{"id":42,"date":"2016-12-01T06:24:34","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T14:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=42"},"modified":"2016-12-01T06:24:34","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T14:24:34","slug":"an-open-letter-of-apology-to-my-non-christian-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter of Apology to My Non-Christian Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo by Alexis Brown<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear friend,<\/p>\n

I am sorry<\/strong> for the times I’ve failed to invite you to church. It’s not because I’d be embarrassed or ashamed of you \u2013 indeed I would be honored to have you with me! It has much more to do with my fear of you turning me down. But that fear doesn’t really give much credit to our friendship, does it?<\/p>\n

I’m sorry<\/strong> when my words and actions don’t align with the right and wrong of my faith, and you end up seeing the hypocritical side of me. While I’m not proud of it, consider it me modeling how much I need forgiveness. Be patient \u2013 I’ll be spending the rest of my life working on it.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry<\/strong> for the times I’ve confused my political beliefs with my religious beliefs. While my political views are understandably shaped by my faith, no one knows better than I do to keep the two separate. No political party, after all, has ever ushered a single saint into heaven. Only Jesus does that. I forget that sometimes.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry<\/strong> for giving the impression that I think my sins aren’t as bad as yours or those of others. I know quite well how God feels about all sin. I am also grateful to know and believe what he’s done about it (… he’s forgiven it)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry<\/strong> for not bringing up Jesus in more of our conversations. My connection with him is the 1 thing that matters to me more than anything else… which probably isn’t terribly obvious to you if you hear me mention him so infrequently.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry<\/strong> for my lack of availability on Sunday mornings due to church. As dear a friend as you truly are to me, I have another Friend with whom I cherish that time together. Besides, the more time I spend with Him, the better a friend I’ll be to you.<\/p>\n

BTW, if you’d ever like to meet Him, I am gradually gaining more confidence in introducing my friends to Him. I’d be happy to connect you. Just let me know.<\/p>\n

In Christ,<\/p>\n

Your Christian friend<\/p>\n

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  Dear friend, I am sorry for the times I’ve failed to invite you to church. It’s not because I’d be embarrassed or ashamed of you \u2013 indeed I would be honored to have you with me! It has much more to do with my fear of you turning me down. But that fear doesn’t… Continue reading An Open Letter of Apology to My Non-Christian Friend<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p842FN-G","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}