I enjoy the kitchen. It’s the process of creating that I like and the reward of making the people you love happy and satisfied. Although cooking demands attention, it’s a great mental escape for me since I tend to live in my head.
My family has come to expect baked sweets from me. I enjoy making them but what gets old is the assumption that I must make (blank) whenever we gather. I’ve tried to give certain recipes to my sisters, but they don’t want them; they want me to make them.
The flip side of doing something well: you get marked for doing so.
In Days to Come…
Maybe I should be happy about it. I suppose I could have a lackluster or all-out bad reputation as the helpless bachelor in the kitchen (#9-1-1). “I can’t make it like you do” might be a compliment and mean “Michael, no one can infuse love and pride into that cake like you do.” It’s sentimental and becomes part of my tradition with others.
It’s the same way with the adages and admonitions our parents and elders gave us. This very moment there is someone’s voice you can clearly hear, a face and gesture you can see, from yesteryear giving you advice that you got sick of hearing at the time. But because you ate long enough from their table of wholesome advice, you are now a better person for listening.
The instruction we received became those folk’s legacy with us even though we weren’t always buying what they were trying to sell us.
Creating a Legacy
I wonder if grumpy Thomas ever rolled his eyes and said of Jesus, “There he goes again with ‘love your neighbor’!” Did any of the disciples need the smallest respite from Jesus? I mean, they listened to every teaching, crowd or no crowd.
That might sound funny (or irreverent) but they surely didn’t anticipate post-Pentecost. They had no clue that all Jesus was telling them would shortly become their saving grace in ministry.
Years later Peter understood the principle well, that his words were to his readers what Christ’s words were to the Twelve; so he explains, “I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have” (2 Pet. 2:12). Moreover, it was imperative because he knew he would soon die and, like a good parent, wanted to make sure his children were ready for greater responsibility.
What an honor God has granted the biblical writers, for we prove the point of good and lasting heritage whenever we search out certain ones for our devotional needs. We desire that voice because…no one touches our hearts like David does, no one says it quite like Paul.
And there’s something you do with others that you may or may not be aware of that really is making a difference in someone’s life, a legacy of your own. It could very well be what they’re balking at right now. Just keep at it. It’s sinking in…time will tell.
I drew comparison between a parable of Jesus and an idea being debated in a group discussion. A person quickly replied, “You can easily use a scripture to justify your own point.” It was the last statement of the session before we all dispersed; however, I left a little irritated.
The comment offended me for a few reasons. First, it came from a person who knows me very well, my love of the scriptures and diligence with them. So it peeved me that he could think that I should be guilty of sloppy study and a sleazy hermeneutic. His comment was a slap in the face that charged, “You’re like the rest of ‘em, twisting God’s words to prove your own point.”
Second, I recognized how that attitude renders Holy Scripture an abstruse, even esoteric, text irrelevant to 21st century life and modern thought. For either we believe as Solomon said—“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun”—and accept that moral and ethical values have been fairly consistent throughout history, making the wisdom of the Bible very much relevant for us today; or we deem life now and ourselves to be exceptional and devalue the Bible and all historical wisdom since they cannot make sense of our experience.
In that case, my only advice to my friend would be, “Okay, just make sure you never use the Bible or some ancient proverb to make a point”—or to live by. We cannot have it both ways, or feel that God’s words comport with any measure of moral relativism.
The truly frightening thing is the possibility that some of us have made the scriptures to say only what we’ve cared to hear. Yet in so doing, we would have merely elucidated falsehoods, which is something Jesus tackles in his Sermon on the Mount.
“You have heard it said”—because oral tradition, reinterpretation, and commentary had altered and appended God’s own words to claim something he had not said—“but I say unto you…” Jesus’s point stands: don’t misconstrue God’s sentiments. And don’t use him to push your own program but chafe when the Word finally judges you.
The real issue here, in the remark made to me, is certainly not my agenda with scripture, but rather the glaring admission of a poor spiritual foundation and lack of deep study.
Friends, we are not charmers or peddlers of a religious snake oil. We haven’t died to sin and reckoned ourselves ready to die for Christ’s sake for a false hope. No, God’s words are true and powerful, very relevant to life, and will forever stand.
The Holy Spirit awakens sinner’s hearts to God, but he employs the righteous in bringing them to Christ. It would be easy to say God needs none of us and can save those who choose him independent of us—then sit back and do nothing. Yes, he could but he has obligated himself to need our help, to use sheep to produce new sheep.
