ChosenRebel's Blog

Thursday is for Discipleship

‎My experience with Christians around the country is that:

1. They rarely share their faith with others if sharing their faith is defined as “the content of the gospel.”
2. They rarely invite anyone to anything in which others would be exposed to the “content of the gospel.”
3. They seem to associate living for Jesus means some kind of quasi-political or cultural battle first and gospel message second.
4. They avoid “harsh” and “broken” and “coarse” people, “foul mouthed people” as if they are almost contagious.
5. And they extremely rarely ever venture out to contact, befriend, or care for people who “look” dangerous, dirty or “hard.” In fact, one study showed that only 2% of Christians ever invite any non-Christians to Church let alone share their faith with them!

But souls blistered by sin are often good soil and respond more readily to the healing balm of the gospel. Often time the best soil is fertilized by the manure of a lot of bad and destructive decisions. One commentator summed up Psalm 1:6 and Proverbs 4:19 with these pregnant words: “The way of the wicked is hard.”

People who have stumbled often, look up. And that is where the gospel finally resounds as good news. 

Jesus put it this way: “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Matthew 9:13)

If we want to be like the Savior; if we want to be his disciples, if we want to hear “well done, good and faithful servant, . . . enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21), we can’t allow the stench of people’s past decisions keep us from proclaiming the hope and promise of the gospel today. 

[Note: please don’t infer any animosity or lack of compassion for homeless people, dog lovers, or motorcycle owners from the pictures associated with this post. My desire was to simply depict some of the people who too many Christians write off as “scary” or “probably not interested” and never go the second mile of even engaging in conversation. You could substitute your neighbor with the noisy dog, or your neighbor who plays the loud music, or your neighbor who uses coarse language, or dresses “weird” or is tattooed “weird” or pierced “weird” or whatever your particular, let’s be honest, prejudice is.]

Bottom line: people need to hear the gospel and you are the one that is in their path.

How can we call ourselves followers of Christ, if we will not follow Him to the outcasts of our world? Isn’t that what Jesus did, after all, He came to us?