Katrina, a young lady who lived with us on and off during a rough time in her life - and for whom I had the honor of walking her down the aisle at her wedding - once said to us, "When you meet God, it's like you need to completely rewrite the dictionary."  She was getting at the point that there are many words that have significantly different connotations when understood from a place of faith:  Justice, good, evil, forgiveness, human nature... the list goes on and on.  There are three words in particular that I had to relearn as a disciple of Christ.

First, I think of the word "Christian" itself.  This word is only used as a noun in Scripture, never as an adjective.  Yet we have Christian TV, Christian music, Christian literature, Christian tee shirts even Christian on-line dating.  But how can a tee shirt be 'Christian'?  Does a piece of cotton have a soul?  Can a song have a relationship with the Messiah? 

Yes, I'm told there's even Christian juggling.  I'd consider calling it heresy, but I think I use the phrase to describe myself on this web site!  I prefer, however, to think of myself as a juggling Christian.  This is more than semantics.  The noun in that phrase is Christian.   That means when I'm performimg in a large church where my routines are greeting with applauses and amens, I'm  a juggling Christian.  When I'm doing a service in a jail where there may be some present who roll their eyes at the Gospel message, I'm a juggling Christian.  When I'm practicing alone in my backyard, I'm a juggling Christian.  When I'm in my towns local parade with no obvious Gospel theme, I'm a juggling Christian.  When I'm practicing and lose my temper, i'm still a juggling Christian.  Christian is not an adjective that applies to certain routines or performances or when I'm controlling my tongue.  Christian is the noun that defines who I am in God's eyes all the time because of His grace.

The next word that I've had to think about differently is the word 'love'.  This is treated as both a verb and a noun in Scripture, but we have all but stopped treating it as a verb in any real sense.  We talk about love as something we fall in and out of, as if we're all  striving not to make a misstep to the left or to the right, like a falling Wallenda on a high wire.  We speak of love as something we  give and withhold, feel and stop feeling.  It is true that love is often a noun, but not such an unpredictable one.  I Corinthians 13 describes love as patient, kind, that doesn't envy, or seek its own agenda. 

At least as often, however, scripture speaks of love as a verb.  It's something you DO.  God loved the world so much He gave His son.  We are to love our wives as Christ loves us.  As Don Francisco writes, "Love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will."  It would often be more accurate for one were to say, "I'm choosing to not love you any more" rather than the anemic excuse, "I don't love you any more."

Finally, there is the word 'faith'.  We say we have faith in our doctors, for example, but that's because we have seen doctors treat people successfully all the time.  Scripture, on the other hand,  defines faith as, "The evidence of things not seen."  I've heard pastors compare faith in God to 'faith' in getting on an airplane.  The difference is, we see airplanes fly without incident every day.  We can explain flight by studying the Bernoulli Principle.  However, we never see God, much less where He may be leading us at any given point in time, but faith demands that we trust and follow Him anyway.