Time to be honest. Whom do you believe?
Recently, I had an email "conversation" with a spiritual leader whom I will leave nameless. The interchange was interesting and perhaps a bit revealing.
I say this because this person would normally say that he believes the Word of God. And in the past, the evidence I've seen would confirm that. But it's interesting what you get in a conversation, email or otherwise.
The issue had to do with getting a group together to do street evangelism. I had said something about finding a group of people who wish to join me to do this.
The response? Essentially that you "gain credibility through results" and that "results are hard to argue with". Before that I had sent him a Tozer article that had discussed the fallacy of judging spiritual things via statistics. (Tozer's words: ""To judge anything spiritual by statistics is to judge by another than scriptural judgment.") The person's original response was agreement with the article, although now I wonder if it (or at least that sentence) was even read.
My core argument, in essense, was that "the Word determines the true nature of anything, not results". If I were to go by "results" for credibility, I'd have to conclude that both Jeremiah and Noah (among others) were dead wrong. No results.
On the other hand we are called to obedience regardless of results. We sow seeds. God produces results as He wills.
I then alluded to John 6, where Jesus even rebuked those who came to Him for the "life enhancement gospel". All they wanted was bread. Felt needs.
That is so contradictory to "warrenism" or "seeker-sensitive". But if Jesus turned them away because they were after getting their "felt needs" met, what makes us think He is any different now?
Of course, we help people who have legitimate needs. James addresses that. But we don't build our churches around felt needs. When people put their own "felt needs" first, that's a good sign that "death to self" isn't going to happen. When we encourage them to seek fulfillment of "felt needs" we are doing them no good at all. It's their real need -- the need for redemption -- that needs to be emphasized above all else.
Anyway, today I noticed this quote by Augustine, which relates to the discussion I briefly described in my post. And I think it bears careful thought:
"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."
5 comments:
What I think you’re saying is: If I were employed by (or were a slave to) a man who handed me a bag of seed and told me to go scatter it all over his parking lot … I just go do it??
Yeah.
I recently saw a video by Ray Comfort. He put a steak in a very hot pan and seared it. It had hardened on the outside. But he cut into it and you could see it was still red (made me hungry actually). Soft inside. That's what the law does.
If you are going to spread seed where the pavement is, you need to plow first. That's the law's job. The Word is living and active, after all!
Sorry if I was a little obscure. I was thinking of you as the seed sower and God as the man with the parking lot which is like the stoney ground in the parable. You can see that you’re not going to get results but you’re going to obey your master anyway.
Absolutely!
Of course, what you don’t know is your Master has planned for some seed to be blown off the pavement onto good ground. Maybe someone on the periphery of your witnessing who overhears, is convicted and later saved. And you might not ever know about it and be able to show ‘results’ for your efforts.
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