Another confusing post. It's all over the place, but then again, so is life.
Self
I took a long hiatus from telling others about the awesomeness of Jesus. My health was suffering over the last few months by both sickness and injury, and I wasn't in very good spirits. I wasn't really connecting to the Lord, and that was purely my fault. Again, I'm a real person. God also led me to the wild, the actual wild forest, to be formed again. To state all of the ways I have been called to repentance would just take up the whole post and not really glorify God. Suffice it to say, God is amazing. When the world and your own body steal your purpose, God is relentless in pursuing you and giving you back your purpose.
For me, there is no use in trying to connect others to God when you yourself are not connected to Him. Otherwise, you will disciple "twice a son of hell" as yourself.
Network of Prayer
God really worked on us to show us that nothing moves in history without Him doing it. So we developed a faithful network of people who would just ask God to bless our efforts (which are clearly in His will to do) to spread God's good news.
The difference is night and day. Whereas before things were slow and hard, things are much more smooth. We can see the story God is writing on people's hearts much better; we can also rest better than before knowing that we don't have to push too hard since God Himself is working. I really don't know if that makes sense, but it certainly does to us. Thank you Lord, and thank you brothers and sisters who have been faithful in praying for the lost.
Family
My wife and I shifted our focus from random people to our family members. We were able to lead one member to dedicate their life to Jesus after a focused Bible study and also answering her own questions. She was a student and was being taught a lot of illogical and disrespectful things about religions and how to relate (or not) to God. I covered this in an earlier post. Follow up and discipleship has been slow, but that doesn't bother us. We pray she would continue strong in her journey, and we praise God that she's moved from death to life!
My wife's mom was able to lead another family member to Christ, and the follow up has again been slow. Praise God for saving her!
We also had the joy of baptizing a member of my family. Yay! Their life was immediately challenged/attacked spiritually, but he is doing amazingly well and there has been a complete change in him. I mean, it really is absolutely nothing I did. God is doing this great work, and it is amazing to see Him work.
Neighbors
We also shifted how we approach our neighbors, and he's slowed our pace way down. We began simply using a cultural practice of taking food to neighbors. For instance, we had an ice storm paralyze our city. Everyone was stuck inside. This was a perfect opportunity to bake and take some cookies to our neighbors to meet them. It was really fun. We hung out with one couple, but they soon moved to a different city.
However, another not-yet-believing family we met are what we think are "people of peace", c.f. Luke 10:5-7. We have become pretty good friends. It's an ongoing and slow process, but there have been great doors opened this very week with them, including worshiping with the church together. God's also given grace for me become closer to the man of the house, which is a pretty amazing to me to see that God is working with men. Men are pretty difficult since they tend not to see the world through spiritual eyes. I strongly believe that God will use this family to let us spread the good news to many people who are their friends.
Other Cases
We began a small business with Guatemalan artisans to help develop an impoverished area there, but also to sell some really cool stuff. The artisans we partner with disciple youth in danger of being inducted into gangs. Their shop is in the middle of a very very dangerous area. Of course, this project has many purposes, but one big one is to disciple others in the workplace and to support these type of grassroots companies around the world.
I've been pleased to pray with a couple of my patients and coworkers in my new job working with cancer patients. Emotionally, some of these relationships have been very hard to be a part of because of the brokenness and great need in their situations. My previous clinic allowed me to pray with others, but I work for a hospital now, and this is pretty much prohibited. Oh well.
Lastly, I have been friends with a man from my old clinic for a few years now. He has a very sad story of his family falling apart, and he is now a bit of a nomad. He's been unable to work. He still sees the good news as an academic, historical type story rather than a story that actually means something to Him. This has been one of the most painful relationships I've ever had in my life, seeing this man's steady spiritual and physical decline. Pray for God's great mercy on Him. Pray that He would be driven to drink of the presence of God and be satisfied.
Lessons Learned
So many things have happened that are simply joyous to experience. We learned that God doesn't want us to do anything without Him; sounds weird, but it means that nothing will work unless we are close to the Lord. In His kindness, He loves us so much that He wants to always guide us and lead us and shepherd us.
We learned we need to use food. We learned we need to be satisfied with a slower pace. We learned we have to be open in our schedules to let others in. We also learned that some people need more structure than others when studying the Bible. In short, we needed to learn to just love people.
