A Barren Field? A Tired Message? ...

What do our assumptions tell us about our witnessing?  Somehow in the United States, Christians have a view of the world that “mission” lies in a remote village, in a far corner of the globe; a place without electricity, internet, and exposure to traditional missionaries.  We fund endeavors to reach such places from the comfort of our church facilities here in the US.  And we lose the idea of local mission.  The Gospel here in the US, to an audience of the affluent, or the middle class; has either already been preached. or is expected to have little impact.  Missionaries in our country no longer carry that name.  We call them Evangelists.  And they generally move from region to region, with accompanying marketing campaigns.  But the message our evangelism tries there is not the simple gospel, it is one of prophetic interpretations, or fear of the end of days.  We assume shock and awe are the only ways to reach the hardened hearts of Americans long exposed to Christianity, and long hardened to receiving it.

So by comparison, our success in foreign missions, in areas overseas that have had little exposure to the Bible and the Gospel, have much better results, than the work in our own neighborhoods.  People in our back yard are tired of the same old message, and same old messengers.  Fear may put seats in a pew for a while, but inevitably unchanged hearts, and untransformed messengers, tend to pull them right back out again over time.  We begin to assume the United States, and well developed European countries have become a barren land.  Our consumer is tired of the same old advertising.  Our consumer is tired of the visible hypocrisy.  Our consumer is tired of the seemingly infinite number of brands with minimal distinctions, that from the point of view of the non-believer, look horribly unimportant, and no reason to separate the body of Christ.  Even though that is exactly what supposed Christians do when they do not agree on a “critical” doctrine.  And our consumer’s reluctance … is well founded.

But in truth, it is not so much our doctrines that are unattractive.  Our beliefs are not the real reason we drive away the unbelievers.  Our lives, and our way of living is.  Our Gospel is all twisted around.  We define our hope and our way to live in His perfection, as ONLY something that can be achieved AFTER death, or in a far-off future where the Second Coming occurs, and everything is falling apart at the seams.  And we define Hell as a punishment baked in flames that torture the wicked FOR everything they have done, and only again AFTER death, in a far-off future even past the Second Coming when “judgment” is meted out by a vengeful God bent on our destruction.  But the truth, the real Gospel is neither of these.

John the Baptist had it right.  The kingdom of God is at hand, meaning, it is here.  The Kingdom of God is in the here and the now.  It is a way of transformation that impacts your current life, and the way you currently live it.  It is the basis of a testimony only you can carry, about how Jesus took the sin from you, took the desire to sin from you, and replaced it with a passionate love for others, you can now, no longer live without.  This transformation is a road to perfection in the here and now.  No waiting.  No future, far-off thing, but right now, at hand, for you.  Embrace it, and the hypocrisy of calling yourself a Christian dissolves into the reality of being a Christian.  All of the sudden, your life looks different than those who still refuse the hope right in front of them.  All of the sudden, there is a difference in the life of the messenger.  Hypocrisy on the decline.  Hypocrisy becoming an endangered species.

John the Baptist had it right.  Repent.  Submit yourself to something greater than yourself.  Humble your ego to Jesus and realize you could indeed be living better.  Understand that what you repent from is THE punishment all of us want to avoid.  Hurting self.  Hurting others.  Hurting God because we engage in the love of self that lies at foundation of the definition of every sin, is the problem.  It causes us to hurt everything around us.  It damages our lives, cuts them short, and makes existence less than it could be.  THAT is the definition of Hell.  Not some far off punishment for what we HAVE done.  Hell is the punishment that comes from what we ARE doing, in the here and now.  The pain we cause, the ripple effects that it spreads are the Hell we would all avoid if we could choose to.  But our choice is locked up in 6000 years of bad genetics, and bad choices of our ancestors.  Our very DNA is presupposed to the desires and behaviors we are unable to escape from ourselves.  Repentance only reminds us of this reality, and points us to a divine source able to re-write our very DNA to avoid the Hell we must otherwise endure.

