I’m a conservative Christian. There you have it. I have officially labeled myself for the world. That label is going to conjure up nasty images for some, and positive images for others, but in reality, it’s just a label. That means I’m religious doesn’t it?

In the end, that label doesn’t matter a hill of beans to the woman standing on the side of the road holding the sign, or to the girl who just left the guy’s apartment the morning after she met him the night before, or to the boy who just told his Christian parents he’s gay, or to the woman who sold herself to make rent, or to the woman who just heard her husband tell her he’s found someone else, or to the guy who just became a widower in an instant and was left with three small grieving hearts while his own has been torn to pieces.

The last time I took a spiritual gifts inventory, I found that my top three gifts were evangelism, teaching and prophecy (and no, that doesn’t mean I am given visions of the future). I was thrilled because it affirmed the desire of my heart to be a public speaker and bible teacher. To me it was like I hit the spiritual jackpot.

Except…

I didn’t really want to get my hands dirty. It’s comfortable in my chair where I can peck away on my keyboard. Parking the car and hiking my leg up over the guard rail to talk to the homeless person with little hope, not so much. I wanted to inspire the world through my blog and then go make myself a sandwich. Ministering from the comfort of my own home. Do as I say, not as I do, right?

I have spoken a great deal about topics that touch me deeply biblically, but I haven’t been one to dive into the trenches myself. Jesus has given me victory over certain sin in my life, but that doesn’t exempt me from others or mean that I need to sit in righteous indignation when I see a sister struggling. Quite the opposite.

The more I learn about Jesus, the less I like how I represent Him. We are beaten, bloodied and battered by the enemy whose one goal is take our eyes off the prize of Jesus. If he can accomplish that through division and hate filled diatribes on social media, he will. If he can accomplish that by convincing a young person that she is beyond hope so she may as well end it now, he will do that too. He will do anything, so we have to do everything. Everything we can to show others the real Jesus.

By the way, I have yet to hear the testimony of a new believer who came to Christ because they were shamed into it by the vitriol from believers on social media. If you say you are a Christian, don’t do it.

Some of us go to church on Sunday and check it off the list so we feel good about the week ahead. The problem with this is that the church was not meant to be a building. It was meant to be a body of believers who don’t merely listen to a feel good sermon on Sundays. The believers were supposed to go and share the good news of the only One who can really change lives.

A disconnect exists when we call people sinners and then tell them to have a nice life, while we pat ourselves on the back for defending Jesus. We have to be there with those who are broken, showing them the face of Christ. He spent His earthly ministry among the broken.

One of my favorite parts of Scripture is when Jesus meets the woman at the well in John 4. He knows she has been married five times and now has a live-in boyfriend. If this isn’t enough to consider her an outcast, she’s also a misfit Samaritan, half Jew, half Gentile, and she’s a woman. By society’s standards at the time, it didn’t get much lower than that.

Yet Jesus didn’t just break protocol and talk with her in public in the middle of the day. He went one step further and she became immortalized in Scripture as the first person Jesus revealed Himself to as Messiah. He didn’t look at her in a religious light. He looked at her in a grace and mercy filled light.

We need to stop being religious and start being relational. We need to quit dressing up on Sunday and forgetting what we heard by Monday morning, and we need to stop pretending like what we see out there is not our business. If we want to truly follow Christ, we can’t consider ourselves religious and refuse to be the hands and feet of Jesus.