And then I wonder… Is it possible for me to cause an awakened soul to reject God—and before you discard the notion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic, The Cost of Discipleship, warns us about the danger of offering “cheap grace” to sinners that converts them but strands them inside salvation’s gate without suggestion of further discipleship.
If the quality of our teaching and preaching can inhibit spiritual growth, could it not also be possible that we or our presentation of Christ turn some away from Jesus except the Holy Spirit rescues them? Conceivably yes and it’s a sobering thought. We possess a grave responsibility laboring with God for the lost, and it should cause us to examine our lives, beliefs, and spiritual competence.
Jude on Evangelism
The final verses of Jude convey some remarkably rich and practical wisdom about how to approach the lost: “And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives” (vs. 22-23, NLT).
According to Jude, a one-size-fits-all evangelistic approach doesn’t work, and he’s right. Many of us grew up in the “fire and brimstone” days and in either-you’re-in-or-you’re-out folds. And I’m not knocking these people and this heritage because, well, it’s still holiness or hell.
But I also understand that times have drastically evolved. Speaking the “unchanging gospel to an ever-changing world” is different from what it was just twenty years ago, and it’s something we really need to think about more deeply, especially as it relates to our methods, involvement, creativity, and content.
Seekers and Scorners
Jude shows us three types of people we will encounter in evangelism. The first are those with doubts or whose faith wavers. I’ll call them seekers, although they may or may not be in search of God. These people will hear the gospel without resistance and may be searching for spiritual significance. They sometimes have weighty questions about life, personal significance, spirituality, and philosophy, which deserve to be heard and answered well.
Jude explains that we should be gentle and patient with this kind. In fact, some may need coaxing out of timidity and to be loved or shown truth and led away from false teaching. They are not yet entrenched in doctrine or vices that would cause them to fight the gospel or regard the church with disdain. Show these individuals compassion.
The second type of people, whom I’ll call scorners, is the opposite. Their sinful hearts are proud and resistant to the gospel, perhaps antagonistic. The patience and wooing that characterize converting the seeker is impossible with the scorner. Jude explains that this kind must be rescued from their own ignorance.
Although we must never frighten people into a decision for God (and certainly no genuine decision), scorners must be warned and shown how their sin and defiance offends the Lord. They have no clue that they are walking off a precipice into hell and must be mercifully yanked away from destruction…snatched from the fire.
Keep Yourself Untainted
The third type of people I will call the shameless. The implication from Jude is that these folk have lived in an unrestrained, or licentious, way. Jude’s instruction is to again show mercy, but he includes a warning to the laborer about the extent of the mission with these individuals. It should not involve one’s enticement to or participation in a person’s sin or with that person. We should genuinely love one while hating the ravaging effects of their sin, yet we must never cross the line and defile ourselves.
It is easiest to minister to people with whom we once associated because we understand their lifestyle and can access them. But ministry to our old friends and acquaintances is prohibited if it provokes the slightest temptation.
“Becoming all things to all people” has become cliché these days; however, we must also be careful for our own souls. Satan is devious and Christians can be taken advantage of by him. Yet we should not deceive ourselves and think we’re resistant to old habits when we’re not.
We would do well to heed Jude’s advice. Honestly, his counsel is basic and the least we must do to prove any acumen with the gospel. We can only better assist the Holy Spirit given the many tactics working to stop people’s salvation.
If you were to ask me what I like to do, there are many things I could tell you. I like moseying through bookstores. I like Sunday afternoon drives. I like thoughtful conversation and debate. I really like baked goods with big bowls of vanilla ice cream.
But more than all of these things I like being with others. I love people. I love acquainting and enjoying folk. Beside God there is no greater subject in life, and our things serve the backdrop for vibrant relationship.
Losing Our Humanity
I wonder if many of us do not value one another as we should—or if not one another, then our time spent with each other. It’s a conversation worth discussing. Technology is seriously privatizing our lives in ways we could have never imagined in the past. Face-time has drastically decreased and impersonal relationships are the trend. Frankly, traditional family life and meaningful communication is eroding. We are spending more time looking into cell phones and computers than we do into one another’s eyes.