Our land is not barren.  Our old gospel of self merely leads to barren results.  A new gospel based entirely upon Jesus and our submission to Him, leads to new results entirely.  And “mission” becomes the image in your mirror, and at the extensions of your own front yard.  The field is no longer barren, but yearning to know this kind of transformative truth.  Our consumer is not waiting to hear these words, but to see them acted out in your own life.  Our consumer is not waiting for you to preach about what you have seen others do, but to witness with a first-person testimony about how they work in your life.  Perfection is not the tale.  But the journey to perfection decisively is the real story you can relay.  And the only way it could have been achieved or started began with a simple concept that John the Baptist so forcefully preached all those years ago, namely … Repent.

But don’t just take my word for it.  Let us examine what Matthew recalls about the opening of the ministry of Jesus Christ.  Just after the great temptational fire, and near death experience in the desert.  Jesus recovers.  You would expect Him to now, finally, head to Jerusalem to be blessed by the current church leadership.  At least that is what the current church leadership expected.  Without their blessing, all His efforts were sure to be fruitless, or heretical.  But Jesus saw His Father as the Real church leadership.  And He was most interested in keeping the real Gospel alive.  The Gospel John started, not the one based on doctrinal debate found in the Temple.

So Matthew begins in chapter four of his gospel, picking up in verse 12 saying … “ Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee; [verse 13] And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:”  Jesus hears that John has been cast into prison by Herod Antipas.  And the first thing He does, is to travel into largely Gentile territory, into tribes considered Samaritan land.  The ten tribes of Israel had dishonored God by breaking with Judah and Benjamin.  The kingdom of Israel had been split in two from that time on.  The north had its own kings, its own temple, and its own ideas about worship free of the order at Jerusalem.  The south remained traditional, if not always faithful.  But all fell to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and the captivity.  And all were returned by Cyrus some years later.  Even then, the north was regarded as lesser-than from its history.  A reputation they were somewhat content to carry.

Jesus however, immediately breaks down these kinds of barriers.  He travels first to what every Jew in the south would call barren land spiritually.  He goes to tribal areas of Zebulun, and Naphtali.  There is no barren land in the mind of Jesus.  Matthew continues in verse 14 saying … “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, [verse 15] The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; [verse 16] The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.”  Matthew is ever cognizant that his gospel is to bridge the Old and New Testaments through the life of Christ.  He calls us to remember the prophecies that bring hope to the Samaritans as much as to the Jews of the south.

You would think, that a study of Isaiah, might help reduce the prejudice of the time.  If the Messiah was to bring His great light into barren territory, then perhaps the territory was not so barren after all.  Perhaps all it needed was to see truth, instead of see religion packaged as truth, but absent any love in the process.  Flash forward 2000 years.  American Christians are very good at packaging doctrine, rolling it up into the brand management of a particular denomination, and then attempting to sell only that version to the listening ear.  But this approach seems only nominally effective at stealing one Christian from one brand and making him loyal to another.  It is because we lack passion for others, that we would leave unbelievers to their fate, while we argue among ourselves as to who is the Samaritan, and who is the purist.

But there is truth greater than our distinctions, upon which all of salvation is based, and all of hell is avoided in the here and now where the Kingdom of God is at hand.  And Matthew identifies it for us as he continues in verse 17 saying … “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Jesus Himself continues the ministry of John the Baptist.  The need for that message did not disappear at His first arrival, and it does not disappear throughout His ministry, after His sacrifice, or after His ascension.  The need remains.  Because the mechanism for how we are transformed remains, and immediacy of the impact upon how we live remains.  Repent.  And why you ask?  Why the immediacy?  Because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

This is not a statement about our mortality.  It is a statement about our transformation.  This is a statement, a truth, about how the REAL gospel works.  It is based on Jesus, and our submission to Him.  It identifies a continued need to repent, to submit to a higher power than ourselves, to Jesus Christ who alone is The Truth, and can save us from us.  The sin we would otherwise long to commit, can be taken from us, not just the actions but the longing itself.  The hell we cause ourselves, the separation from God we choose to endure need not be so.  All of it can be repaired right here and right now.  No future waiting.  Right now.  At hand.  Today. Tonight. Tomorrow.  No after death, end of the road, promise when so much time is wasted between now and then.  That is the message Jesus Himself continued to teach from the start to the end of His ministry.  It is the real gospel, that leads to real results.  It transforms a life, and makes that life a living witness, with a living testimony, unique to a single person.

