Feel the joy of living out your faith

​I had dinner with a friend last night. She was raised in a very strict 'Christian' environment.

We got into a conversation about fundamentalism. We were googling it and then discussing it.

Some mornings, admittedly, it is nice to have already written what I want to write as a way to process an experience. To make sense of it. Some mornings it's nice to take a break and read what I already thought instead of having to figure out anew what I think.

I wrote this last year:

Bob Goff says in his devotional today: "I'm not trying to be a theologian. I'm trying to be more like Jesus and follow the example of His life."

I think Goff has identified why there is such a sharp decline in Americans who identify as being Christians today. In a country that is full of hurt - I continue to say we have a hurting epidemic - Christians more and more want to offer biblical words as the solution and not the biblical love Jesus spent his whole life spreading.

More and more lately, when people on the outside of our Christian circles are asked to pinpoint what it means to be a Christian, they think of politics or the man on the street corner screaming at them about salvation.

That's because more and more, when those of us on the inside are charged to act like Christians, we want to tell people "what would Jesus do" instead of loving them like Jesus did.

And here's the saddest part of that. In this epidemic of hurting, Christians are well represented. We're as hurting epidemic as the rest of them. I think that's because we're trying to scripture people to death about their own hurting while ignoring all that Jesus showed us about healing our own.

Christianity isn't an educational experience. It's not at it's most powerful when we ask a group of people to pull up some chairs and let me tell you what Jesus said. It's at it's most powerful when we walk into the middle of a hurting epidemic and quietly show people how Jesus loved.

And it's in the middle of that healing, it's in the middle of that joy that overcomes us when we're helping others, it's in the middle of that interaction when someone asks, hey, do you mind if I pull a chair up and ask you to tell me a little more about Jesus?

Don't overlook the joy that comes from living your faith.

Don't overlook the impact that joy has on others.