A victim of the hatred and evil of Roman, state-sponsored terrorism, Jesus Christ was tortured, nailed to a cross, and hung up to die. Dangling between life and death, He spoke crosswords that released God’s love and fire: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Through out the past two thousand years, millions of people have been caught in Christ’s crossfire — overcome, undone, and changed by His love. Jesus transformed the cross from a symbol of terror into a symbol of love triumphing over evil. Although an American group, the KKK, tried to turn crossfire back into a symbol of terror, Jesus released His living love to burn in all human hearts and transform all people from darkness to light.
A glimpse of Christ’s crossfire demolishes hatred. A terrorist named Saul, who encountered Christ’s fire while on a mission of hatred, was changed and unchained by the cross. He became one of the greatest leaders of the early Christ-followers and wrote many of the life-changing words of the New Testament.
The Light from Christ’s crossfire shows me that evil isn’t just out there working in and through other people and/or other groups of people. Evil is continually trying to ensnare me and people like me. I am (We are) capable of meanness, cruelty, hatred, and every other form of evil. (Hopeless people have weakened defense against demonic activity.)
The war against evil must be fought inside of each person. Coercion and force can’t contain demonic evil. It passes through political and military barriers, barricades, and boundaries. Only Christ’s loving crossfire can burn it out of our human hearts.
Should Facebook restrict people to only seeing one person’s posts?
Is it good that Facebook lets you see more than one person’s posts? To be restricted to only hearing one person speak in a church service, is like getting on Facebook and only being allowed to see one person’s posts.
Would you like it if Twitter started restricting you to only seeing one person’s tweets? Then why should church services limit you to only hearing one person speak?
God has gifted you with something to say. Perhaps church should be more like social media and let you say it!
“Do not neglect your gift.” –Paul of Tarsus
–Churches are full of people who have spiritual gifts and insight from God (spiritual tweets and posts). Yet, contrary to the words of the Bible (“Do not neglect your gift,”), most church services are set up so that those gifted people have nothing to do but sit and try to stay awake.
–Perhaps it is time to allow God’s gifted people to get out of their seats and share their insights and gifts in church meetings!
Will the idea of open sharing work in church meetings as it works on Facebook and Twitter? Yes! Come and login for yourself — every Sunday morning at 10:45 at The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., Nashville 37207 — where regular folks share what God has done!
(Feel free to like, share, retweet, and/or comment on this blog post.)