Usually avoid this kind of thing. Probably won't respond to any comments. But here is basically my ranting I am eventually going to make into a book. "What I Hate About Us ________________________________________________________ A in depth look at how all of us Christians are imperfect hypocrites ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 1 - Getting our eyes in the right direction Now as Christians our entire purpose in life is to strive to be more like Christ. To follow in his footsteps through everything we do and say. To spend our entire life serving him and those around us. But so often we get caught up with what is in the world. Oh so often, we find ourselves with our hearts set on things that aren't of God. A lot of the times we don't even realize what we are doing until after we are too deep in to just turn away. We find ourselves in a struggles between flesh and spirit at all times. We find our selves comprimising with the world more often than standing our ground. In a world that is so "passionate" about "accepting everyone's beliefs" we find our selves trying to find a middle ground where we can follow Christ and accept other's beliefs. While yes, we should not go around calling people idiot's for what they believe we also should not let them believe falsely. If someone tells you they are going to heaven because their parents are christians will you not correct them? Will you not explain to them that they are incorrect? Not in a rude fashion, but with love. Too often we just stand back and let people believe what they want with out even trying to tell them the truth. We are literally just standing back and watching people go to eternal damnation with out doing a thing to help them. How selfish are we? How proud are we? How unloving are we? How can we so often stand back and be quiet because of fear of man? The fear of what man will think of us? The older I get the more I realize how stupid we are as Christians. How we have such a marvelous and wonderful gift yet we don't share it with anyone. So many times I have seen my self mis opportunity after opportuinity to share the gift and so often I do not.Why are we so prone to just stand back and do nothing? How to we deal with this selfishness inside of ourselves? We turn to the light of God. When we have our heart in God's word, our heart in prayer, our heart in worship, our heart into service to God we can overcome any sin. But it seems like almost all of us christian have a tendency to g be on fire immediately after we are saved , then just cool down and become lukewarm. The real problem with us Christians is we have a tendency to become lukewarm. We get stuck in this rhythm of just doing the christian life. We find our selves going to church, reading our bible, serving in the church, and even teaching in the church not because we have a heart for it. Not because we have a heart for God, but because it is just what we do. It is just stuff we are supposed to do as Christians. But God doesn't care abotu the service, he cares about the heart behind it. Deuteronomy 28:47-49 Time after time we see in Scripture on how it is all about the heart behind the service that counts. How can we as Christians make sure our heart is in the right place? I find my self tossing and turning with this question, So many times I know why I should be serving but I wonder if it is really my ONLY motivation.The best response is to always turn to His word. I have found that Joshua 22:5 Holds the answer inside it. "Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all His ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to Him and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” It says "to cling to Him", that is the key. I have found the reason that we struggle with serving for only His glory is because we are not clinging to Him. We are distracted by the things among this world instead of being totally focused on Him. In reality this is the reason we struggle wtih any sin. Whether it be pride, lust, anger, conceit, or just plain selfishness. The fact of the matter is we just don't have our eyes set in the right direction. In fact this is the answer to any sin struggle we have. When we sin it is because our focus is not on Him. We need to constantly have our entire focus on Him. We are a lot like Peter in Matthew 14:29-30 See we say things like "Well I'll stop sinning, I just gotta try harder" or "I'm just waiting on God to give me the strength to conquer this sin" when in reality the reason we can't conquer our sin is because we are too distracted with the world. We are trying to fix one sin while we are rolling in many others. We have our focus set on worldly things rather than spiritual things. I notice this a lot in politics, we try to make our spiritual beliefs fit our political beliefs. For example, the right for Homo-sexuals to get married, a lot of christians have supported it with statements like "if I was gay I would want the freedom", "the sanctity of marriage is already ruined", "politicaly I think they should be able to, but spiritually I know it is wrong, "They are going to commit the sin regardless". The problem with these kind of statements is they miss some very important things Our spiritual belifs should be what controls our political beliefs. We do not practice christianity, we ARE Christianity. Being a Christian is who we are, those beliefs should trump EVERYTHING else. Not only that, but we should strive to make our country as coherent to God's word as possible. I have caught my self too many times thinking politically instead of spiritually. We should at all times be thinking spiritually.