Every day people go down to the pits of a deepest, dark hell... your neighbours, your friends, your relatives... and you don't want to 'blow your witness'... and you don't want to 'turn them off'... you don't want to make them feel like you're 'trying to get them saved', so you dont, and so they go to hell...and i'm asking you, what are you giving them in return?... a 'cool' friendship? I'd rather have people hate me... and the knowledge that i tried to save them. ~Keith Green.
[listen to the sermon in which he said this here.]
there are two ways a person can take this: 'you should this, you should that, you SHOULD'.... or, 'God, give me Your heart for the perishing!'... we can let a mantle of guilt come upon us, or we can take the knowledge that 99% of us don't truly have a heart like that for the lost and bring it before God. and there we discern the wheat from the chaff in the teaching and methods given.
it is good to have a heart that is passionate for the lost. but myself, i don't have a heart that says, 'gotta get them saved, gotta get them saved, even if they hate me for trying'.... because my theology is different. i believe that it is God, and God alone, who does the saving. i don't save people - i'm not the savior! Jesus is. and He saves all whom the Father gives Him... no more, no less. they are not saved on the basis that i worked 'hard enough' to get them there! that is a works mentality.
so what is my role? to LOVE them. ....you can't effectively show the love of God to someone who hates you, can you? sure you can 'feel' agape love towards them, but it's hard to effectively and practically love on someone who can't stand the sight of you, who avoids you like the plague, because you are one of 'those christians'... a "head-in-the-clouds good-fer-nothin bible-thumper". which is what the world thinks of us anyway, merely on the basis that we call ourselves 'christians'....
we must woo them with love, not manipulate them. that was tried during the inquisition... and is tried often enough still. some will not be wooed, that is fine, their heart is not in that place... but a 'man (or woman) of peace', one who's heart is ready to listen, will hear the voice of God in His timing.
but nobody is wooed by the attitude that says, "i'm going to save you, dammit, whether you like it or not!"
yes, we must not 'dumb-down' the gospel... yet we do not merely speak the gospel, we must LIVE IT. faith without works is dead.... sharing the gospel without living it first is merely yet another 'dogma', another 'philosophy of life', another 'religion' among all the others.... and to put it simply... hypocrisy. "oh, give your life to Jesus, God is love!" i say, as i sneer at you for letting your dog pee on my fence.
we need to shut up and LIVE it first... and when we have developed the relationship with the other to the point where they will listen...God, and God alone, will give us the words, at the right time.
when we speak, we must speak as an oracle of God.... the 'this is step 1.... this is step 2...', 'abc's to salvation' form of evangelism is the result of man's wisdom... 'this is how i can get them to listen to me so i can save them'.... to me, this is faulty on four basic premises:
1. i am not to manipulate people into salvation/going to church/listening to me;
2. it is not me/my words they need to hear, but those of God speaking to their hearts;
3. i am not the only 'mouthpiece' that God can/will use to speak into their lives - He speaks into their hearts using any 'device' He so chooses;
4. i am not the saviour.... Jesus is.
so what is the result? relationship, as opposed to religion. and relationship is the best witness to the love of God that we have. it's what He desires to have with us, both personally and as the church; it's what He desires for us to have with each other; and it's what He desires for us to example, and extend, towards those who are cut off from relationship with God - the perishing.
this, to me, is the ministry of reconciliation.
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