Tuesday, July 04, 2006

The tenth year

'Jesus is wholly concerned with God, and wholly concerned with people. That is, according to Jesus, the human cause is God's cause. Jesus' lifestyle arose out of the simple truth of loving God, our neighbours and ourselves.'
Out of the saltshaker-Rebecca Pippert, P52

Two things matter in life, people and God. INcreasingly, for me personally the things that i used to do with my time when i had nothing better to do, watch tv, play championship manager, nothing are losing interest (which is an anwer the prayer) and the Lord is pulling me towards Him and His face and beauty and purposes. This is good. Nothing matters in life aside from people and God, thats why the two greatest commandments are 'love the Lord your God' and 'love your neighbour'. All that concerned Jesus when He lived on earth were those two. How to relate, empathise and ulitmately save people, and how to glorify God.

So...evangelism shouldn't be something we do, project here a monologue there, it should be a way of life for us. I know this is fairly common sense but i'm pretty much seeing the mechanics of it for the first time, so bear with me. For people who have had no contact with Biblical Christianity we are their Bible. We are all they know about what it means to follow Christ, what it means to have Him as our God rather than ourselves. Our lives and lifestyles and relationships are all they know of Christianity, which is a pretty huge priveledge/challenge really, and something i need to remember.

What's been great about doing CEx is that it's taught me to build relationships with people first. Not to try and cram two ways to live into every casual conversation we might have. That my relationships with people need to reflect my relationships with the Lord. That my service must come from an overflow of love for Him, or it is wasted. Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, loving people wholly and recklessly with people who don't know the Lord is evangelism, because it shows them who He is, at least in part.

I need to pray for more grace in my relationships with my unbelieving friends and family. That i would love them as the Lord does and honour them accordingly. Thinking about this its a pretty huge challenge...and this is a fairly meditative post, but its been good to think things through!

6 comments:

Unknown said...

can u expand on what that means?

Ed Goode said...

hey mandy...
thats interesting, i think you've got a topic for your next post eh?
I think that when we treasure Jesus above all things in our life it is a form of evangelism (is that what you meant) although i am a big believer, if not a big doer of proclamation evangelism...although maybe thats changing.

Kath said...

And why don't we scrap the word 'evangelism' all together?, before you burn me, bear with me. We should be living this life 24/7, right? We should be living and breathing out the beauty of God to all around us, christian and not christian. Our speech, our life, our love, our way of doing things should all reflect and speak of our maker. We are witnesses to his majesty.

When did 'evangelism' become something of a 'tack on extra' to our lives? When did it become something we measured our holiness by whether we did or not? When did we measure our worth in how much 'evangelism' we'd done? When did evangelism become something we do once a year, or even once a week?

Christ is our life. Simple. Lets scrap the word 'evangelism' and get on with shouting out, living out and delighting in the grace of God to all sinners.

Ahem, forgive the blurting out of randomness... It's a bit of a hobby horse of mine at the moment, love the post, keep on living it out, building relationships and making real friendships that lead people into the best life ever, and aren't dependant on the other responding to that life...

becci brown said...

Amen sister Kath, preach it...! We are a redeemed people, a holy, chosen nation...surely thats going to afffect everything we do...salt, light etc...seeing every encounater with people as the way we show Christ to them. Not neglecting to speak the gospel, of course, but not separating our lives so much into categories that only promote pride when were doing lots of one thing and guilt when were not?
hmmm, think ive had a little outburst too!!

Unknown said...

goKATH!

Ed Goode said...

woah! good words kath! you are absolutly right (not for the first time). thank you, and yeh, we need to stop compartmentalising and worship with our whole lives.

there are many words i'd like to reclaim...church is high on the list.