Christian Responsibility

As a Christian, I feel like sometimes the main responsibility is to just love other Christians. I feel like if I do that I am doing a good job. But boy was I dead wrong. As Christians we have a tremendous responsibility. 

The greatest responsibility we have is how we live our lives. 

There are various people that you may be connected with who have an influence on your responsibility. For me, I know I have an amazing family, fiancé, friends, and inspirational leaders in my workplace. One of the people I think who have the biggest influence was my first basketball coach in college. 

When I was a freshmen, I thought that I was a big shot because I was on the basketball team and we were the best team on campus. I was under the impression that me and my teammates were the big dogs on campus because of those things. I will never forget what Coach Mike Lightfoot told us during my first ever college practice. 

The first words out of his mouth was that relationships matter. He talked about how we need to say hi to people when we are in the cafeteria, how we should make friends who aren't on the basketball team, and how we should say hi to people when we were out in about around campus. And his lesson for us wasn't just to make a quick friend, his intention was to help us form long lasting relationships and to understand that relationships are everything. 

I didn't quite understand this until we leaned that the more relationships we built with other students, the more students would come to our games. 

What I quickly learned was that the people I just said hi to, didn't end up coming to the games. The people that came to games were the people that I was intentional with. The people who would see me in class, the people who saw me work hard, the people who knew a lot about me, etc. The people who came to the games were the people that saw that responsibility that I was living my life with. 

I am not saying that I was perfect, but this is the same way with our faith. We are going to have the biggest influence on others based off of our lifestyles, not just loving other people. 

Oftentimes it might be easy to love others, but what about outside of that? What are you doing with your life? What does your life look like at work? How do you treat others on a deeper and intentional level? 

I hope you are understanding what I am trying to encourage you with this afternoon...We as Christians have a great responsibility. 

"and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody." (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)