Let's talk airport checkpoints... Going through airport security checkpoints has never been easy for this German born son of an American  military couple.  I was told when getting my passport at a Walgreens not to smile, so to be funny I thought I would put on my stone-faced Terminator "I'll be back" face.    Not really smart when you consider my menacing passport along with my artificial knee and my carry-on C-Pap Machine.  Many of my good friends and fellow believer's on more than one trip over seas have had a good laugh at my expense when watching me be placed in a plexi-glass cubical with my feet on the the footy template on the floor, my belt unbuckled and magic metal detecter wands waving all over my body.  Now with even more metal in my body from total hip replacement, I'm sure I am closer to being a iRobot than human... ok, not really but the prospects of further airport detentions does make me both smile and grimace. 

I ofter wonder what if the same suspicion came with being a Christian....  hmmm?  I wonder how many of us would have enough Christian metal sort of speaking to even cause a the detector to go off upon our approach?  I wonder if there would be any momentary detention upon suspicion of carrying the cross.  I wonder if our mug-shot... our countenance would make anyone think that we could possibly have any joy of the Spirit;  any hope dripping from our conversation?  We are a "peculiar people", but more and more the ministerial mantra is "blend in and just live like everyone else."  Hmmmm?  Sounds to me like early believers never would have made a differnce in their Greco-Roman world if blending in was going to change their world.  They were in relationship, that is for sure, but understood that "being in the world and not of the world" were very distinct differences.  We are admonished to be in the world and connected, but not made up of the same stuff.  So my dear friends... .the question for the day is... "Is there a difference between you and the world in which you live?"  Could you ever be called out and distinguished as made of Christian metal?" 

Romans 12:2
 2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.     -The Message Bible

John 17:14-19 (Jesus speaking)
14 I gave them your word;
The godless world hated them because of it,
Because they didn't join the world's ways,
15 Just as I didn't join the world's ways.
I'm not asking that you take them out of the world
But that you guard them from the Evil One.
16 They are no more defined by the world
Than I am defined by the world.
17 Make them holy ? consecrated ? with the truth;
Your word is consecrating truth.
18 In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world,
I give them a mission in the world.
19 I'm consecrating myself for their sakes
So they'll be truth-consecrated in their mission.                                                                                                                          -The Message Bible

From the Jourey's View

Pastor Tom