"My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!"  Gal 4:19

  I believe that the degree that Christ is formed is you is the degree that, when the world sees you, they see the Father. Everyone who is born again has Christ living in them. But, Christ being formed in a person speaks of a yielding to, and trusting in the Lord that allows His life to come and be lived out through them. That is when the world sees the Father. Otherwise, what they see is religion. They see someone who has a christian bumper sticker on their car, listens to christian music and sneers at the worldly music others play despite it being the same music they were listening to just a few months before. These believers feel, “Touch me not for I am holier than thou.” They are afraid of the world getting on them somehow, and they need to build a wall to protect themselves.  And the people around them feel that.  

  This is not an attractive representation of the Father. What people want is a Father who is standing there welcoming the prodigal when he comes. Not a Father who takes offense at the filthy clothes of the prodigal, and asks him to change before he embraces him. This is opposed to what the Father is really like. He hugged the son while he was still in the old, dirty robe before giving him a new one to wear. 

  Recently the son of a well known minister told a story about how he thinks about what would happen if he went somewhere where no one knew who he was and preached. What would happen, he wondered, if while he preached revival started and he began to get a lot of press and attention. His question was who would read about the revival and look at his picture and disqualify him.  Who would say, “Oh i know him! He’s rude and cuts in line.” Or, maybe the salesman from AT&T would remember him from when he yelled at him because of his phone trouble. How many people would think, “What a jerk!” Or, “I know that guy! He is always talking about himself!”

  What about you? What would people say about you if you became prominent as a minster of the Gospel? Who would disqualify you, and why? Would they see religion in you and to what degree? Or, would they say, “I’m not surprised. That’s the most loving person I know.”  Or, “He wronged me and went out of his way to come back and make it right.”

  You have heard it said before that you are the only bible some people will ever read. I read a story recently where a Priest gave a beggar a quarter. Now, this was years ago when a quarter was a good gift. But the beggar looked disappointed. He told the Priest, “Everyone gives me a quarter. I expected more from you.” You are a priest. Jesus has gone to heaven and left you on earth to continue the ministry of representing the Father to the world. 

  Make it a matter of prayer. Pray that Christ would be formed in you so that when people see you they would see a citizen of heaven. Pray that your actions and attitude would be consistent with the things that you profess to believe. Pray that God would show if there are people you are offending that you don’t even you are, so that you can go the extra mile and undo the offense. The mark of Jesus is humility. He said, “I am meek.”  Pray for that meekness so that even when it’s the other person’s fault, their problem, we would go in meekness and destroy the ammunition of the the devil to build a case against us, and ultimately against God.