Humble Responsibility

"We have praise and worship and we study the Bible because we want to know about Jesus. We want to be like Him, and we're not ashamed to tell others about Him."

This is something that I said over and over again when I was helping my husband with the InterVarsity booth on Sunday. It's very true about InterVarsity and I loved sharing that with students. However, I realized that it wasn't very true about me. At least, it hadn't been very true about me in the past several years.


Lately, our church has been teaching about taking the Gospel to the whole world. One of our pastors gave a sermon on preaching a couple weeks ago, and she said that everybody has a responsibility to share the truth of Jesus' life with everyone in their realm of influence. Everyone is a preacher. To be honest, I didn't really know what to do with that. A lot of the teaching I received when I was younger in the faith instructed me NOT to preach at people, or thump my Bible in their face. I don't think that's what my pastor was suggesting, but I really had not grid for a bold presentation of the gospel. How was I supposed to bring Jesus into a conversation about....checking in to the hotel or making a  dinner reservation? How could I preach about Jesus when I become a teacher? I asked for boldness, but I was still unsure. What did it look like for me? 

I especially struggled with this because several of my closest friends do not completely accept Jesus as the only truth. And they have experiences and studies and research to kind of justify their stance. Their lives were more consistent in their belief system than my own in my belief system. Many times, it was them, not other Christians, that helped me through the toughest moments in my life. How could I turn around and tell them, "I know you really helped me out, but your whole belief system is..not whole at all"?  I didn't want to preach at them and tell them they are wrong when they helped me figure myself out when I was completely lost.



On Sunday, the sermon, yet again, was about preaching. The passage was based out of II Tim 4:1-8, when Paul is giving his charge to Timothy. He knows he is going to be executed. He's going to die this time. And what does he say to his disciple? "Preach the word - always. Always be ready." At first, I had the same thoughts while I was listening to this sermon that I had had before. "What does this look like for me?" But then, I heard the pastor say, "Even if we know that they have rejected the gospel, that doesn't get us off the hook. We still have a responsibility to speak Jesus into their lives." Wow. Even if people reject the truth a gajillion times, we keep presenting it. Their rejection doesn't make the truth go away.

Now, I had a more important question - How do you want me to handle rejection, God? I may be a little tentative and unsure of telling people about Jesus, but I am clueless about where to go if someone says, "No thanks. Jesus died a long time ago and he's still dead." LIES! It is hard for me to take because many times I feel that if someone rejects Jesus, that they reject me, because He is a part of me...and I have a very hard time taking that laying down. My husband says it best, "Gabby is either syrupy sweet or a ball of aggression and fury." It's hard to keep the lioness on lock down...but that is another blog for another day. I am working on finding a middle ground.


So how does God want his people to handle rejection? He showed me II Tim. 2:24-26 - "And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will."

I think He gets the last word. 

God, teach me this humility.
 

A quote from George MacDonald

"It may be infinitely less evil to murder  a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice.  It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hatred." 

I Just Love Him

Tonight my heart hurts. My heart hurts for my friends.

They are really good people. My friends are people that would give me all the money in their pocket, the time in the day, the food in their fridge, even if I had nothing to repay them with or even if I didn't talk to them for a couple months. They're just good people.

 As generous and loyal as they are, though...not all of them love Jesus. I think a lot of them want to love Jesus. I think a lot of them really want a relationship with someone that will never let them down. But a lot of them are upset. Or angry. Or frustrated. Or confused. Or just...lost.

In the beginning, I became angry just like my friends became angry...and frustrated, and confused, and lost in my own murky thoughts and bad theology. But what I have realized is that my friends aren't angry with God. They're not frustrated with God. They're angry at God's people. They're frustrated at God's people.
My friends have been looking for a relationship with someone that will never let them down.....in Christians. My friends have been looking for a relationship with someone that will never let them down....in me.

And, this breaks my heart. I can't be perfect. I can't be Jesus. I try to be like Him, but I fail every day. Sometimes I think that my failures to be like Him have fueled their anger, frustration, and confusion.  I just love Him. And He loves me. He loves them. I wish they knew that too.

Jesus, tell them you love them too.