Worthy

As I was on the treadmill watching the inauguration coverage. I found myself so in awe of all the majesty and stateliness to it all...the respect and reverence that is shown to our new leaders and rightfully so. I kinda got choked up even. I began to pray for our new president and his family. But somewhere in my prayer, God began to take it to another place or person. His son enter this world with no respect or reverence. There were no traditions that showed the world his positition of power. No church services, no coffees with important people, no balls, no parties. Just a dirty stable greeted him.

Isaiah 53:1-3
1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

It is no different today. Some try to make Jesus a footnote in history...irrelevant to our modern culture. But he is not. The sad commentary to this today is that even in the lives of believers this can be said. This past Sunday our youth minister lead the service (and did an excellent job). He gave us a statistic that frightened me and will not leave me alone. In a survey of 40 year old people, 84% said that they knew a Christian, but only 15% of them said that they saw it making a difference in their lives. I felt like falling to my knees in repentance of the mediocre life I live in the name of Christ. I am now challenged to let my faith make a difference in me, a real difference. I am now challenged to allow the Spirit of God examine my life and show me where I really am.

One day, Jesus will return. He will return will all the glory, majesty, respect, reverence that has never been seen before and it will not cost 150 million dollars. His name will be known to all whether they have professed him as Lord or not. In the meantime, what are we as believers, as followers of Christ, doing now to pave the way for his return?

Philippians 2:5-10

5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.