Is 520 Verses a Year Enough?

Not Like Anyone Else – Part 8

Have you ever wondered why it seems like everyone qualifies to be a Christian?  I know I do. You see people who get away with doing all sorts of un-Christian-like things: lying, cheating, stealing, and ignoring what’s important to God, yet say they are Christians.  Maybe there are no qualifications for becoming one.  

The Qualifications?
In my old church and my current church, we say everyone is welcome to join the club.  I believe that’s true, but what about once you’re in the club?  Are there any qualifiers or disqualifiers?  I could defend this age-old argument in either way.  In favor, Jesus died for all our sins, the things that disqualify us, past, present, and future. So no matter what we do, we qualify.  To disqualify one, I’ve read it and heard it said that not everyone that calls on the name of the Lord will enter Heaven.  So what gives?  By the way, that last phrase was taken from the words of Jesus, Himself.  Looks like I’m back at square one.

Maybe it’s not whether one qualifies or disqualifies that gets us. To determine the difference, I’ve come up with 2 labels.  However, the labels are to tell the difference between one who says they are a Christian and one who truly is.  I call those who just say they are small-letter-c-Christians and those who truly are capital-letter-C-Christians.  The problem is you might not know the difference.  

20160731 NLC Blog - Small-c-ChristianAttributes of a small-letter-c-Christian
Let me give you a few attributes of a small-letter-c-Christian.  [This might be me going a little to the left.] They…
Go to church with no regularity and justify why they don’t.  I don’t have anything to wear.  I don’t like the preacher.  It’s too traditional.  It takes too much of my time.  I don’t like the music.  As if these excuses for not going makes it okay with God.

They…
Don’t read their bibles with any regularity.  In what other way will they ever know what God says.  By the way, even if you went to attend church 52 Sundays out of a year, and the messages had a minimum of 10 verses, you only cover 520 of 31, 102 verses of The Bible.  Even if you went consistently for 20 years, you’d only cover 10,400 verses (a third).  That’s if no verses were ever repeated.  

They…
Make it okay not to do the little they know The Bible says. What’s interesting is, they know very little of The Bible and yet have trouble understanding and doing the little they know.

They…
Discredit the importance of being around other followers of Christ.  How can one learn what it means to be a Christian if you’re never around any.  By the way, you discredit other followers only because they too are not really following.  Moving right along.

1/3 of the Bible takes 20 Years
A small-letter-c-Christian has limited knowledge of what it means to follow Jesus, yet they act like they know what they’re doing.  There is only one place you can go to learn how to be what you claim you are and that’s The Bible.  Church is a great help, however, let me state it again in 20 years, if you never read it for yourself, you’ll only get 1/3 of the bible read in church if no scriptures are ever repeated.  Being a capital-c-Christian requires homework.

The point I’d like to bring home is this.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that…
everyone who goes to church,
everyone who says they believe,
everyone who wears Jesus bracelets,
everyone who has their bible displayed,
everyone who dresses like they go to church,
is a Christian, a true follower of Jesus Christ.
This is not true; being a capital-c-Christian involves some work.  It will require you to behave differently, live differently, and love differently.  You must be different from the rest.  I call it no longer “common”.

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