We’ve become people afraid of the silences—the long car rides, the between-bites at dinner, the beckoning, open doorways that invite us into a person’s day or life. Instead, we opt for noise. We get in our cars and instantly turn on the stereo. Television sets the mood for most homes. We lounge together in our living rooms each transfixed on a device perhaps texting one another.
We would be lying or terribly unmindful if we denied that innovation could be helping us unravel our inner well-being by nipping and tucking at the parts of our humanity that need not be altered.
Humanity Regained
Things mean more to us when we experience them with others. I’ve been fortunate to take my dream vacation, and I was lucky enough to have it at Christmas. Yet I was alone. It was a fantastic time, but I kept saying to myself, Oh, I wish _________ were here! Things can never replace people. Too often we get the message when loved ones die and we realize that we didn’t know them the way we should have known them, and that’s a true sadness. Humans are designed to be relational.
I encourage you to develop a habit of simple fellowship, something I can call a healthy habit of mine. It could be viewed as a combination of two spiritual disciplines—simplicity and fellowship—with the goal of being truly participative in the lives of the people around us in ordinary, even artless, ways.
Shut the TV off, take the family outdoors, and have wild fun—remember the joy of spraying each other with water and playing badminton in the backyard? There is no greater enjoyable relational tool than the board game: keep them around. And why not invite over the neighbors you’ve only ever waved to and grill out. Didn’t you love it when the whole neighborhood was like family?
Do these types of things. Draw on those modest activities that thrilled you when you were young, perhaps before the Information Age, and create ways to share time with others. Practice them regularly as a way of pushing back against society’s redefinition of social acceptance and importance. Perform them to reclaim normalcy in your life. Let your actions be replete with the affection, harmony, and mutual respect that make us human and keep the world beautiful.
And never ever forget that being fully human is deeply spiritual and God’s only design for us.
More commonly you’ll read in an article or hear someone on television say something like this: “I believe it’s important for you to unashamedly live your truth” or “I have become more successful as I’ve discovered what is real for me.” What is alarming is to hear Christian people pick up this notion.
The “live your truth” idea is a fashion of moral relativism, which purports that there is no absolute moral law that objectively applies to everyone everywhere at any time. It’s a “have it your way” philosophy for which there is no right way and belongs to a secular humanist worldview that shuts God out and elevates the value of humans and human contribution.
Apart from the impossibility of living strictly by relativist notions (what happens when my relativism conflicts with your relativism and whose is right?), live your truth people or “truthers” have to deceive themselves to believe that there do not exist moral and ethical boundaries regarding what they ought and ought not be or do. The argument is simply impossible to overcome logically. It becomes slightly easier, however, when God or a moral lawgiver is excised.
What the Ducklings Teach Us
In psychology the term imprinting is used to describe a period or stage in the life of a person or animal, generally young, when behavior is acquired from its parents or perceived parent. We’ve all learned how crucial it is for certain animals to be with their parents after birth and not with humans or inanimate objects that they could take to be their parent.
The young one’s identity and safety are at stake, so it’s important for it to grow up to live and act as it should and not as it might wrongly think of itself. A boy that would be raised by apes never becomes an ape and certainly no Tarzan; instead, he lives as a severely limited human.
Christian people who sincerely pose as truthers are confused. To start, Christians believe in an open system where God is real and acts providentially in the world and for human life. Christians also believe that God is the only moral lawgiver and that his ways are essentially “written in the wind” and apply equally to all humanity and always have. Humanity, although ingenious and capable of great good, is morally fallen and gains spiritual significance as it adheres to God’s moral and ethical duties.
God has never told us to discover what is right for us but to learn his ways, understand his truth, know his will. We are to be holy as he is and lovingly do his bidding. He stands as the rightful imprint of our lives, for we bear his moral image. We walk the way he walks, exactly how he walks, and no further than where he walks. There is no place for “our truth” because we have none to offer. The Battle Hymn of the Republic has it right—“His truth is marching on!”
Further, it’s inadvisable to define ourselves by things we discover about ourselves—what if it is unbecoming or antagonistic to God’s will for us? This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t learn more about who we are, our strengths and weaknesses or the issues or vices that operate in our lives. But it does mean that what we discover is placed under the lordship of Christ and either serves his will for us or is diligently eliminated from our hearts.
“Just a bunch of Mexicans that should be shipped back to where they came from! They’re all illegal, here taking our money and sending it to Mexico. They just need to leave!”
