Jedi Mind Trick Evangelism

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As a Pastor, I find myself wishing I could use the Jedi mind trick on people to get them to do what they should do.  No mess, no fuss…just a wave of the hand and a few simple words to convince people that they need to live for Jesus.

If only it were that easy.  If the Jedi Mind Trick were and effective evangelism I could sit on my couch while watching my favorite TV shows after having Jedi mind tricked whoever passed by me that day and in know time the world would be made Christian.  It would mean I would never have to fear rejection. I would never have awkward conversations about my faith.  I would never have to show or compassion to anyone.  I would never really have to share the Gospel.  How easy it would all be if the Jedi Mind Trick was an an evangelism tool?

It seems to me that while I can’t imagine anyone employing a Jedi mind trick approach to evangelism, we tend to look for the magic formula or the quick and easy way to reach people for Christ with a minimal amount of effort.  We do what we can to avoid making people feel uncomfortable or to avoid rejection and we almost but never really share Jesus with others using actual words because we are afraid.  I know I am often hindered in sharing my faith because I allow my fears to dictate my behavior instead of allowing God’s love for me and others to drive out the fears in my life.

To see others come to Christ more often than not requires hard work, relationship building, trust building, and sacrifice.  It requires us to rely on the work of the Holy Spirit in our life and in the life of the person that we are building relationships with instead of cheap tricks and tactics that allow for us to sit idle without doing the hard work.  Much is required for those who follow Christ…the cost of making disciples is high.  If we are going to make disciples a simple wave of the hand will not work.  Magic formulas won’t work.  We must involve ourselves in the lives of others (and our communities) as messy as that might be so that the Holy Spirit can provide  opportunities to bear witness to Jesus in the messiness of life.  Those opportunities will not come to us as we sit on our couch hoping that God won’t ask anything to difficult of us or as we wait for him  give us everything we think we deserve in the form of big houses, cars, or money. God isn’t so much interested in our best life now as He is interested in his followers living up to the calling That Jesus left to us to make disciples.

Stewards of God's Grace

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Stewards of Grace

1 Peter 4: 8-10 says this:

8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace

The greek word for steward is this oikonomos
oy-kon-om’-os; a house distributor (that is, manager), or overseer, that is, an employee in that capacity; by extension a fiscal agent (treasurer); figuratively a preacher (of the Gospel): – chamberlain, governor, steward.

This clip from the 1998 movie Les Miserables demonstrates this idea amazingly

Three significant things at work here:
Radical Hospitality
Radical Love
Radical Grace

May we all be good stewards of the grace God has given to us and practice  radical hospitality, love, and grace to those we meet.

Send Me on My Way…

I was listening to the Rusted Root song Send Me on My Way this morning and it got me to thinking about this passage in Isaiah.

Isaiah 6:1-9a

¹ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

⁶ Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

⁹ He said, “Go and tell this people:

I know the song has nothing to do with this story about Isaiah, but I couldn’t help but think about  “Here I am.  Send me!”  in verse 8.  In this passage Isaiah’ sins are atoned for and his response is to answer God’s call.  I wonder how many of us respond to the forgiveness and atonement of our sins as Isaiah has here.  I know there have many time is my life where I have chosen to respond by saying “Not me God, send someone else.

In verse 9 God directs Isaiah to “Go and tell this people:” and then gives Isaiah a message to deliver in the following verses.  Each of us that have responded to the call to follow after Jesus have been given a message to deliver…we have been sent out to bear witness to the risen Christ Jesus.  Have you responded to that call by saying “Here I am.  Send Me” as Isaiah responded to his call, or have you responded by saying “Not me Lord, send someone else.”

Our message may be different from Isaiah’s, but God has sent each of us on our way to share the Gospel.  May we all respond with faithfulness as Isaiah did before us.

Oh…and in case you are unfamiliar with the Send Me on My Way song.  Here is the video.

Superbia…

I was reading a blog last week that I have just started following by Steve Liscum. Check out his blog here at http://steveliscum.wordpress.com/.  In one of his recent blogs he asked the question, “can someone tell me why we try to earn God’s grace?”  Its a pretty challenging question, and one I think the church should spend some time trying to find some answers to.  Anyhow, I spent some time this week thinking about this question and I came across this passage in Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

The root of all sin is pride, superbia  (the Latin word for pride).  I want to be my own law, I have a right to myself, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death.  The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God.

I think Bonhoeffer’s words make some sense in considering this question.  If it is true that we want to be as God as Bonhoeffer asserts…and as I would assert as well, because of our sin/pride then the reason we try to earn grace is because we think we can give grace  to ourselves by working hard enough to be good to earn God’s favor.  Our culture teaches us that all we need to do is work hard and we will achieve whatever dreams we have.  If our culture teaches this, it is no wonder this mind set has seeped into our churches.  Our pride tells us that if we work hard at this thing called Christianity God will reward us with His grace, but the scandal of the Gospel and of Jesus is that no amount of work will earn us that grace.  It is freely given.  What a serious blow to our pride that is.  That means that anyone can have that grace, despite their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or bank account size.  That means that we are all on equal footing before the LORD.  Most people’s pride won’t allow for that so we continue to create for a system that allows us to earn grace, because that means certain people will be kept out while others who did all the right things will be in.

Pride is a dangerous thing.  Let us all humble ourselves before God and each other and grab hold of the Good News of Jesus Christ which tells us that we are all sinners in need of saving and reconciliation to our God.  That grace offered in and through Jesus Christ is free to all and requires no work from us.