Talking About My Faith

Sorry about the lack of posts over the last few days. I went with my church youth group to winter camp at Pondo. It was a great time to get to know the youth better, as well as learn and grow myself. Personally, the biggest take-home was my experience of freedom and forgiveness on Saturday night. It helped me to know and understand God's love for me even more, and I couldn't help but feel grateful. Now, on to today's post!

A recent post for a blog that I try to read regularly touched on a subject that I'm growing to love more and more: talking to people about Jesus. Now, if you've been reading my posts regularly, you might have noticed that I tend to mention my faith and talk about different things from the Christian perspective in a lot of them. That's not what I'm talking about.
I work with youth in the church, and I've got a lot of opinions that I wrestle with my friends over. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about audible, "face-to-face with someone who doesn't share my beliefs" talking about Jesus.

"The interesting thing is that, although I'm growing to love it more and more, I don't do it."

The interesting thing is that, although I'm growing to love it more and more, I don't do it. I was listening to a message from Matt Chandler about the subject of prayer (a great message, by the way. Click here to listen to it. It's only about 40 minutes long, so listen to it while you play Tetris Battle or something.) and he said something that, at first, didn't really stand out to me. He talked about loving an idea of something, but not actually loving the thing. He said,

It’s like if you love the idea of food and I were to offer to buy you a steak, but you go, “No, I don’t really ever eat. I love the idea of food, and I love the idea of tastes and flavors that collide. I love all that stuff, but I just don’t eat.

It's a ridiculous thought, isn't it? But one that strikes dangerously close to how people feel about a lot of things. An addict might like the idea of being clean, but he doesn't really put forth the effort to be clean. A father might like the idea of being involved in his kids' lives, but he's behind at work and they need the money to survive.

"I know that Christians aren't called to be comfortable, but comfort is hard to fight, isn't it?"

Or maybe it's someone like me, who likes the idea of talking to other people about Jesus, but when it comes down to it, I don't go out of my way to do so. And the thing is that, I can write about this all that I want, but what am I doing about it? Right now, honestly? I'm not doing anything. I'm super shy. That's why I write blog posts. I can state my mind safely, behind my computer, protected by my screen. I know that Christians aren't called to be comfortable, but comfort is hard to fight, isn't it?

If you're a Christian, do you find it easy to talk about your faith? Or even important?
If you're not a Christian, does it bother you when people talk about what they believe?
Leave a comment, I'm curious about what you have to say.