World Changers.

How you live your life is a huge responsibility placed on each one of us. Lately, God has really been opening my eyes and showing me how important it is that I live my life in a way that is honoring to Him. I've heard it said before that the largest reason for Atheism in the world today is Christians. How sad is that? Christians have taken on the stigmas of being hypocrites, hateful, and even terrible tippers at restaurants, along with many other negative things. I mean seriously people? This is so disappointing.....We're called as Christians to be World Changers. If this is how non-christians view us, then we're really falling short of how God wants us to live. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally at fault for these stigmas too....I just really believe it's time for us to change.
A Hypocrite is someone who promotes virtues and religious beliefs or principles, but doesn't actually apply them to their lives. How many times have we as Christians pointed out the sins in another people's lives before looking at the sin in our own lives? It's our natural instinct to ignore our own faults and pick apart the faults of others. I definitely have had my own struggles with seeing others faults and ignoring my own, but Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:3-5,

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

We need to stop picking out everyone else's sins when we have a truckload of sins to account for ourselves. I mean seriously, "Christian" means to be a Christ follower. That means to be like Christ. So who was Jesus Christ while he was on earth? He was loving. He was accepting of everyone. He was forgiving. He was gracious. He was caring. He was patient. He was kind. He was humble and fair and generous. He was all of these things and so much more. It's our role as Christians to aspire to be these things.
Obviously we're only human so we will fail time and time again. But Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." With God on our side, we have no excuse for not being loving towards others. He can help us and give us the strength to shine His light on those around us. As Christians we should want to reflect Jesus in the best light possible, and quite frankly, we've been doing poorly at this, me included. 
I didn't mean for this to become a "Do this/Don't do that" rant...but I feel like it kind of turned into that. Don't view my little spiel as discouraging towards you because that's not my intention at all. My intention is to bring this topic to light and to encourage you as well as myself to focus on being salt and light to the world. Lets break these stigmas placed on Christianity...Lets be World Changers.