all the in-between days...

Did you ever learn that Sunday school song when you were little?.. The one that goes…
“put Jesus in your everyday life
not just Sundays and Wednesdays
but all the in-between days
put Jesus in your everyday life
He wants to be your very best Friend..”
That song has been running through my mind off and on for the past several weeks. I remember singing it at Awana when I attended Sparks with a friend of mine at her church, and I think I had it on a cassette (yeah, okay, so it was a long while ago )..
As simple as the words are, they are really quite profound. It’s a simple concept, but it is one that we as the church today tend to have some trouble applying to our lives. It is so easy to go to church on Sunday and Wednesday and then go on with our lives on all “in-between days”.. as soon as the service is over on Sunday (or maybe even before it’s over..), our minds are already onto something else.. — “What’s for lunch?” “Oh wow, I’ve got a lot to do today!” “Maybe I’ll leave just a couple minutes early so I can beat the crowd..”
But when we start to have these thoughts.. our hearts are not really there listening to what God wants to tell us. Something I’ve learned a lot about in the past year or so is slowing down. There is nothing wrong with taking our time. What exactly do we gain by rushing out of a service early? Ten extra minutes to sit in front of the tv? Or is the only thing we really gain from it a growing impatience in our hearts? Who really cares if we have to wait a couple of minutes to be seated at the restaurant for lunch because there is a huge crowd after church?
See.. if we take to heart what this children’s song says, maybe we’ll let it affect us. If we live what this song suggests, if we really put Jesus in our everyday lives, just think of the difference we’d see in our attitudes and our actions. Think of the difference we could make in the world around us.
If we really put Jesus in our everyday lives, He will make us shine like the stars in the heavens (Philippians 2:15) in the middle of this darkness.
When we put Jesus in our everyday lives, people will begin to notice. They will want to be around us, because we don’t put them down or complain and argue when things don’t go our way.
Putting Jesus in our everyday lives makes us real followers of Christ. It pushes away the stereotype of “Christians” who are more into legalism and making up new rules than they are into caring about people. It embraces instead the lifestyle that Jesus lived. He visited the homes of people who were the “worst” that you could be. People looked down on Him for it, but.. that is because they didn’t understand what it meant to be in the world but not of it.
We are called to love people. Others are going to know we are followers of Christ because of our love (John 13:35). We actually owe it to people to love them (Romans 13:8). There is no greater love than to lay aside our own lives and desires for someone else (John 15:13).
So maybe this is a children’s song.. but I don’t think it is just for children. It is so relevant to us all. We need to put Jesus in our everyday lives.. and the world really needs us to as well. We can’t be fake.. which is what we are if we only let Him peek into our lives on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Let’s put Him in our everyday lives and let it change us from the inside out. We can change our world by letting Him first change us.