Showing posts with label Seeing Others. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seeing Others. Show all posts
Monday, November 5, 2007
Lost - Part 1
"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (Jesus in Luke 19:10)
Do you have a burden for the lost, or have you lost the burden?
I am amazed at a how the post-modern church has left this highly biblical term behind in favor of more culturally sensitive terminology. We talk about the "pre-Christians," "not yet believers" and "seekers." We have come to fear the use of the word lost when describing those who do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Obviously, this shift in semantics was meant to express a biblical idea in a positive or optimistic manner. The word lost conveys negative images. However, call me old school; if the word lost was good enough for Jesus, shouldn't it be good enough for us?
Now I know that my dogmatic argument is probably not going to convince you of the need to recover this allegedly archaic word, so I better make my case before I lose you.
I would like to suggest that lost is actually a positive word.
In Luke 15, Jesus gives three parables about lost things: the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost (or Prodigal) son.
When the shepherd lost 1 of the 99 sheep, he dropped everything he was doing and went to find that one lost sheep. He did not give up until he located the sheep. When the woman lost 1 of her coins, she stopped what she was doing, lit her lamp and swept the house. She did not give up until she had found the coin. The father never lost hope that his son would return and kept watch for his return day and night.
Each lost thing in these parables was valued highly in the eyes of the one searching for it. In fact, the lost thing was so valued, the "owner" went to great pains to recover it.
If an object - a trinket, a watch, my mobile phone, money or _______ - is valuable to me, I will exhaust every effort to find the missing item. I will even rejoice when I recover the item and share the happy news with someone else. I don't get stressed out about losing something that has no intrinsic value.
So when I say that someone is lost, I am not just talking about their spiritual depravity and I am not trying to be offensive; I am saying that that person is valuable to God and to me. So valuable in fact, that God sent his precious son to die upon a cruel cross for that person's soul.
The terms pre-Christian, not yet believer and seeker just don't say much about the person's value in the eyes of God. In fact, these terms take the focus off of God and place the focus on man. The term lost implies the need for external help in order to be located. (A tip of the hat to any reformed theologians out there.)
In the next post, I will talk about the why is it is so important to help believers in today's church understand what it means to be lost. The future of evangelism depends on us recovering the idea of lostness.
Monday, March 5, 2007
3 Commandments of FriendFluence - Pt. 2
In the previous post, I talked about the importance of serving others in order to build a bridge for sharing the gospel. In this post, I want to talk about what it means to “see” people.
In 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 Paul wrote: “…I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized--whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ--but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view…” (1 Cor. 9:19-22 The Message*)
Paul had empathy for people. He saw them first and foremost as sinners in need of a savior. Yet he also recognized the fact that every person was an individual with differing perspectives, lifestyles and experiences. He thought of them first and how he might enter into their world in order to reach them with the gospel.
Recently I was in a conference for evangelists in Portland, OR where Donald Miller was speaking. I know some people get their pants in a bunch about Donald -- one of my friends thinks he ought to be roasted at the stake like a heretic of old -- but I really believe he has something to say to us about reaching this generation if we will stop stereotyping him.
He talked about the going into a local convenience store one day to buy something – for the life of me, I don’t remember what. He began to talk to the man behind the counter who was from another country – or rather; he begins listening to this man pour out his life story. When he paused to hear this guy, he came to the startling revelation that “other people exist.”
Don’t tune out yet…Donald explained that so many times we view life as a movie about us. Our eyes are the camera, our ears, the microphones. We are the stars. Everybody else is the supporting cast. Pathetic!
Paul was saying that life was not about him, but it was about other people and getting them to Jesus at all costs. Religious people, irreligious people…Moral and Immoral…The defeated and demoralized…they all need Jesus.
The world hasn’t changed much in two thousand years. People still need Jesus. The key for us is to really see them with the eyes of Christ. God knows, I don’t always like the way they look or how they live. But, I must love them because Jesus loves me and he loves them too.
I walked into a local coffee shop the other day. The guy behind the counter had lots of body piercing including those big round quarter sized hoops inserted into both of his earlobes. They reminded me of the pictures of natives I saw in National Geographic Magazines as a child. I am almost sure he had lots of dark tattoos to go along with his fancy ear wear.
