Bringing Glory to God... Are We?

We Christians always pray that we could bring glory to God thru our lives. Which makes sense, since we're all supposed to be ambassadors for Christ. But truly, how many of us truly yearns to do so, and how many actually did juz that?

Come to think about it, who brings the most disgrace to God? Is it not the Christians themselves? Who among us aren't hypocrites to a certain extent, who among us practise exactly everything that we preach? Who among us don't contribute their parts into further deepens the stereotype of the 'typical bible-thumping, narrow-minded, Christian' by totally neglecting our PR status with the non-Christians?

Even the worst atheist targets their criticism much more often on the believers themselves rather than God himself, and when you think about it, some of them rings true. For example, God commands us to go out and spread the gospel to the people, but never has he said that GETTING people CONVERTED is of our concern. We are supposed to be mere messengers, not forceful converters, no matter how much love we claim to have for them that we wanna see them saved. To forcefully and persistently pushing someone towards accepting Christ not only increase the person's uneasiness with Christians, it shows how lacking the believer's faith is in the power of the Holy Spirit. Isn't a person's decision to accept Christ as his saviour a direct influence of the Holy Spirit, rather than the persistent "gospel-shoving" of that believer?

I believe that we are to show them the gospel by lying it out on the table and explaining it to them, not shoving it into their mouth and persistently annoys them hoping that one day a miracle will happen and they'll become Christians. A friend of mine tells me why he dislikes Christians: When his newly-converted Christian uncle came back from Australia, the first thing he do is trying to remove the idols from his Taoist mother's house and stated that he wanted to destroy these 'false deities'. He won't stop bugging his mother to accept Jesus as the only way to salvation, and hurls insults and all towards her Taoist faith. One might argue that he is motivated by his concern over his mother's salvation, but what impression does that give to non-Christians? Does the self-important, self-superiority image of Christianity brings any glory at all to God?

All of us Christians should keep this in mind at all times: Just as we are God's ambassadors and God's glory can be bring about thru our everyday speech and actions, we are equally at risk of bringing shame and disgrace towards God by our everyday speech and actions. But despair not my brothers and sisters, but believe in the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and stop the reliance on the self over God, and your spiritual fruits will be abundant.

But seek first humility, humility before God and men, and all these fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, will blossom within you.