Going forward
We still don't know how to get people into follow up, but we suspect it has to do with there being a need for a stronger foundation of friendship before leading someone to Christ. We are satisfied with a slow pace, but we also watch for the opportunities that the Spirit is creating, such as spiritual questions, whacked out movie plots, friends of friends, time folding laundry with people, teaching others to build fires in the woods, etc.
What a mess! At the beginning of this blog, I noted we would be sharing our struggles in spreading the good news, so here goes.
About a year ago, I put out flyers for a Bible study with little tear off strips at the bottom with our website and Skype information. I put one in English and one in Spanish outside my door in the clinic I worked at at that time, and the other I put on a bulletin board outside of my apartment complexes mailbox center. 4 people responded. 3 actually did studies with us. None of them are studying with us now. It's kind of difficult to put that in writing, but sometimes it just happens. It's certainly been a learning experience, and we won't forget the lessons we learned.
As a side note, we did all of this openly under the eldership of our local church, giving frequent reports.
1 English speaking guy
This one started out nice. I met the guy at a local restaurant to hang out and just get to know him better before going forward. He follows Jesus, and we enjoyed being around each other. We hung out a couple of times, had some moments of spirited prayer, but after about 4 times seeing each other we never did anything together again. Not for lack of follow up, so I don't really know what went on. I think it was just hard for him as a traveler to get his schedule on. We offered to skype with him when traveling, but it was never accepted. Oh well. God bless him!!
1 Spanish-speaking Jehovah's witness
This was a hard one. I met this lady during a financial counseling session at the clinic and noted a lot of irregularities with her family situation because of a lack of control of pretty much every aspect of her life. When I asked if she was being abused, she said she was. I had her read a few books of the Bible, and we would come together and discuss these and how God's spirit was speaking to her. She seemed to improve over time. My wife and I even traveled about an hour to get to her house and have a family Bible study with her boyfriend and other family members present. However, the friendship took a turn towards obsession on her part, and I had to exit the friendship for the sake of honoring my lovely wife. In this, the Spirit taught me a huge lesson contained in Titus 2:3-5, to teach those of your own gender.
1 Spanish-speaking lady
This was a beautiful story. This lady knocked on my office door asking to become part of this study. Karen and I went to meet her at a restaurant. She had been saved by God from a number of cults she had been a part of, and she herself will also tell you she was saved from her own homosexuality. We met with her over a number of weeks and discussed a great number of things and began to get close. Through her we were able to witness to a Muslim friend of hers and to support our dear sister in spreading the good news to her coworkers of other faiths. She introduced us to other of her friends. It faded for a season, and we have not seen her for about a year. We will probably begin meeting with her again soon.
However, one thing we learned with her is that she loved the theologically hard things and focused mainly on those during discussion times. It was difficult to steer conversation back to the simple calling of Jesus on our lives when we were always talking deep into eschatology. It's hard to know what to do with these things. The temptation is to impose structure when things aren't perfect. We let the Spirit move, and we firmly believe Jesus is quite able and ready to lead the church Himself, in reality, not theory and of course without a human mediator.
-----------------
*Another guy, actually a rap producer, came into the clinic just angry at the world. We talked, and I felt the Spirit telling me to ask him if he had given his life to the Lord. We prayed together to rededicate his life to the Lord. It was pretty awesome. I texted him for follow up and linked him up with a local pastor, but he never did follow up. That did not feel awesome. :(
-----------------
**My wife also started developing a relationship with a coworker, eating out with them and going to galleries together. We consequently got invited to a unitarian universalist wedding, which quite possibly ranks as the most blasphemous experience I've ever endured. Slowly but surely we are making a relationship with the coworker and her husband. She is connected to a large Buddhist following in our city, and I had the awkward privilege of talking to the main guru over it who claimed to follow Jesus.
-----------------
It was greatly discouraging to lose what we lost. However, we also know that it was a great joy to share in the presence of God and to share the Word of God with others. It was a privilege. It still is a privilege. It's amazing to see God work, even in the mess.
You can really get burned out if you dwell on these failures, or what appear to be failures, if you take all of the burden of it onto your own heart. It is good to desire good for others and be disappointed when they reject it and reject you. But these are things Jesus told us would happen (like Luke 10:1-16), and we must drink of the amazing calm of passages like Matthew 11:28-30 and 1 Corinthians 3:5-9.
