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Fully AliveEphes. 4:10-13 (The Message) When I hear the word "evangelism", I tend to hear it as "bringing people to Christ" and into our church. I picture people going door-to-door inviting them to our church or putting on church programs designed to increase our attendance numbers by drawing people to us. On my darker days, I tend to view it as an ad campaign to increase our bottom line. These last few weeks I have been studying Ephesians 4. I am starting to think I have this all wrong, all backwards somehow. What if the church was the place where we trained and equipped ourselves in skilled servant work? What if we actually worked with each other to learn how to discern what Jesus wants to do with our lives—what our gifts are? What if we taught each other to move rhythmically and easily with each other in constant communication with the Holy Spirit? What if we then went back to our daily lives, at work, at play, at the stop light, and poured His love and grace out on others in humility and Oneness with Him? What would a church like that look like? What if instead of trying to bring more people to Jesus, I brought more of my Jesus to more people? Not just His story. Not just His word. But Him. Jesus Himself living through me right here, right now—guiding my graceful response to His constant message alive and flowing copiously through my heart. Lots of questions. Still looking for answers. Dear Lord, as my mind studies your Word this week, please speak to my heart. Teach me how to follow You in everything I do. Drain me of my idle thoughts and refill me with Your thoughts, Your whims—even Your commands. Cause Your will to be done in me so that I may become more fully mature, fully alive—like You. Amen.
[LK]
[SR]
[MF] Amazing how it all comes down to being faithful – being willing to let go of myself and to let God be God in me and through me.
[KJ] "Evangelism". What a word. You are brave to engage it, Brother. The word sends shivers down my spine. Does it not affect others similarly? What a word, what a history, what an opportunity. The other day, I met someone whose 4 year old son, having been the very picture of health and beauty, was diagnosed with a very large, very malignant teratoma on his lower back; the tumor had swallowed his liver, his spine, his pelvis, parts of his large bowel and his bladder. This small child, so recently healthy, now faced a very different future, not of playing and laughing, but pain medications, chemotherapy, surgery, whispered words in sterile rooms, and the pain he cannot yet comprehend. This young child turns to his parents for support and love. To whom do his parents turn? Wow. How did I respond? I listened. I held. I cried. I loved. What words can we say? What words do we choose to say? Yes, bring Christ to them, bring Jesus, and what does that mean for the words leaving our mouths? Do we think about bringing them to Christ at a time such as this? Ah... evangelism... HERE is where such a word makes the greatest impact, for good or ill. Here is where Jesus resides, among the lepers, the outcast, those unfit for proper company, those too distressed to be acceptable. Evangelism... I think about this very often, as I do my job, my work, assigning numbers to the medical cases I read. The infants born with malignant tumors already ravaging their bodies, healthy children struck down by disease beyond even medicine's ability to save them, children struck down by the hands meant to nurture. And I think about the people I've met in my life, in the grocery store, in the coffee shop, in my past jobs, struggling with addiction, disease, wading through the pain and struggle in their lives, sometimes aided and supported by bretheren in Christ, sometimes judged, sometimes FEELING judged by their own picture of the church in their own minds. Jesus, holds the little children, suffer them to come unto me. Jesus, smashing down the moneychanging tables in the temple, you have made my Father's house a den of thieves. He is amazing, this Jesus, so amazing. So, when I heard this story of this little boy, when I learn of these desparately ill children, these achingly alone children, these are the words Jesus gives me: God loves you. God knows how much you love your child, how much you would rather suffer this pain than your child suffer any of it. And if you are angry at God, that's okay, God is big enough to handle it. And in your anger, remember Jesus in the Garden of Gestheneme, Jesus with the lepers, Jesus with the sickest of the sick, the lowest of the low. He did this so we would never be alone in the dark. I have no idea how alone you might feel now, I can only imagine. But God, Jesus, KNOW how alone you feel, they are with you, even if you don't see them. "Evangelism" What a word. Shalom
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