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.