In an instant of seeing him, I could already feel my holier-than-thou conservative suit-wearing Baptistness creeping up to judge him. I felt equally repulsed by the teenage kids who came in the shop and plopped down in the chairs in front of me spewing out the f-words and so forth. Jesus had to do a little work on my heart right then; He reminded me that He died for them too. Ouch!
Jesus met people where they were. He was a friend to tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the unclean and the unwanted. He didn’t take on their way of life by any stretch of the imagination. He did however take their sin in his own body on the tree. He didn’t meet them in church either. He met them in the day to day places of life.
In the book, Why Christians Sin by J.K. Johnston we read that “Christ met unbelievers where they were. He realized what many Christians today still don't seem to understand. Cultivators have to get out in the field. According to one count, the gospels record 132 contacts that Jesus had with people. Six were in the Temple, four in the synagogues and 122 were out with the people in the mainstream of life.” (J.K. Johnston, Why Christians Sin, Discovery House, 1992, p. 142.)
Do you see people when you walk around your little world? Or, are you the star of the show?
*I chose to use the Message paraphrase instead of a traditional translation because of the clarity of this passage.
In 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 Paul wrote: “…I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized--whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ--but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view…” (1 Cor. 9:19-22 The Message*)
Paul had empathy for people. He saw them first and foremost as sinners in need of a savior. Yet he also recognized the fact that every person was an individual with differing perspectives, lifestyles and experiences. He thought of them first and how he might enter into their world in order to reach them with the gospel.
Recently I was in a conference for evangelists in Portland, OR where Donald Miller was speaking. I know some people get their pants in a bunch about Donald -- one of my friends thinks he ought to be roasted at the stake like a heretic of old -- but I really believe he has something to say to us about reaching this generation if we will stop stereotyping him.
He talked about the going into a local convenience store one day to buy something – for the life of me, I don’t remember what. He began to talk to the man behind the counter who was from another country – or rather; he begins listening to this man pour out his life story. When he paused to hear this guy, he came to the startling revelation that “other people exist.”
Don’t tune out yet…Donald explained that so many times we view life as a movie about us. Our eyes are the camera, our ears, the microphones. We are the stars. Everybody else is the supporting cast. Pathetic!
Paul was saying that life was not about him, but it was about other people and getting them to Jesus at all costs. Religious people, irreligious people…Moral and Immoral…The defeated and demoralized…they all need Jesus.
The world hasn’t changed much in two thousand years. People still need Jesus. The key for us is to really see them with the eyes of Christ. God knows, I don’t always like the way they look or how they live. But, I must love them because Jesus loves me and he loves them too.
I walked into a local coffee shop the other day. The guy behind the counter had lots of body piercing including those big round quarter sized hoops inserted into both of his earlobes. They reminded me of the pictures of natives I saw in National Geographic Magazines as a child. I am almost sure he had lots of dark tattoos to go along with his fancy ear wear.
In an instant of seeing him, I could already feel my holier-than-thou conservative suit-wearing Baptistness creeping up to judge him. I felt equally repulsed by the teenage kids who came in the shop and plopped down in the chairs in front of me spewing out the f-words and so forth. Jesus had to do a little work on my heart right then; He reminded me that He died for them too. Ouch!
Jesus met people where they were. He was a friend to tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the unclean and the unwanted. He didn’t take on their way of life by any stretch of the imagination. He did however take their sin in his own body on the tree. He didn’t meet them in church either. He met them in the day to day places of life.
In the book, Why Christians Sin by J.K. Johnston we read that “Christ met unbelievers where they were. He realized what many Christians today still don't seem to understand. Cultivators have to get out in the field. According to one count, the gospels record 132 contacts that Jesus had with people. Six were in the Temple, four in the synagogues and 122 were out with the people in the mainstream of life.” (J.K. Johnston, Why Christians Sin, Discovery House, 1992, p. 142.)
Do you see people when you walk around your little world? Or, are you the star of the show?
*I chose to use the Message paraphrase instead of a traditional translation because of the clarity of this passage.
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