The Company You keep

Since I moved here to west podunk a few years ago I have found myself hanging around with unbelievers a good bit more, especially people I work with. I don't hide my faith, but I don't shove it down anyone's throat either. What I tend to share most are my own personal experiences with faith. At first it was obvious that some people censored what they talked about around me but gradually over time, some of that has changed. I have found it interesting to hear what nonbelievers say about Christians when they forget there is one in the room.

Last night it was "girls night out", which amounted to lots talking and take out eaten pool side at the home of one of the "girls". During "girl's night out" one of the women I do not work with started talking about how two of the women she works with have recently "found Jesus" and how annoying these ladies are. One of the other women said "Oh, there's nothing worse than being stuck working with someone who just found Jesus!"

One day last week I was eating lunch with some coworkers and one of them was talking about being 12 years old and getting harassed every afternoon on her paper route by kids "from the Baptist church". These kids would corner her on the street, tell her she was going to hell, and shove some gospel tracts at her. She said she felt like a "project".

At one point in time I would have said these sorts of stories were just examples of 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." But, after I have had more opportunities to be privy to these kinds of conversations I think that instead of attributing these sorts of statements to an inability to discern spiritual truth and dismissing them, we need to be more open to how we are being perceived by unbelievers.

Hello

I haven't written much here lately. I think that some things I have experienced in the last few months and my feelings about what happened have colored my perceptions to the point that I have thought it was better for me to keep my thoughts mostly to myself for a while.

I don't want to go into too much detail here but I had a brief relationship with a man that was not good. Before things got bad we talked a good bit about issues between men and women in society and in the church. So, when I have read stuff online over the past few months about issues between men and women that are the same or similar to things that he and I discussed, I find myself reacting emotionally (hurt, anger) about it because I am associating things with him. The emotion isn't about the issue, but rather about what happened between this man and I. So, I haven't felt that what I would have to say in this blog or in the comments in others' blogs would be productive. The emotional reaction seems to be getting better but I now find myself working through my thoughts and beliefs about these sorts of issues from a somewhat different perspective.

On the positive side, the experience has served to draw my attention to an issue that has been affecting my walk with God for a long time. It has been in the back of my mind though I have been unable to put it into words and recognize it for what it is until just recently. I am not prepared to write about the issue here at the moment because it is just too personal and raw for me. But, I am happy to say that I definitely sense God pursuing me and urging me to deal with this issue and so that feels very hopeful to me.