“My goodness, the gays! These folk are demon possessed: men have a female demon and women have a male demon. They need deliverance. But I ain’t got time for them.”
“Can you believe some Muslims just moved next door? Things are gonna start getting bad around here. You can’t trust them because they’re surely up to something.”
“There were some foreigners in the grocery store the other day blacker than me—I mean b-l-a-c-k—and they’ve got the nerve to think they’re better than us.”
These were real comments I heard made by professing Christians that caused my heart to sink. I cannot understand why people who say they are Christians can feel so graceless and speak so ruthlessly about people with whom they should be sharing the love of Jesus. When I hear these kinds of comments coming from Christians, I’m tempted to go “Jesus vs. The Money Changers” crazy and shut everybody down. But enough is already written in their Bibles, which they are obviously not reading well.
Have you ever felt like one alone on an island in the middle of the ocean? I know there are a host of other Christians around me striving to walk in the fruit of the Spirit; however, the journey for me gets lonely sometimes when the faithful seem to cling to worldly notions more than taking their cues from Christ. I just don’t get why loving God and people is a Christian essential for me and not for everyone else.
Getting Down in the Pit
Maybe the question needs to be reworked. So let me start by addressing the two issues—homosexuality and xenophobia—in the comments above and use them in proxy to address the issue of loving others whoever they are.
Many Christians don’t know how to talk about homosexuality without feeling they must come down hard on it lest they be viewed as condoning. Yet the very ones who would claim they love everybody could never really have a friend who was gay, a person they could act the fool with, respect, and enjoy life together, because their own faith would be a jagged blade between them stabbing both ways.
I consider homosexual behavior sinful. But I also know that the deepest differences of opinion on any subject don’t necessarily have to divide. Christ’s approach was always toward the person. He understood that getting some people (of any habit) out of the rut might mean having to jump over into the slum with them and pulling them out. (No, I’m not advocating any type of gay therapy.) Why? It’s because people—those bearing the image of God—have primacy in the heart of God, and no distance is too greatly traversed to recover them. (I cover this topic in-depth in Communication Barriers Between Christians and Gays.)
It reads simply but is quite profound: We like to say that God loves the sinner and hates the sin, which is very true, but it doesn’t get us to what we need to see. Jesus shows us a God who chooses love for people over his contempt for sin. God, who is perfect love, hates sin with perfect disdain and yet his love for humankind is preferred to his love and need for justice. Thus, space is created for pardon, for redemption.
So for Christians, loving others with God’s heart is transforming to the one who receives it, and if that’s not happening, the problem is not with God.
As it relates to other cultures and people groups, Jesus was often criticized for associating with street people and those of the seedier side of society—and by those who felt they had a handle on their own righteousness. (Read “People of Your Kind!”) But Jesus’s message was broadly inclusive of everyone, especially the outsider.
It isn’t just the Great Commission where we are told to go to the four corners of the earth with the message. Jesus predicted (in Mark 12:1-12) a spiritual “fumble” that would bypass God’s chosen and bless the Gentile first in a way unintended. Further, in Christ’s final embodied scene in the Gospels, he instructs the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit—the one who would enable them to bridge the barriers of culture—and take his message, as if in ever-widening concentric circles, to Jerusalem (home), Judea and Samaria (city, state, nation), and to “the ends of the earth.”
Crux of the Matter
So I come to my reworked question: What made Jesus so approachable? And, he being God, why was it easy for him to mingle with sinners? It is more of that which we so desperately need. Moreover, why can’t all Christ followers see that loving God through people really is a Christian essential? What Christ shows me is that the faith God offers is amazingly well suited to human need. To say even this is an understatement, for God has made us to need him. It is a wonderful thing that is sorely missed by those who take the lesser road.
God needs us Christians to acquaint their Lord. Without intimacy we will not have God’s heart or understand his ways. We must live in the words of Christ, think through the scriptures, deliberate with our faith, and follow the Holy Spirit who reveals Christ perfectly. When we do, we’ll lend credibility to the Christian name and others will come to know the Lord, if only by observing that he truly dwells in us.
Getting to the table on matters of faith is hard for many people, while behaving there is another for some. Sometimes I am amazed at postulation I hear when people are backed into philosophical corners. I recall myself leaving a philosophy club meeting at my Christian university fuming at peers who blamed God for creating evil simply because they could not arrive at a logical answer for it.
