Good News!

Good news, Friends…today is the first day of the rest of your life. What an opportunity! You can decide to move beyond the bonds that held you and into your future with a new mentality that does not carry the spots of failures, sins and disappointments of yesterdays gone by.

The paragraph above rather sounds like a commercial you might find on late night TV, doesn’t it? At least it would if there were some eager beaver talking fast and a bit too loud in their enthusiasm. With a small change in wording they could be selling face cream, knives or Jesus.

I’m not so much interested in face cream or knives but I am totally interested in how we, as Christians, come across when telling people about Jesus. We, I believe, can turn others off to Jesus far more quickly than we can turn them on by our presentation alone. Here’s an example using a Christian named Casey which can be male or female.

Casey addresses the group and proceeds to give his/her testimony. Casey tells of growing up in a Christian home with both parents, attending Sunday school and VBS as a child, going off to college where he/she joins the campus Christian movement and has decided to become a missionary for Christ because he/she wants everyone to have Jesus, too.

Casey’s success as a spokesperson for Christ will have a direct bearing on the people he/she is speaking to. If Casey is addressing a group of homeless people under a bridge or those in a jungle village without electricity or an orphanage in Africa, in spite of all the good intentions…Casey will have a hard time relating to the people he/she is most trying to impact. Those people will have little common ground from which to build a bridge from their daily lives to the place Casey is talking about. Most of what is being said has little meaning to them. VBS, what is that? Going to college, fat chance.

Likewise, in prison ministry we didn’t get all gussied up to go speak to women offenders. How successful could we have been to go in dressed in our Sunday-Go-To- Meeting clothes and decked out in make-up and jewelry? What woman wearing a white uniform with numbers on it wants to listen to the ‘Church Ladies’ she feels so far from?

Sharing Christ, to me, needs to be done with a heart of compassion and discernment with sensitivity to the person or people being addressed. Jesus looked like every other man walking the dusty roads. He spoke to people in parables about everyday life so they could make sense of what He said. He didn’t ride in on a white horse wearing armor and shouting out his intentions of saving them all. He cried with them, ate with them and ministered to them exactly where they were, on their level, in their language and it was the pure love spoken with authority that allowed the people to listen and hear what He was saying.

Sometimes, in our enthusiasm, we get goal oriented rather than people oriented in our attempts to minister. It’s not about numbers of people saying the Salvation Prayer that really matters, it’s about souls that really get saved that counts. I know a young woman that walked to the alter to accept Jesus four different times. She was more caught up in the passion of the alter call than really knowing what she was doing. A broken heart, stirring music and a moving pastor can get people to the alter, that’s never been the problem. It’s actually getting people to Jesus that makes a profound difference in people’s lives.

Once upon a time in my previous world, I worked in a corporate office. I left a Bible on the front of my desk all the years I worked there. It was a commercial construction company; so to say it was a secular world seems a bit of an understatement. That Bible was touched and handled by so many people over the years that it became dirty. This made me happy because, for some, it was probably the only Bible they touched at all. The field workers would come by my office or just stand in the doorway sometimes and ask me to pray for them. I always asked if they wanted prayer for something in particular or in general. Some would come in and tell what they needed prayer over, others would say just to pray for them before bolting out as if on fire. Some of these same people referred to me as the crazy Jesus Lady. I never preached to them but simply lived my life walking for Jesus. They came to me and picked up or rubbed their hands over the Bible that lived in plain sight. I had chosen that particular Bible over any of the others I owned because a woman of God I loved very much had given it to me. She impacted my world with her quiet godly ways and it seemed fitting that others would feel that impact, too.

So, I’ve written all this to say we need to be aware of the Jesus we show the world in our daily lives. There is a place for many styles and various approaches to ministry but our efforts need to be constantly monitored to make sure it all about sharing Jesus in a manner worthy of His name. Jesus drew people to him, not shouted until they could no longer ignore him. We want to be the best walking, talking examples of Jesus we can be so others will want to draw near. Good news, Friends…today is the first day of the rest of your life! Let’s make it count.