Actions Speak Louder Than Words

People can't "see" our personal relationship with Jesus. Sure we can talk about it, we can blog about it, we can facebook about it, but truly those words are dead without action. 

Moral of the story: actions speak louder than words. 

I think the culture of a lot of Christians has been the talk, but not the walk. The reason I think this is especially true nowadays is the number of churches with dwindling congregations. Our church's mission is, "To Know Christ and Make Him Known" and at the last Care Group Rally Pastor John talked about reaching out and making disciples.  It is not good enough to for us to sit back and just soak in The Word for ourselves but rather, go out and make disciples. Don't get me wrong, we MUST dive into The Word and study, but we have to maintain a balance between growing ourselves and bringing people to Christ. 

Unfortunately, churches around the country are not successfully bringing new people into their congregations or into a relationship with Christ. Now this is simply an observation, it is not meant to offend, but rather to shed light on what I think is diluting the church culture of the US. 

People read their Bibles, they talk about loving God, they pray, and they even offer prayer to others, but, they are not going out into the world, into public, and trying to recruit people for Jesus' Team.  They are not truly showing Christ's love through their actions. And my friends, our friends are always watching. This is especially true with all the social media floating around in cyber space. We post instantaneously to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, snapchat and all other sites people use these days. But these again are limited to words and words will not always bring people to Know and Love Christ. I'd even go out on a limb and dare to say that words alone absolutely do not bring people to Christ. 

I know firsthand people watch what we do even when we least expect it. I've had the most unexpected people call me, text me, or see me in person and tell me how I've inspired them, how I've impacted their life in some way, or how I encouraged them to take a leap of faith. It's been truly humbling to have people come up to me and praise me for something I've done, said, or started. This encouragement has come from people who I honestly didn't even know I showed up on their radar; not a clue! 

For this reason, we have to be cognizant of our behaviors, our actions, and our words. We are entrusted with the task of filling up Heaven and I don't know about you, but that sometimes makes my knees a little weak thinking that a simple encounter with me might make people accept Jesus Christ or reject Jesus Christ. That's a heavy load on our shoulders, but that's a load God never expected us to carry alone. He wants us to reach out to those who are suffering, those who feel unloved, and those who feel unreachable. He wants us to leave the bubble of our comfort zone and stretch our arms wide open to love on the most unlovable people. He wants us to go out and make Him known through making disciples. 

Okay so back to the church culture. . . Actively engaging and consciously making an effort to not only improve our personal relationships with God but developing personal, meaningful relationships with others is a way to grow the church communities in America and a way to bring more people to Christ. People have developed a distrust of churches that get too large; they discount their Jesus culture as one of greed and business deals. Unfortunately, the big churches fall under the wrath of small churches because of the smaller church's inability to grow their congregations. 

The community of churches should be one of which works together to bring people to Christ. They should not judge, make cutting remarks, or be in competition with one another. They should focus on working together to bring people to Christ while still spiritually growing themselves. We can't just let our words be our guiding force. We have to lead with our actions.