Since seminary I have always stated that I begin my personal study of theology—apart from my faith in God’s existence and perfect goodness—with a large dose of “I don’t know.” That stance helps me appreciate the mystery and keeps me searching for truth. Why is the deepest question about life and its most elusive. We are all spiritual seekers, and we have, at some point, found ourselves caught up in some eddy…some wave…some tide in the ebb and flow of higher truth.
I respect those people who fight to know, who wrestle with truth and seize upon the life of faith, although for them it comes in flickers and glimpses. Some people, however, give up and cease all inquests, grow intellectually antagonistic, and never recover from their lack of spiritual knowledge, something I hate to see. I would like to believe that a period of searching is not unlike a teen who goes through turbulent years only to recover his or her “sanity” and grow into a model adult. But my own doctrinal beliefs about sin and fallen humanity disallow that.
Reaching for spiritual truth—to know if God’s resume is really what he claims it is—is normal, even for Christians, and will traverse the breadth of human speculation and emotion. If you’ve read Psalms, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes it is the only way we can be sure that the faith we possess is able to sustain us. But to overreach only does harm to the person. Overreaching means to bail out and surrender to intellectual suspicion; to give in to the mental and emotional need for stasis; to bring God up on charges; and, at worst, to walk away from faith.
Is There Purpose in Everything?
These sentiments often surface with moral topics and hot-button issues. I once watched a talk show and a question came up concerning autism. “Is there a purpose for everything, including disease?” I think everyone nodded their heads and agreed as a way of making sense of it and sympathizing with the suffering family. But something didn’t seem right to me.
Based on my spiritual convictions and the wisdom of Christian teaching, I cannot believe that disease possesses purpose and moral value. Unfortunately, sickness and disease occur, and why I don’t know; but they have never been part of God’s revelation or intent for humankind. I could never imagine anything less than goodness and goodwill in God’s character, in his Heaven, and in the original world he created. Again, to say otherwise, I feel, is to overreach.
I am not sure all things have purpose and moral value, and some things, like disease, may exist in a state of failed purpose. I don’t know, and, trust me: I’m not trying to be the philosopher here! But to assert that all things do indeed have purpose, from my Christian standpoint, may be leading to the justification of evil and sin’s existence in the world. (Research theodicy, the problem of evil, for more discussion.)
I will not bend my mind to accept something as true simply because I do not understand it. A better approach might be to realize that although some things are mysterious and without apparent purpose, and perhaps consequently evil and used (by Satan) with evil intent, they can be used purposefully, but only if one possesses the power to cause it.
Only God has the power to use all things in purpose, and here would be a good starting place in understanding his omnipotence and lofty wisdom. Thus, I cannot say it better than scripture itself has done: “And we know that in all things God works for good to those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).
I once worked in the photo department of a drugstore. I recall a lady who dropped off her film and promised to promptly return for it that day. I started developing the film and noticed that all the pictures were of a sleeping infant, but something was different about the baby. I was engrossed in the pictures as they came out of the printer, trying to put together what I was seeing. It looked like a wonderfully real doll until I suddenly realized that this was no doll or sleeping child. It was a dead baby.
The lady returned as she had said whereupon I tactfully commented about the photos. She apologized to me and stated that she usually explained the content of her film before having them developed but simply had failed to do so this day. These photos were part of her job: She was head of Pregnancy Loss Services in the maternity ward of one of the major hospitals. When children were born dead or had died in birth, her group went into action with different services the parents might desire to ease their grief. These ranged from photos like these to private funerals and regional commemorative walks.
Although my questions about the photos were satisfied, the pictures had a negative effect on me. They got on my nerves and haunted me for an entire week. I’d have flashes of the dead child while driving down the road or lose my appetite—such were the things that happened to me. Thereafter and almost weekly, the lady brought in film and the photos became more disturbing: babies in all stages of fetal development, some mutant-looking and badly discolored.
Even more shocking were the photos of smiling parents and family cuddled with their child—dressed if possible—and complete with balloons and other party stuffs, as though the child celebrated its birthday. The moments captured in those photos were terribly sad to view, but they were also powerfully consoling to the parents who were able to see a child’s tiny fingers or dark hair or resemblance to a sibling. It was literally a lifetime bundled in a single moment.
