{"id":450,"date":"2018-09-27T11:02:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/its-time-to-come-out-of-close\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:15:20","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:15:20","slug":"its-time-to-come-out-of-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=450","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to Come Out of the Closet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I loved the movie, \u201cThe War Room\u201d, about a woman\u2019s \u201cprayer closet\u201d. That\u2019s where she went to prayerfully \u201cbattle for the souls of her family members\u201d. And, while our prayer closets are certainly worthwhile for pleading our cases to God, it\u2019s time we come out of our prayer closets long enough to go into the world to boldly declare WHAT and WHO we stand for as Christians. <\/p>\n

Honestly, too many of us keep our Christianity in a closet. We heed the old admonishment to not discuss religion or politics. But, really? The two major discussion points for letting our lights shine are not be discussed? How can our voices be stifled when the voices of others who oppose God\u2019s side are so loud? <\/p>\n

I once worked for a technology company going through its beta-testing period. Giving our opinions about the systems were important for the engineers. I didn’t want to \u201crock the boat\u201d. I \u201choped\u201d it would all just work itself out and get better. Before long, I broke my silence after I heard someone say: \u201cThe squeaky wheel gets the grease.\u201d That idiom means that the loudest (or most noticeable) people (or problems) are the ones to get the most attention. I hear those loud, noisy, angry, bitter, cranky, mocking-God-and-His-people voices in our world today; voices that oppose the 10 Commandments, God\u2019s Word, morality, and God, Himself. Those people are getting so much attention these days because they are boisterous and loud. Christianity remains the largest religious group in the world at nearly a third (31%), yet we restrain our voices. <\/p>\n

Jesus didn\u2019t call us to be closet disciples. He gave us some stern warnings about denying Him. Matthew 10:33 says: \u201cbut whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.\u201d Keeping our faith to ourselves isn\u2019t the \u201clight\u201d that Jesus said we should be. He told us to go into all the world with Him. Our faith was made to be made public because we are called to evangelize the world and we cannot do that silently.
\nThere are controversial groups who have \u201ccome out of the closet\u201d and their voices are VERY, VERY loud. It\u2019s time for us to stop hiding in our closets and declare Whose side we are on. <\/p>\n

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For years I chose to downplay my religious faith. But, as you can see from my daily posts about my \u201cactive\u201d faith lifestyle and witness, I am out loud and proud to be a Christian. I look at it this way. If I had the cure for cancer and hid it in my \u201ccloset,\u201d what kind of humanitarian would I be? I have the cure for depression, loneliness, anger, sorrow, discouragement, and the lack of joy, love, hope, and peace. I can\u2019t hide it. That\u2019s why I share it every day. I love my friends too much to stay silent. I am not a loud, militant Christian who tells everybody who\u2019s not thinking the way I do that they\u2019re going to hell. I\u2019m a passionate Christian who speaks love boldly and loudly and that “true” love comes only with a faith and belief in God and His Word. <\/p>\n

With this blog today, I\u2019m proposing that we bravely use our \u201coutside voices\u201d. Election time is around the corner and we have the opportunity to make our voices heard. One of the greatest ways to be bold and loud as followers of Christ is to believe that politics really does matter. We better believe that these upcoming elections are important. We better believe that our vote makes a difference. I\u2019m not saying that voting takes the place of preaching the gospel or feeding the poor or mentoring our children or having a personal relationship with God. Not a chance. But I am saying that voting for the principles in God\u2019s Word will make a massive difference for our nation. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” Psalm 33:12 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I loved the movie, \u201cThe War Room\u201d, about a woman\u2019s \u201cprayer closet\u201d. That\u2019s where she went to prayerfully \u201cbattle for the souls of her family members\u201d. And, while our prayer closets are certainly worthwhile for pleading our cases to God, it\u2019s time we come out of our prayer closets long enough to go into the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1434,1435,1436,1437,1438,1439,1440,869,1441,1442,1443],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-battle-for-souls","tag-bless-is-the-nation","tag-come-out-of-the-closet","tag-dont-discuss-religion-or-politics","tag-lights-shine","tag-matthew-1033","tag-prayer-closet","tag-psalm-3312","tag-small-closet","tag-squeaky-wheel","tag-the-war-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8621,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions\/8621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}