We can all picture that car can’t we. The one we see driving around town with more bumper stickers than you can read at a red light. These cars may be amusing but they are hardly convicting. I can honestly say I have never been convicted by one or fifty politically charged bumper stickers plastered on the back of a rusty Chevrolet.

Why? Probably for the same reason you weren’t. Bumper stickers are easy to come by, require little conviction and are more often about social commentary than they are personal conviction.

Sometimes Christians act more like bumper stickers than they do vehicles of God’s love in a fallen world. Their Christianity is easily come by, requires little conviction, and is more often practiced because it’s popular than because it’s real. The sad thing is the world is watching. Their response might be a slight chuckle at their social commentary but bumper sticker Christians lack the power to really change anything don’t they.

If this is true, why are so many of us interested in being bumper stickers?

Why are we looking for cute sayings that define our relationship with God?

Why is it so important to wear our cute Christian paraphernalia so the world can see?

I have a friend named Chuck. He likes to tell me how God got a hold of his life. He often says:  “when God changes someone he doesn’t put a new shirt on the man he puts a new man in the shirt”. This is so true. You see the problem is many of us have made God a bumper sticker on our lives. He’s cute, catchy and hip but not convicting. He doesn’t really change anything in us. God is more interested in changing the car than He is in being a bumper sticker. This is so because no matter how many different bumper stickers you slap on your car you still have the same car, but if you change the car, all the bumper stickers go with it. When we allow God to change our lives he radically reorients everything.

May God be the change in your life not just your commentary on current events.

Community Questions:

What’s the best phrase you ever saw on a bumper sticker?

What’s the cheesiest “Christian” bumper sticker you ever seen?