The Spiritually Dead
I realize that the story I’ve just related might be bizarre or difficult to read, but I use it as a prompt to discuss a spiritual point. Every person on earth spiritually enters this life as that unfortunate child—dead. There is no worthy goodness, no ability to love God, no self-motivated effort to reach him or ponder thoughts about him, even no chance of assessing our own depravity. We lie helplessly dead. In fact, this is one of Christianity’s classic teachings, the total depravity of humans as a result of original sin, another classic teaching. Every capacity of the human creature is impacted by the taint and destructiveness of sin.
The urgency of evangelism lies in what is at stake, the eternal soul: the soul that will either forever enjoy the presence of God or experience the torment of his separation. Thus, to do evangelism we must have a clear estimation about whom we’re targeting, which should look something like this: A spiritually dead person whose knowledge about church, past activities there, beliefs about Jesus, and so forth have heretofore meant nothing to the salvation of his or her soul (with respect to the Spirit’s unseen work.) Moreover, nothing will mean anything in that regard until that one acknowledges their deep sinfulness and rebellion against God. We were made for God and God’s love, but we, as Jeremiah has beautifully stated it, “…have turned [our] backs toward [the Lord] and not [our] faces” (2:27).
So it becomes our responsibility to explain that coming to Christ marks a renaissance, a quickening to life, a spiritual transformation that purposes to dominate everything about a person. It is more than getting one’s life together or “turning over a new leaf,” for one cannot ascertain God except the Holy Spirit gives light whereby to see. When this light does come, the first thing one will see is the disease of sin that destroys; the next thing will be the remedy, Jesus the Savior.
Why Being Good Isn’t Enough
Until we present a full call to repentance we accept the charge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that we offer only a “cheap grace” to the sinner. The grace we invite the sinner to accept is characterized as being cheap because it entails a convert merely holding to rules and regulations—going through the motions of being saved and doing church—rather than one’s radical self-denial and death to sinful ways to take up the cross of Christ. Such a grace only cumbersomely gets one through the door of faith, then, woefully, continues without effective discipleship.
Again, until we present an unswerving call to repentance, we will deceive men and women that their faith is genuine when they actually stand in need of full conversion. Bonhoeffer also makes a powerful point that a believer’s life and righteousness is possessed only in association with their fellowship with Christ. He says, “…righteousness can never become an objective criterion to be applied at will.” This is why merely good people don’t get to Heaven. Our best efforts and supreme moral good is worthless to make any difference for our salvation (Isa. 64:6)—and so is a righteousness given by God should we ever try to divorce it from Jesus. The righteousness which is from God ceases to be when we try to take credit for it. Jesus is everything in the ongoing conversion process, for even our confession is by the Holy Spirit.
Following His Lead
Now I’d like to transition from the condition of the lost and our preaching to some matters that determine our evangelistic effectiveness. First, we must recognize the Holy Spirit’s leadership in the conversion process. As much as I believe in outreach and missions, we must avoid an imperial attitude that makes us regard the unsaved as pawns to be captured or won instead of sinful souls in need God’s salvation. Too often that zeal is short-sighted (saving souls is easily done) or comes with wrong motives (numbers for our crusades and membership).
Real evangelism that brings souls to Jesus is not centered in how we can ‘work it’ but in the power of the Spirit to draw men and deliver them from death to life. We must preach simply and dependent on the Spirit’s help resisting the need for tactic or gimmick to lure people to the message. Now I’m not the biggest fan of witnessing campaigns…a much more conservative evangelical in this area than some. Still, I believe that an integrated faith in one’s life is important. I will never be ashamed of professing my faith in Jesus Christ before the world and sharing how his life makes every difference in mine. I think the Holy Spirit can sometimes use this better than our agendas to “win” the lost.
It’s important to pause here to say that prayer is our first labor. We must pray earnestly for the sinner. We must ask God to develop his heart for the lost within us. He longs to save and commune with those who are carried away in darkness. We must ask God to open their minds to the truth and to make their hearts receptive; to set us in their paths that we might share a word of encouragement with them whether it’s accepted or rejected. It should tear our hearts to learn that one has passed into eternity without Christ.
Just as following the Holy Spirit’s leadership is important, so is being sensitive to his unseen action among us. We can never be sure who the Spirit is dealing with, but we can be sure that he is moving in hearts around us because we labor in prayer. In this way he precedes us.
