Christian or Sinner? (An Angelwing Devotional)

I always believed. Even as a wee child, the LORD Jesus was my friend. I loved Him then,and I love Him now. But I, like most kids, didn’t understand. When I accepted Him as my Lord and Saviour, I was naive. Mostly about the sin thing. It wasn’t until much later that I understood sin isn’t just about what’s in the Ten Commandments.

Once I attended an in-home church when we lived in New Jersey. The preacher and his family had gone door to door on our street, and very nicely invited us to his home later that week. Since I had not found a church since leaving our hometown a couple of years before, I was happy for the invite. So one night, my husband, my mother, and I went to this man’s home for a night of Bible teaching.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how he kept saying we were sinners. I mean, I hadn’t killed anybody, I didn’t tell lies, I sure didn’t covet the neighbors ‘anything’, and I did not take the Lord’s name in vain. I was offended.

I was polite the rest of the night, but I never went back. I could not understand how that preacher could call himself a Christian. Didn’t he know the difference between another Christian and a sinner?

This man had a very gentle manner about him, and his wife and young daughter were the same. I felt bad about it , but I could not listen to teaching from someone who was so wrong about who I was. I was my father’s daughter. He taught me well as I was growing up, how to treat others, how to say my prayers, how to tithe properly. So I knew it couldn’t be me.

The preacher came to our home a few more times, to politely check on us. He encouraged us to come back again. He invited us to the Sunday morning service. My husband would run and hide in the laundry room whenever he saw the poor man coming. So guess what…I found myself lying to this man of God.

Yes, I called him a man of God just now, didn’t I? And that’s because many years later, after finding a Bible believing, Bible teaching church, I finally saw the light. I know I was saved, and was Heaven bound, but I did not understand that we are all sinners, we are born to it, and that is the real reason the Father sent His Son to this earth I didn’t understand that sin can be as simple as wanting a dress so much that I can think of nothing else, or not reading my Bible as I should, or forgetting to pray. Sin is anything that comes between me and God. And that can be a lot of things.

So I believe, and I have faith. I know now how precious it all is. Faith is love. Faith is Christ.

Blessings!