“For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s and of the holy angels.” Luke 9:26

Something caught my eye the other morning while I was walking. One of my neighbors has a flag hanging from his back porch announcing his support of a political leader. What makes the sight odd is that the back porch faces a nice backyard with a view of the river in the distance. It’s not like a lot of people will see this flag and it makes me wonder why bother. If one is interested in convincing their neighbors to support their candidate then it seems like the flag would have been flown in a more prominent location. The candidate would expect that if you hang their flag out, that you would select an area in your yard with high visibility. So why hang it in such an obscure location unless the neighbor is concerned about backlash regarding the candidate’s flag or the neighbor doesn’t really feel that strongly about the candidate and the flag is out as a matter of duty or obligation. Either way, the message is weak and contrary to the point of having this flag in the first place.

This was Jesus’ point in regards to us and our faith walk. With Jesus, the commitment should be all in. There is no such thing as a halfway Christian. You either believe or you don’t. You are either committed to live as much of a Christ-like life or you’re not. You are either saved or not. Anything else is lukewarm Christianity that will push us right out of heaven (Rev. 3:16). We can wear all the Christian paraphernalia we can find, fooling some of the people some of the time, but we will never fool God any of the time. We can talk about Scriptures, but if we don’t know how to apply them to everyday life, we have just filled our head with another fact or narrative. We can be the best member in church, never missing a service, a study or event, but if we failed to give our heart to Christ and be saved, we will find a rude awakening at the point of transition from life to death…Jesus saying, “depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matt. 25:41).

It’s not that we are supposed to be brandishing Jesus around like a political figure or a favorite sports team, but we are to be living in such away that will invite the non-believer to look at our lives a little more closely and make a decision to follow our God. Our faith should be a shining light in a dark world. And if we are asked we can be an effective witness that win s another soul for Christ. In other words, we will have no shame in our game and we can put our “flag” on display for all the world to see, not hiding our allegiances on the “back porch” of our life.