Lands we thought barren, were not actually barren to a real gospel, only barren to a religion without any real results.  Lives lived without the pain sin causes.  Lives lived that are happier, and passionate about others, are not founded in wealth and ease, but in reformation Jesus alone can bring.  It is not about looking like pilgrims, living in some sort of twisted self-denial.  It is about looking like someone who knows something others just do not seem to know … because they do.  That kind of passion cannot be faked.  That kind of happiness cannot faked.  It is the “faking” that has been the problem all along.  Real Christianity is based on a real different right here, right now.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  It still is.  It is still waiting to be reflected in your life, my life, and the lives who sit in pain all around us.  THAT is a truth the entire world longs to hear.  Perhaps even those who sit beside us in pews that we only see once a week.  But for certain in the lives we know are suffering from the pain sin causes us all.  THAT is a new gospel, that is brand new and yet more than 2000 years old.

The gospel of self we have been preaching, needs to be replaced with a gospel of Jesus that yields a reason to change, and the only mechanism by which change can come.

 

Our Audience ...

“The gospel must be preached in all the world” before our Lord returns. “Go”, was His command, “teaching all nations”, “loving one another as I have loved you”, “for by this the world will know your Mine.” – New Testament paraphrase. These final directives by Christ seem to clearly indicate what He wants us to do now that He has returned to His Father in heaven. But in the intervening 2000 years, the Bible has been published in almost every language known to man. Christian missionaries have taken the gospel to the remotest parts of the globe. There are few, if any, accessible places left on earth where the gospel has not penetrated. So who do we witness to now?

To answer this query, we must ask ourselves what Gospel have we been teaching? The one we have discussed here in the previous 4 sections, of personal testimony about the power of Jesus Christ alive in our lives, removing our sin and self-inflicted pain, giving us a truly better life in the here and now – OR – have we only been teaching a theoretical knowledge of Jesus, forgiveness, the hope of heaven, and a resumption of our lives as they are with no real differences except for future hope of escape from sin’s consequences? I would submit that we have had too much of the latter in the last 2000 years and nowhere near enough of the former. This is by Satan’s design.

For Satan cannot compete with God in the present, but he can create a relatively attractive present if it only stands against a far-off future that no-one can factually testify about. Satan wraps the pain of sin in bright shiny packaging and calls pain “fun”. And like infants fascinated by sounds and shiny things we grasp what he is selling with both hands and begin to believe what we are told. With Christ alive and in control of our lives, truth is revealed. We begin to see evil for what it truly is, rather than for how it was sold to us. We begin to feel our need to be free from sin, from the pain that always accompanies our sins, and we begin to feel the urgency of this need. With Christ alive and well and in control of our lives, removing sin becomes a consuming passion of ours. And so the process can begin.

As each piece of evil is removed, we see clearer how much better off we are without sin in our lives. Satan’s clanking keys and shiny wrappers no longer demand our attention, we recognize them for the traps they are, and look for something more meaningful from our heavenly Father. This becomes our testimony, and our witness. But again to who is the question. Think of the answer this way, if you were given a billion tax free dollars, with who would you want to share it? The answer to that question may well be the same as the answer to who is your audience for witnessing. Those you love come first to mind, but then comes those who know you and know you have something to offer (despite whether you like them or not). Next would come those who have heard of you from the testimony of others who claim to know you. This I would submit is the Christian version of the trickle-down effect. In short, everyone would want a piece of your billion dollars, just like everyone will want a better life and if they see you living one, they are going to want to know how.

It is ironic that England and the United States share a common phenomenon in the reduction of religious influence in the upper and upper-middle class families. Even the middle-class families in England show religion on the decline. It seems only the poor who need hope still cling to religion to answer this need. And in England the majority of the poor tend to be immigrants from Muslim nations, clinging not to Christianity but to other forms of doctrine. In the U.S., the Muslim religion is the fastest growing one, and Christianity has lost much of its influence. Why? Why is our reputation and gospel to have fallen into such disrepute? I submit that our ideas about spreading the gospel have translated into the spreading of ideologies wrapped up like doctrines and church dogma – not personal testimonies about the power of Christ in our lives.