Note: It is not for us to assume that just because someone we’ve witnessed to is apparently receptive he or she is ready to confess Christ. The nicest people can be the most resistant to God. But could it not also be true that the one that fights and rejects us does so because he or she has been resisting the Spirit of Truth already whispering in the ear? Expect the Spirit before you ever open your mouth!
Aiding the Spirit
Now if giving way to the Spirit’s leadership is to help ourselves labor easier, then our procedures and support systems must be our way of helping the Spirit. Let me explain what I mean.
First, we need to see the entrance into the life of faith as a process. One of the most intimate and powerful baptism experiences that I’ve witnessed occurred when I lived in Japan. It involved a Japanese man with whom I shared budding friendship. His wife was a believer but he was not. He had long been attending Alpha meetings, a Bible-based discipleship support group. I came to the church in time to witness my friend’s baptism and announcement of faith in Jesus. It was a deeply moving experience.
My friend’s coming to faith didn’t produce my belief in faith as a process; rather it was the gift of God to me to witness what I had always felt was true about it. Jesus conveys this in his parable of the seed in Mark 4:26-29. Yes, I believe that salvation can be instant and genuine. People all the time come to church resistant to God until the Spirit suddenly opens their eyes and causes them to see Jesus.
But many of our churches don’t possess enough insight to see that the ‘one stop shop’ approach will not (and does not) reach everyone. I hate it when I hear preachers going through the formula—“Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God; that he died and rose from the dead…” Well sure they do and many people do, but it has done nothing to save them so far. (They’re dead, remember?)
And we can be sure that our formulaic approach and come-to-Jesus-right-now attitude will always fail should we maintain that the process 1) hinges on a mere decision for Christ (usually meaning all one has ever heard about Jesus) that can 2) be so easily made by the person having no discipleship precede conversion and certainly none following it. Lord, help us!
So we lend assistance to the Spirit (1 Cor. 3:9) when we take the time to answer the questions of those who genuinely inquire of the Christian life. People have questions and we should respect their right and need to have answers. Could we go further and say that the Holy Spirit himself places questions in people’s hearts? That he understands that the personalities of some need questions answered before they will unlock their hearts to him? Of course he does because he created us all and knows us perfectly. This is partly the understanding of 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 when Paul speaks of “casting down imaginations”—arguments and theories. This is what the Holy Spirit seeks to do: dismantle the structures Satan has erected in people’s minds that cause them to rebel against God (2 Cor. 4:3-4).
Our churches have to be sure that their methods are not blocking the work the Spirit may be establishing in people’s hearts. This even means we need more intimate prayer settings in our churches where workers in our services can explain the gospel and help seekers understand the life they’re choosing. It means that we need more cell groups and focused support groups, like Alpha, that embrace those with questions about God, the church, and spirituality.
(Let me stop and say this: Evangelism is an off-campus event. We are to go seek and save. No more seeker-sensitive services! The worship service is meant to edify the body of believers.)
A Rationally Viable Faith
It is a sobering thought that some people do not shadow the door of the church because it doesn’t meet them where they are. Some perspective here: Our world is a highly advanced place these days, and we (Americans) live in the most advanced nation on earth and in its history. The task for us Christians is to be able to clearly speak the unchanging and powerful gospel in the agora, the public square that might be better reckoned today as the marketplace of ideas.
Many out in this bazaar will not enter our churches without a higher level approach to the Christian system. So right here we must toss away the what-worked-in-times-past approach because it won’t fit the bill today or with all people (Mark 2:22). But although we preach an unchanging gospel, it doesn’t mean that the system of Christian faith is outmoded as many in our culture have written it off to be.
Two thousand years of church history has made the Christian faith more than ready to answer the complex questions of our advancing society. Most of our churches focus squarely on the devotional and primary aspects of the gospel message and forsake the church’s voice in the global and secular scheme of things. But the church has something to say about the broader society and matters like environmentalism, biomedical ethics, technology, and an array of topics and issues that have often been viewed as being irrelevant to our holy purposes.
In the same vein, sometimes we’re just not prepared. The Christian faith bears a very real rational aspect. It is a theological system as well as an ethical and philosophical system of belief that offers a full-spectrum perspective on the human experience. These kinds of intellectual discussions and forums must also be hosted by our churches because they too belong to the Church and have strongly existed in it since its spread throughout the Roman Empire. The church should always have a voice about current topics. We must appreciate our earliest heritage because there would simply be no church today without the rational prowess of the earliest defenders. We can only overlook intellectualism in our armory of spiritual weapons.
