Therapeutic Blogging
Comments(1) No one reads this, so I can say whatever I want and get away with it. Right now my life seems to be coasting. I’ve got a job with a Christian non-profit, but I don’t feel challenged. I’m very active in my church, but I don’t feel as if I’m accomplishing anything. I’ve got friends, but I’m not very close to anyone. I keep myself busy with reading, but I don’t know if I’m learning anything. I feel like God is calling me to do much more, but I’m paralyzed with excuses.
Every day I pass a street where drug dealers and gangs congregate, I walk past with a bag full of books about evangelism and soul winning, but I don’t stop. I tell myself, ‘I go to a middle-class Asian-American church, even if I did talk to them, where would I tell them to go? They certainly wouldn’t fit in at our congregation’ ‘I’m not a pastor, can I care for anyone else’s spiritual needs?’ ‘Didn’t Jesus send out his disciples two by two? I can’t go without someone to go with me.’
I feel neutered, spiritually impotent. I think about attending a different church, a more multi-ethnic church with more of a range of social and economic backgrounds… but do I change churches just to reach people who I don’t even know if I’m supposed to reach? Do I sacrifice all of my relationships with peers and leaders to make myself more capable of being a gospel messenger?
As I type this I know the answer, I know the answer is that I shouldn’t be selfish with my relationships, with my comfort zone. The Holy Spirit has prompted this dilemma in my heart; I need to start checking door handles to see if there are any open doors for me to learn how to be an effective Gospel witness.
I never liked the idea of being a street preacher. Seeing people on my college campus with big billboards with bible verses, speaking through megaphones. But I can’t help but thinking about how important personal evangelism is. Today the church seems to only care about friendship evangelism –well what about the friendless. We’re denying people the gospel because we’re only sharing it with people who are our friends.
I was reading DL Moody last night and he made a few very good points; one of them was that Jesus gave his best sermons to individuals. The way that he spoke with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman was much more intimate, much more powerful than anything he ever spoke to the crowd, and those conversations are full of more of his heart than any time that he preached at a Synagogue. Moody said that everyone is waiting for the opportunity to preach in front of thousands of people, all the while missing opportunities to meet one on one and share the Gospel with those people they pass daily. He said that the most effective evangelists were those who never missed an opportunity to share the gospel with even one person.
Moody also talked at length about sharing the Gospel with our enemies. Moody expounded on Jesus’ command to go and preach the Gospel in Jerusalem, and Peter asked, ‘Even to those that crucified you.’ And Jesus answered, ‘Especially to those that crucified me.’ The Gospel isn’t just for our friends, or people that we feel comfortable, the command to take the Gospel to every creature is a command to go out of one’s comfort zone, to go to the foreigners, to go to our enemies. I am a failure when it comes to this aspect of my Christian life.
I feel that my Christian life has been too self focused; it’s all been about me becoming a better person… but what for? I’ve spent the last seven years at this church trying to become better, and even though I’ve changed so much in the past seven years I feel like I’m so far from where I should be. I think my main problem is that my focus has been on my own spiritual development, and not on others.
There’s an old saying, you have to teach something to someone to truly know it yourself. I think that is what I’ve been feeling recently, I need to go and teach what I’ve been learning for so long, my head is full of so much information, but there is so little practice of all of that information that has to do with evangelism.
CS Lewis wrote in his book ‘Mere Christianity’ that when we pray for our enemies, they’re no longer our enemies, they’re our friends. CS Lewis found that there were psychological and practical benefits to praying for others. I think when we reach out to people with the Gospel, it’s not just for them, but it’s also for us. When we are faithful to reach out to a stranger with the Gospel, that person is no longer a stranger even if they don’t accept it, they’ve gone from another person who is passed on the street to an intimate concern for that person. Preaching the Gospel isn’t just about God restoring his relation with his people, but man restoring his relationship with other men.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written here, and oh do I have stories to tell. I must first begin by telling you that I have gotten rid of a great burden. For years I’ve been struggleing with my attachment to the internet -ever since I was twelve or thirteen I’ve been addicted to the internet. I’ve also tried self medicating, like setting internet parental controls and typing in a randomish password, or leaving my laptop at my parents house for months on end.