Doctrines are supposed to bring us closer to Christ by revealing more truth about Him. But doctrines (outside of Salvation) should be taught AFTER Salvation has been personally experienced. We can sort out the denominations later, first we must bring people to Christ. An experimental knowledge of Christ reveals to us, that He will lead us to His truth, in His time, in His way. Knowing this frees us from the burden of convicting others of the truth of our doctrines. We can safely leave them in the hands of Christ, and He will lead them into the doctrines they need to know, in the time frame they will need to know them, and in the manner best suited for them to comprehend what He needs to teach them. Doctrines then are secondary to Salvation. We must be saved from evil first, before we can begin to understand the beauty and power of deeper truth.

As I stated the premise of this entire volume is, if we have nothing of substance to offer the world around us, why should they care what we have to say? In short, we have been doing it wrong. But now we have a method outlined here to change this. Instead of babbling on about the distinctions of doctrines we can focus first on the power of the gospel. First letting it change us, so that we will have a testimony. Then pointing others to the source of the victories they are curious how we obtained. For you see we humans are pretty much all the same in certain respects. We all have sin in our past. None of us are perfect. And almost all of us want to be happy. When someone we know succeeds, we all want to know how they did it. Our natural inclination is to have this knowledge so that if possible we can use it ourselves to succeed like they did.

Christians sometimes believe that the only place where they need to worry about witnessing is in far off missionary fields. But nothing could be farther from the truth. How can you testify of the love and power of Christ, if your life looks just like everyone else’s? Your family will be the first to know the truth of this. Therefore I submit your own family is the first audience you will meet in your new role as witness to His power. Those who know you best, will not hesitate to call you out on a B.S. story. You will have less ability to fool them, but more opportunity to truly woo them, if what you speak about is real. Those who care about you, have shared the suffering of you embracing evil, even if it is only in your own life. Parents cannot look upon their children making bad decisions, and not share the grief of the outcomes with them. Siblings rarely wish to see each other truly in pain, particularly when it might have been avoidable.

“Tough love” is a concept that originated inside of families, to break the dependency on family to continue on a path of self-destruction. Anyone who has had to be involved in “tough love” from either side knows full well the pain of it. How much better what Christ offers us? Not “tough love”, but real relief; an end to the horrifically addictive cycles of evil in our lives. What family would not relish the idea of finding hope, of finding a cure, of finding an infinitely renewable source of love? What family member could continue to ridicule and make fun of real results in your life when they see them in action, in responses, and in deeds? Our families may be our toughest critics, as they have come to know our shortfalls best. But then no-one is more important to us than them. We would wish to spend eternity with them most of all. And we would share with them first the GOOD news and power of the gospel.

After our focus on our family, will come those who know us, to find out for themselves, how we seem to have eluded the evils we used to share with them. Our drinking buddies, our smoking buddies, our friends with benefits, our cohorts in crime – all will want to know why we do not hang out anymore, or more precisely, why we don’t miss what we used to do. This will be followed by those who casually know us, and see a marked difference in our lives. They may remember us with a forlorn countenance, or seemingly having a marriage on life-support, and now see a remarkable difference. These too will want to know how it occurred. And finally, there are no coincidences in a life led by Christ. You will encounter those He leads to you, for something only you can give them. He does this knowing our unique particularities, knowing how personal Salvation is to each of us, and that our unique perspective may be just what the searching soul needs to hear, and just when they need to hear it.

There is a new mission field in the world. It begins in the mirror. It spreads to our families. It infects our coworkers. And it changes our communities, and then our nation, and then the world. But it is powerless to begin, until the man in the mirror is willing to humble himself and allow Christ to change him, truly change him. Then instead of us leading the charge, we can allow Christ to bring those in need to our doorsteps. Instead of wildly going off to a far off mission field to spread ideology and doctrine, we may find close personal conversations with a loved family member right here in our own living rooms, or over the phone. Lives will be changed, in a meaningful way. Testimonies will be real, for the power of Christ to change us is real. What is different about our audience is a reflection of the differences in us. We now speak from a personal perspective, and now target a much more personal audience. And in this way, the entire world will see His power and His light.