It is here that we discover the leading front of the battle between light and darkness. The way we think affects generations. After all, God loves these men and women, too, and needs the Albert Einsteins and Steve Jobs of the world. They are the Apostle Pauls and C.S. Lewises who could do more for the kingdom than we all combined! We fear these deeper subjects because we feel that they’re irrelevant or unnecessary in the saving of souls but we err. For goodness sake, we oppose anyone who would stand in the pulpit and preach theology! No, every person won’t need deep exposition to open their eyes to God but many do, especially today, and often those who could draw scores to God with their own salvation.
So just because these subjects are deeply rational and perhaps new to us doesn’t mean that we should avoid them. Think on it: Do we just let the intellectual masses of youth streaming out of our universities go headlong into hell? No! God needs their minds, their youth, and their fervor. Each of us can only benefit from a philosophy or apologetics text. Not only would we be made better Christians by it, but God sends us—guess where?—back into the marketplace; this time you’re a sharper tool (no pun intended!) The question is not if we can communicate Christ to the world but how willing might we be to do everything in our power to do so.
Party Time!
“Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Eph. 5:14, KJV). When God awakens that baby from death, we should be the ready life support staff of spiritual physicians equipped with every tool in our power to make the work of the Spirit complete. The Spirit has done the hard work. He has breathed new life; now we work on the vitals.
With that said, evangelism is necessary and discipleship is not optional (Matt. 28:19). In fact, discipleship occurs on both ends of the evangelism process. Our manner should be direct, simple, enabling, and thoughtful. And when that one finally says Yes! to Jesus, with genuine conviction, we can truly call in the party because that child will live to never die again. Isn’t that great? We have awoken, once and for all, to life everlasting. Let us examine ourselves, for we are each God’s ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20).
Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1968.
Christian leaders who have the opportunity to address issues publicly should be careful to give accurate explanations for God. Common inquiries range from why evil exists to cultural changes to how God judges matters. Sometimes, however, many in our faith community offer responses that only engender more questions or those to which we default with basic salvation answers—“The scriptures say that if you do not confess Jesus as your Savior, then hell will be your eternal home.” But these responses are wooden and difficult for the un-churched.
I don’t dispute anything the scriptures explain. I do believe, however, that formulated answers to really tough questions may create unnecessary problems for Christians rather than solve them. Besides, being formulaic doesn’t truly represent a deep, coherent theology or the heart of a loving and wise God.
As a seminary student I always felt that theology is rooted in 1) the truth about God as he has revealed to us, 2) faith in God and his character, and 3) a healthy acknowledgement of mystery. Most believers score well on the first two. But our faith in God rests at a deeper level when we can confess that many times we simply don’t understand him and all the things he says and does.
I believe the Bible is God’s revealed Word to humankind, true in its message and perfect in its intent. Yet I also believe that some of that record can be difficult to understand. I acknowledge that God and his ways, other than what has been explained in Christian theology, are incredibly shrouded in mystery.
Mystery fills in all the space surrounding the hard questions of life that century after century have stood as stalwart as when they first troubled the minds of humans. But we allow ourselves to get in trouble when we let our theology nail God down to an exact science.
I must learn to answer many questions outsiders ask with God’s heart. I know what the Bible says and often they do, too. But God is more than dogma and easy answers. He is feeling and caring and loving; sometimes we fail at presenting this side of God. I feel that if the world wants real answers from the Church, we would do well to risk explaining truth along with God’s heart.
For instance, I don’t fully know how God deals with people for whom it isn’t apparent they believed on him before dying, especially people who never knew of Jesus. These are things none of us understand. And, yes, I know that not believing on Jesus as Lord is unforgivable. But what about those who walked uprightly by the light of their conscience and those implications Paul alludes to in Romans 2:11-16? I just don’t know, but I can be honest about the mystery of it all.
So we all struggle with God’s revelation and to interpret scripture in order to know how God thinks about a matter—and I must say that for most things the truth is not hard to figure out. But I deplore those who have all the answers. They often do more damage than good.
What our theology has given us, let us learn well. Let us also do well to communicate it with grace, tact, and the honesty to say “I don’t know.”
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A 'Mike' for Christ 