Note: Some spoiler
alerts on the new God’s Not Dead
movie.
I felt this
need to write about what just happened to me after I watched the movie, God’s Not Dead, at the movie theatre last
Friday. For those who haven’t seen the movie, I’ll try not to go too much into
detail and just mention what’s important for this post.
At the end of the movie, there’s a
scene at a concert where everyone’s encouraged to text every person on his or
her contacts list, “God’s not dead.” The logic behind it was that if there were
1,000 people there and each person texted 100 people, than it’d be like telling
Jesus we love Him 100,000 times. After the movie ends, the audience is prompted
to join.
How could I say no?
Here’s the thing, though. It’s
easier said than done. The moment I took out my phone and wrote those three
words, it was difficult to picture myself sending it to everyone on my contacts
list.
Sure, I could easily send it to my
youth group friends, my Christian camp friends, my family members…but what
about everyone else? What about my classmates, my other friends, my colleagues?
What about everyone who wasn’t Christian?
The last thing I wanted to do was
offend anyone. I pictured myself getting dozens of offended texts, somewhere
along the lines of, “How dare you send that to me? You know I’m an atheist!”
I could also get offensive texts
too, like, “Screw you and your Christianity!” or worse. I’d be the one offended
then and there’d be no one to blame because I asked for it.
Suddenly, pressing send didn’t seem
like a good idea.
Then I started thinking. I wasn’t
saying anything offensive with my text. If the person didn’t agree, they didn’t
agree. And if someone responded offensively to me, I didn’t need to take that
personally. Besides, it wasn’t like I was doing this for any of them, or even
for me.
I was texting for the one I was
texting about: God.
Before I could talk myself out of
it, I began to send the text. First, I sent it to all of the contacts under A. By
then, the movie was over and everyone was exiting. When I got up, though, I noticed
something wonderful.
Practically everyone, especially
the teenagers, was texting.
Now, don’t judge me. It wasn’t that
I was doing it just because everyone else was, but the fact that I wasn’t the
only person, or even teenager, filled me with strength. For a brief moment,
there was a room full of teenagers saying, “So what? I’m a Christian teenager
and I’m going to text for God.”
So, I kept texting, moving down the
alphabetical list. As I kept sending, I kept expecting the worst.
Here are the results:
Total people texted: 170
No responses: 78
Total responses: 92, and of those responses:
35
responded with some sort of confusion
26
agreed in some form
20
asked, “Who is this?”
4 of these overlap with agreed
6 referenced the song, “God’s Not Dead”
by Newsboys
4 referenced the movie, God’s Not Dead
2 started a philosophical conversation
2 gave completely unrelated responses
1 responded offensively
I’ll just
say it. I was flabbergasted. Yes, flabbergasted. Why? Because of all of the responses
I received, not one person responded offended and only one gave me an offensive
response.
Honestly, it was such a pleasant
surprise that it left me thinking why I was so scared to do it in the first
place. Why couldn’t I just text for God? I talk, sing, dance, etc. for Him, but
I hesitated on texting for Him. Why?
Maybe it was the randomness that
threw me off. Maybe I wasn’t prepared for the possible responses. Maybe I just
wasn’t as brave to tell the world about Him as I thought. Maybe it’s because of
all of those reasons. Maybe not.
The truth is, I don’t have a
complete answer for this question, but what I do know is maybe I’m not as
afraid to text for Him anymore. This experience taught me that I could do
something I’d never thought of, text for God. It’s just another way to reach
others about Him, so why not go for it?
Seriously, why not?
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