#3 What's a Christian?
 

Ground Zero
 

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
(Colossians 1:21)
 

    The Bible teaches that people were made by God for God, and that the only way we can truly live is in relationship to God. But we are born alienated from him, and there is an enormous hole in our lives without him.
   These holes express themselves in different ways, Some people are blatantly antagonistic to God. Some of us shook our fists in his face, denied his existence, or lived brazenly opposed to everything he said. Others simply disregarded him as irrelevant.
    Some of us can look back to lives that were inexpressibly evil. We lived as we pleased and couldn't care less who got hurt. Others= lives before Christ didn't seem so evil. "I was never like that,@ we might say. "I was just a normal, decent, law-abiding citizen.@
    The problem is that our standards of decency and law are such that it is quite possible to be a decent, law-abiding citizen, and still be considered evil in God's eyes. We need to measure our behavior not against normally accepted principles, but against what God had said in his Word.
    Whether the antagonism is overt or covert, all Christians can testify that at one stage in their experience, they were alienated from God, not living to please God, and were earning his wrath.
    Can you recall your own life before you met Christ? Do you remember the feeling of alienation, restlessness, and emptiness, the desperate search for satisfaction and self-fulfillment?
    The old theologians had an explanation for this. They said there is a God-shaped vacuum inside each of us, and we'll only be fulfilled and satisfied when God himself steps into our lives to fill that God-shaped blank.
    Christians have no problem agreeing with Paul's words. They say, "I remember when I was alienated from God. I remember when I was active in evil behavior. I am not proud of it, but I am so glad that Jesus came into my life, turned it around, and set me on a new course. I'm so glad I am no longer what I once was.@
    Can you make that kind of declaration? If you can, then I= d like to encourage you to continue growing in the faith you've embraced. It only gets better.
    And if you can't, there's no time like the present to get started with God. Your chest is no place for a vacuum.
   Who do you know who feels restless, empty, and alienated from God? How can you pray for that person?


Lord, please help me to remember that when I long for fulfillment, I am really longing for you, and that when I feel alienated from you, you can deal with whatever stands between us, Amen.
 

~Stuart Briscoe~