We learned two great lessons from this. First, talk to God all the time and beg God when preparing to go to one of these things. Nothing moves in history without Him, and we must also talk to Him so we can align ourselves with the work He is already doing in people's lives. Second, we have to build relationships slowly... slowly. Trust is the currency we deal in when we desire to make relationships. Flyers, I think, may be the worst way to meet people. It's very inorganic and awkward to start a relationship with a flyer. I'll talk about in the next post what we changed up. Third, people do need a little anonymity for their own protection sometimes, and exchanging emails and cell numbers before you even meet them can be a blessing and a curse.
Committing your life to Jesus is not something to be taken lightly. None of us knew what it fully meant for our lives when we first believed, but we did it anyway - all as a matter of trusting that the good news we received was both true and that is was also meant to govern our lives.
But still, understanding what salvation is beforehand is simply vital. Salvation has this image of passing from death to life, from old to new, from illegitimacy to adoption, destination hell to destination heaven.
What is the point of salvation? Is it to be safe? Is it to just live life like you want and to know you are eternally safe? No, it's for the joy of being with God forever starting today that we are being saved.
Here is the idea of it all: without salvation in Christ, you are dead and you gotta get with the person who defeated death to get off this earth alive.
Jesus said it best when he told Nicodemus, "For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life." John 3:16. For a more extensive list of Jesus' words on salvation, click >>here<<.
Other salvation verses include Romans 10:9-10,13, Acts 2:38 (both based on Joel 2's prophecy) and a bunch of others. My own personal opinion is that moving from death to life is as simple as accepting Jesus as absolute King, God and Savior over your life. It is quite clear from verses like Acts 4:12 and John 14:6 that Jesus is the only way for us to be reunited with God - which is salvation. It is purely grace through trust, not by the things we do, so that no man can say he's saved himself and boast about it, Ephesians 2:8-9. No, it is only by God's power and moving that one is saved, since no dead man can do anything for himself unless he is resurrected by God.
So lead people to turn from their old ways and give full allegiance to Jesus Christ. Have them say it out loud, and be very tender to the moment. If they have trouble saying it, but truly want to, help them form the words.
Be aware, though, that in so leading someone to the Lord, this is only the beginning, not the end: Matthew 28:18-20 tells us to teach and disciple people - an ongoing process - and to dunk them in water (see Romans 6:3-5 and 1 Peter 3:20-21 for an explanation of "baptism").
------------------------
Religious Word of the Day: Baptism. Okay - this is a touchy subject, but I don't really know why. Baptism is a Koine Greek word, it doesn't really come from English. When we see this word baptidzo (Greek) used outside of the Bible in other Koine Greek texts, it refers to things like a sunken ship or submerging pickles (lol). It means to "immerse in water". To see the source material I'm speaking of, click >>here<<. You have to read the whole page to see the full picture.
People will inevitably try to derail Biblical discussion. Not only are there people who intentionally do this, but our very human nature will do this. Some things in the Bible are painful. Others are quite confusing. Much of the Bible directly confronts culturally accepted practices. This is normal.
More to the point, people will try to explain away hard parts like "Love your enemies." "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me." "Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me." Of course this also applies to parts of the Bible that speak of some of the more controversial topics, such as homosexuality, lust, divorce - for some reason the sexual stuff raises more eyebrows than the passages condemning slander, malicious intent, drunkenness, witchcraft, gossip, etc.
People will try to explain it all away by saying that that was the way it was back then, but not now. Or, the Greek really says [blank]. The excuses are sundry.
The natural tendency is to argue back, shove it down people's throats, or just ignore it and let people say whatever they want for the sake of peace. All of these, in my opinion, are problematic. If the Spirit allows you, I would suggest stating this very humbly: "If it doesn't say what it says, why does it say it?" or "What if it IS actually saying this?". This may help break people's tendency to propose excuses. Or you might share a time where Scripture challenged you and you yourself had to conform, rather than you conforming it to your liking. Remember that you yourself are still conforming yourself to God's will, and you are still struggling to obey.
As you read through as a people, and continue to ask the question - "What does this want me to do?"... you will see that God is calling some of the people to salvation. This is an exciting time wherein people are really beginning to grasp the goodness and great love of God. They are feeling healing. They are sensing their life is renewing and has a purpose. They begin to see the confusion clearing in their lives. And a grand, daunting choice of whether or not to commit is standing in front of them.
