I want to be WEIRD!!!

You certainly don't hear people say that they want to be weird these days. Most just want to fit in, not get noticed as different, or move through life without being pointed out as strange or weird.

My husband and I have made it our goal recently to be try to be weird. Now I'm not talking about the weird that you initially would think. From our perspective, normal doesn't seem to be cutting it. If you look around at people, many are just trying to get through life without getting hurt or scarred or even noticed. As a Christian, I think we should be trying to go through life not doing what everybody else is doing. We SHOULD be different; we SHOULD stand out.

Recently, we have been doing a study in Sunday School on the Holy Spirit. Francis Chan said, "[The Holy Spirit] has not really made much of a difference in our lives, to the degree that if we woke up tomorrow and discovered that it is not true the Holy Spirit lives inside of us, most likely our lives wouldn't look much different." I am tired of living in a way that looks exactly like people who don't have the Holy Spirit of God living in them.

When people outside the church see no difference in our lives, they begin to question our integrity, our sanity, or even worse, our God. Can you blame them at all?

George, a man we know, is a professing Christian and has been after his son, Junior, about going to church. Every chance George gets to punch in a word or two about Junior visiting church with him, Junior turns him down. I've witnessed this on several occasions.

Junior is a hardworking young man who strives daily to do his best but he does what the usual non-believer does: curses, tells dirty jokes, talks about people. He believes that because he is a good person and works hard, he will go to Heaven. George is a fairly new Christian but has never been discipled on what it means to live a life as a Christian. George also curses, tells dirty jokes, and talks about people. So, when George asks Junior to go to church with him, Junior always makes up an excuse but in reality all he thinks is, "Why should I go to church with you. You look just like me? All that church has done for you is give you rules and not changed your life in any way. All Christianity has done for you is made you go to church."

Many non-believers don't care to have anything to do with Christianity because of hypocrites who claim to be Christians yet live the same way everyone else does.

So, my challenge is to be geniune and the life God has called me to live in Christ. Be different....INTENTIONALLY DIFFERENT! Be weird because in the end, I don't want God to say, "Way to go! You made it through life looking like everyone else when I called you to look like Me."