Ashamed Of A Shirt?

  There’s this customer at work, he likes me, always flirting with me (actually once he offered to buy me a candy bar, so sweet:), well I think he’s cute.  Anyways, he is a friend of a friend so I stumbled across his Facebook profile and one of his old profile pictures is of a red equal sign, so I know he stands for homosexually, okay, that’s fine, there’s Christians that believe that there is nothing wrong with it, of course I have no clue if he even claims to be one or not. Well, I rarely see him at work but whenever I do, there’s kinda a spark I guess you could say.
  Well, today as I was getting ready for work I was looking for a shirt to wear right? Well all I could really find was a black T-Shirt, that had a tree on it with a person (Jesus) hanging from the tree (but, you can’t see the person unless you look really close) and it has the words “WHY?” in caps, just like that, written on the bottom of the shirt. I was planning on taking it off and finding another one to wear. It’s not that I didn’t want to wear the shirt because of the image on it, it was just I never really liked it that much, and well, I didn’t really want people to think I was crazy or something for believing what I believe, so yeah, I guess I really didn’t want to wear it, because of the image. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve “proud fully” wore Christian T-Shirts before, so really I’m not sure what my deal was with this particular one. As soon as I left I realized I was still wearing the shirt, “Oh well” I thought. “No one will say anything”.
    Of course, I was wrong. First, there was this guy who has already asked me out, but I’m “thinking” (what he doesn’t know, is my “thinking” is thinking of a really nice way of telling him that I really don’t want to date ANY guy right now. I’m not sure how to word this without sounding like a lie, or me sounding completely stupid) if I should accept or not, well he saw my shirt and said “Cool shirt” I was very surprised, this guy was one of the last people I expected to compliment my shirt, so I just put on a shy smile. I wondered if he even knew what my shirt meant...
    Later on, the guy I talked about above came in, I was kinda glad to see him actually. He bought a pack of his usual Echo Full Favor 100 cigarettes, I accidentally grabbed the shorts instead, and I was like “Oh, wait you wanted the 100’s right?” Of course I knew the answer. He simply replied with a smile on his face “Just because you are short doesn’t mean I want to smoke shorts”. I laughed. So I went back grabbed the correct cigarettes. He kept staring at my shirt as I was ringing all of his stuff up, I’m thinking just great, I tried to turn a little more of the opposite direction in hopes he wouldn’t read me shirt. Sure enough, he says, “So what’s the shirt about?” Just great..  I reply “Uh, Jesus” I wondered if anyone else had heard my response, I said it louder then I wanted to. He just says “Ohh” from the look on his face, crazy is exactly what he thought I was. At that moment I felt stupid because of that shirt, and my beliefs. Here is a nice guy, that obviously likes me, but it didn’t matter anymore because I could tell from the way he was looking at me religion was a big problem for him. There goes him, no chance, ever… Then, my mind went to a verse in Romans 8, I believed (as you will read either I was wrong of the location), I wasn’t sure exactly all of what the verse said but it was something like “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ”, yet I was, at that moment.
    The whole verse I thought of is Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
 I was ashamed that I had wore that shirt, a shirt showing exactly what I believe. I wished I never put it on? But why? Why would I want to hid what I believe? The song This Little Light Of Mine, plays in my head: Hide it under a bushel? No! I’m gonna let it shine. That’s the whole point, being a Christian I need to be willing to share the love Jesus has for us with anyone no matter what the sacrifice might be (okay, so I don‘t exactly consider a guy not liking me anymore a “sacrifice“, but you get the point). Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, yet I am ashamed to wear a freaking shirt because of what others might think?! Yeah, something doesn’t sound quite right there.
                                                                                                                                                09-03-2013