Saturday, January 8, 2011
have you ever...
...been reading your bible in a coffee shop and then find yourself thinking, "if I were really set free by the Gospel then i would have no fear in standing on my chair and preaching the Word to everyone here." rationally you tell yourself, "well that's dumb. how effective would that actually be? they'll think you're crazy and totally not want to be your friend. not that it matters if they're you're friend for friendship's sake, but you come here a lot and want to build meaningful relationships and this may just shoot that relationship that could eventually lead to talking about jesus over a period of time in the foot" but then this deep, disgusting, make-you-want-to-throw-up kind of guilt sets in where you can't even think anymore. you keep hearing in your mind that you're denying christ by this refusal, that you're denying the holy spirit, that you're denying his promises. and then you become convinced that you don't actually understand the gospel and don't actually love jesus because if you did, you would stand up in the middle of the coffee shop and begin testifying the goodness of the Lord. the Lord is good. but that doesn't mean i need to literally shout it in the middle of a coffee shop. right?
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Well, since this isn't ancient Rome nor the Great Awakening I think getting up and preaching on a pedestal would only serve to hurt your cause. This is both a blessing and a curse because it prevents us from presenting the Gospel to a mass audience, but of course it is a blessing because that's really not the way the Gospel gets out. Jesus didn't start like that, and never really moved toward that. He went after 12 guys, and then as he did more and more small relational acts and miracles more and more people followed him. It was only then that he preached to crowds who didn't know God; they wanted to hear. The only time he preached to crowds who didn't want to hear him were the religious elite, who already knew of God.
ReplyDeleteYour words now wouldn't fall on deaf ears, they would fall on angry ears. I don't think it would matter how compassionate you tried to come across, because it would conjure up images of judgmental hellfire and damnation preachers. Unfortunately our faith is tainted with Christianity's jade and unfortunate past. People don't want to hear a preacher when they don't want to hear preaching and I don't blame them. It would be great for you to exclaim for yourself, but it is in my honest opinion that it would only give them reason to distance them self from God.
Yet this is a blessing because it not only calls us, but forces us back to our roots as Christians. We are relational beings, created by a relational God, thus it should be logical that the Gospel is to be transmitted most effectively in a relational way.