Now go and do

I read this verse over and over the other night. I looked it up in a few different translations in order to help me truly understand it's meaning. Here's the simplest of forms:

1 Corinthians 1:17-2:8 (The Message)
God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.

I think some of us read the following from Luke 7:50 and think that's Christianity.

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

It doesn't end there. We've been asked to do more.

As 1 Corinthians 1:17 declares, God did not just ask us to be baptized, putting faith in Christ alone. He asks us to be baptized and then follow it up with some action... because we are baptized and we've been given that amazing gift, we are to share it with others. And we have to live it. I love how Paul says it in the next verse "he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own". I'm so glad about that because I'm not really a fancy speakin' person. :o) Plain, simple. Yep. that's me.

A few years ago I heard that Christians are more "on fire" within the first 2 years after their baptism. It's during this time that the world looks so different and the possibilities are endless, we want to tell everyone about the new "club" we've just joined. However after a few years, the world (as it's know to do) squishes up a lot of that beautiful enthusiasm and the Word isn't shared as much.

Why does this happen? For me? It's because I'm scared of what people will think, because of hurtful comments or being afraid to be viewed as a hypocrite because of my past behavior or my current stumbles. Or I've been asked questions I'm not always sure how to answer. Re-reading the above verse... the message is clear. God is far less concerned about my comfort than He is my character. I'm not trying to collect a following for me, but one for Him.