Have we become Tax Collector Christians ?

“And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” Acts 4: 31 (New King James version) “Its very easy to teach a kid stories and all . Try telling them about the gospel .. that is what makes the difference and its not easy” – This is a statement that someone told me 7 years ago that still rings so strongly in my mind. It does make me to carefully reexamine what I do . I love the corporate social responsibility groups that I have been blessed to work with in the companies I have worked over the past 7 years. However though my initial years were spent in just making a social difference, over the years God is pruning me to understand that it doesn’t stop there. They need to know the Lord ! I can be the most friendly person on the team. However if my life has not been testimonial of the God whom I serve I have failed. Sometimes we like to keep a ‘generic’ attitude at work. The “God, Faith’ topic is becoming a taboo word in work circles. If someone asks ‘do you go to church every Sunday??’ we might even say a timid ‘yes’ and then change the topic. When someone says ‘Hey I got some receipts that we can use for our taxes ‘ we would actually take them and quietly decide not to use them so that we are still ‘cool’ like our colleagues and yet we have not done anything wrong. When our boss says ‘Hey I am adding this line and that line to your resume so pretend that you know it’ , we go ‘oookkkk’ and then pray ‘Lord forgive us’. When we see people around us heading towards paths of destruction , we tend to think ‘ok I am not walking down that path so that’s enough, let me just be quiet and let them do what they want’. This is not what we have been called to do. God has appointed us as watchmen. We are the ambassadors of Christ, ransomed by the blood of the Lamb, sealed by the Holy Spirit , in the service of the great I AM !! We are not placed in our work place just to be a silent spectator. But everything about us should speak out of the God whom we serve. We read in the second half of Titus 2: 10 ,”…that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.” Our phone conversations, our behavior in meetings, our conversations over lunch, they way we handle our work , the way we regard our colleagues …. Every thing … in ALL things we ought to adorn the word of God ! When we read Acts 4 , we see Peter and John had been brought into custody and severely threatened . They were being forbidden from speaking at all or teaching in the name of Jesus. Wow ! Not a very conducive environment right ? But yet we read the moment they were released they gathered together and prayed. We read in Acts 4 : 29 , “Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants with all boldness they may speak Your word,” There will always be struggles, there will always be challenges , but HE causes us to rise above them all in the boldness and peace that comes from Him and Him alone. I pray we may not be “silent Christians” (only talk about God when in a Christian environment, else shy away completely in every aspect) , I pray that we may not be “Tax collector Christians” (good to only those who are good to us , patient only to those who are patient with us…). I pray that the Lord will rise us up and mould and shape us to be truly hearers and doers of His word , walking according to the purposes of Him that He has laid out for us even before the foundations of the earth God Bless