“Whatever I would come to believe in, it could not simply change my mind; it had to change my life.”

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus, (2006-11-14) from his book, Soul Cravings: An Exploration of the Human Spirit (p. 192). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

I was reading this morning in the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament and I came across something that Jesus said that I underlined. He was talking about someone who He had just healed who had come back to thank Him and He said, “And he was a Samaritan.”

Now the Samaritans were a people that the Jews looked down on. In other words, they were prejudiced against them. And here Jesus it seems was highlighting their prejudice. Over and over He did this in the Gospels. And Peter, Paul and James did the same throughout the rest of the NT.

One of the first great battles in the new Church after Jesus’ time here on earth was over whether they were going to accept Gentiles into the Church. A Gentile was someone who wasn’t a Jew. But Peter and Paul showed that to follow Jesus was to let go of our prejudices, to accept those who were different. They showed that we are to change. That accepting Jesus as their personal Savior meant there were some changes that needed to happen and prejudice was one of them and the same is true today.

You see being a follower of Christ doesn’t simply change our mind but it changes our life. In one area, it changes the way I view those who are different from me. When that happens in someone who would be counted as a racist whether it is toward Whites, Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Asians, or one who is prejudiced toward someone who is poor, rich, fat, skinny, people with tattoos, those without, Republican, Democrat or how someone would label their own personal prejudice, when they change that will truly show that following Christ has made a difference in their life. You see, being a Christ-follower means that we have changed even in our prejudices. That’s why Jesus kept emphasizing it while He was here.

As you may know, the ones He had the most problems with were those religious people who hadn’t really gotten what it was all about to truly follow God. They just didn’t get it.

One of the reasons why I am reading the four Gospels 13 times in 2013 is because I want to really get it. I want to really know Jesus and what it really means to be His follower. And this is one area He wanted to see us change. This is one area where we can show that Christ has made a difference in our life.

So do you get it?

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