T-shirt Testimony

I knew I wasn't behaving like a Christian. Yet I convinced myself that id didn't matter.
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On a bright spring morning that seemed like a hundred other mornings, my alarm failed to ring and I woke up late for school. Frantically I threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and ran downstairs.
Right away I knew this was going to be one of those days when everything goes wrong.

Bad Attitude

"Why didn't you buy more milk?" I demanded of my mother when there wasn't enough for a single bowl of cereal. I then proceeded to snap at my kid brother for eating the last of the frozen waffles.
Once at school, I realized I had forgotten my algebra homework. When my teacher asked about it, I replied with a smart-aleck comment. My teacher stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head and walked away.
In science class we had pop quiz I wasn't prepared for. Feeling only slightly guilty, I accepted a friend's offer and copied the answers off his paper. It was only worth a few points anyway, I told myself. It's not a big deal.
At lunch, a girl accidentally spilled chocolate milk on my new sneakers. "Watch what you're doing!"
I exclaimed, ignoring her apology. "What are you, a three-year-old?"
I needed to relax after a day like that, so I went to the movies with my friends. Once at the theater, however, someone suggested that we should try to buy tickets for an R-rated movie. The workers were too busy to check our IDs, so we easily got in to see a very violent and sexually explicit film. Once again, I had doubts about what I was doing. I knew I wasn't behaving like a Christian. Yet I convinced myself that it didn't matter. After all, who was I hurting?

Only then did I notice the T-shirt I had carelessly thrown on that morning.
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It wasn't until late that night, as I got ready for bed, that I realized how much my actions throughout the day really did matter. For only then did I notice the T-shirt I had carelessly thrown on that morning. It was a T-shirt I had received at a church youth retreat, and it had the entire Lord's Prayer written across the front.
My heart dropped to my stomach as I thought about how I had been behaving all day--snapping at people, talking back, making bad choices--all the while wearing a shirt that proclaimed I was a Christian. Without even realizing it, I had been dishonoring God's name from the moment I got dressed.

Bad Example

When we think about misusing the name of the Lord, we often think of using it as a curse word. Yet there are many other ways to dishonor God's name. Every time we go to church, pray in public, carry a Bible, talk about our faith, or do anything else that declares us as followers of God, we become representatives of his name. And when our actions contradict what we claim to believe, we bring disgrace to the Lord's name.
I shudder to think what my algebra teacher must have thought of me as I wore my Lord's Prayer T-shirt
while talking back to him. And what sort of message was I sending my friends when I agreed to cheat on the science quiz and watch an inappropriate movie?
I was a walking billboard for God that day, just as we all are when we profess to have Jesus in our hearts. My T-shirt should have been a testimony of my faith, yet instead of uplifting the Lord's name, I brought only dishonor.
The next time you clothe yourself in God's name, make sure your actions match your claim to Christianity. Only then can you truly honor Him.

-by Christina Dotson