Recently, my wife and I went on a short trip to the mountains. We happened to be there over a Sunday, so we went to a church close to the motel.
That particular weekend, the church was having an old-fashioned homecoming service and a couple of guest singing groups. I do enjoy a variety of music and enjoyed hearing so many different kinds of instruments being played. After the service, it hit me that every song performed that day was about dying or escaping out of this world we live in. It was kind of like being in a funeral service.
I left wondering if there were unsaved people who had attended and went away feeling like Christianity was something they needed to run from. My mind went back to times when I grew up in church and remembered services in which people gave testimonies of how hard they had it and requested prayer that they would be able to “hang on to the end.”
The New Testament writers didn’t look at their faith as a life of drudgery or misery, but rather a life of joy and contentment.
In 1 Peter 1:8, the Apostle says that the believer is “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” The Bible teaches us in Galatians 5 that when a person makes a decision to be a Christ follower, the Holy Spirit of God comes into the new believer, and the fruit or evidence is a life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
If we are followers of Christ, each of us individually needs to ask God to fill us with his spirit each day so that we make Christianity appealing. We need to let our lights shine so that even though we may have to experience trials and some hard aches, we still live the best life available to mankind.
We ought to live such lives so that others want to know how they can experience this kind of living.