to the church compound.  Oh, how useful and necessary was that ray of light!! Without it, we would almost assuredly have plunged into a caribou wallow or stepped on a snake and been bitten or fallen over a log or branch in the path or simply have gotten off the path and become lost in the woods. Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 5:16). Are you really a light reflecting Jesus and His light in the darkness of this world?  Your neighbors, friends, coworkers and relatives are all looking for a ray of light in the darkness and you both can and should be that light. Not because of your own goodness, but because you are a reflection of our Lord Jesus Christ and His great light.     — S. M. S.