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.

Children ...

To experience how it is that God can love you, simply look to how you feel about your own children. Imagine with me for a minute that your two-year-old toddler comes to you, smiling, with arms outstretched desperate to feel the warmth of your embrace. Now imagine with me, that your smiling two-year-old is covered in feces and smells like something south of a chemical factory. Yuk! But this is still your child. He needs to be cleaned, and He may not even know how badly He needs to be cleaned, but you do. You want only to love your child. You want only what is best for your child. You know more than your child knows. You have seen more, fallen more, been dirty yourself more, in short you know if your child will trust you, His life will be better than if he does not. Welcome to the lessons of parenthood.

We parade around content in the accumulated knowledge of human wisdom, and to God, we look like adorable two-year-olds speaking in baby talk, making almost no sense at all. Cute, but wise? We think we know facts, and truth, and philosophy, but we know very little. What is common between us and God is our ability and need to love and be loved. God would have us learn this from the raising of our own children. He would have us see that as precious as they are to us, so are we to Him. He would have us see our foolishness with Him, in their foolishness with us. A parent’s ‘curse’ - may you have children just like you are … was designed to illustrate our relationship with God to us first hand. How often we go blind to the lessons.

Children need much. The younger they are, the more they need. But with that need, the younger they are, the more they are taken care of by the parents, and less by themselves. So it is with us and God. The more we realize our needs, and realize that only God can meet them, the more we trust Him to do so. And the more God takes care of us, the more we can rely on Him to do so, without fear, regret, or remorse. We do not torture our children for their ignorance. We try to educate them. We do not stop loving our children when they misbehave. We try to correct them in love, so as to help them avoid the pain we would have them avoid. Children are an object lesson in salvation itself.

The analogy does break down in one area; we are more like Peter Pan in that compared to God, we never seem to grow up. We are perpetually stuck in the 3 year old phase. We do not like this idea of ourselves. We rebel against the concept that our best knowledge and accumulated truths only amount to the comparative wisdom of a toddler, but there you are. Our problem is that our imaginations make us think we control aspects of our lives, when in fact we control nothing. We think we can earn our living, when in fact we are dependent on God for the job and the income in the first place. We think we can be a better person, when in fact, our ideas of better person continue to allow us to achieve personal gain at the expense of others. Control exists only in our imagination and in the hands of God. We remain in desperate need. We remain toddlers.

It is said to “spare the rod” is to spoil the child. I would add “if you can’t reach it, don’t spank it”. The younger the child is, the more they seem to understand misbehavior has physical consequences. Spanking seems to lose all effect at age 30 (at least all disciplinary effect). But what lesson in discipline would we rather our children learn? Perhaps better to show them that REAL harm does not always come right away from what we do, but the longer it is delayed, the larger the impact it has on our lives and the lives of those we love. I am not convinced that spanking is required to maintain authority with a child. But I am convinced that maintaining authority is important. It is more important the younger they are.

As our children mature we must mature along with them. We must learn to allow them more and more freedom, freedom to fail as well as succeed. If we shelter them from all failure, we do them a disservice. So it is with our God. It is hard to sit back and let a child experience firsthand, what we know to be inevitable consequences of their decisions. So it is with our God and us. It is particularly difficult to see them experience pain first hand, when we know it could be avoided. But it must be so in order for them to learn. We do our jobs as parents well, if we teach them the values behind the rules. We honor our children if we teach them to think for themselves as God would have us do. We give our children a gift if we teach them to question authority, as God does with us. For our Lord is not afraid of questions. He is able to answer them all. For He is perfect love. Questioning authority only poses a threat to those who do not really have it, or perhaps should not really have it.

We wish our children to be thinkers, and leaders, not followers and sheep. It is good to be a thinker, but only if we realize our relative position to Christ. It is good to be a leader, but only if we humble ourselves before Christ and realize our own unworthiness. We must teach our children the balance between self-examination or humility and using the talents God has richly given us. We are safe to employ His gifts, and His talents, especially when we acknowledge they come from Him. It is vanity to direct attention away from His gifts, and on to self. It is arrogance to assume that our accomplishments belong to us alone. It is pride to believe we rule ourselves and our worlds. And vanity, arrogance, pride, are all internal sins of distraction designed to keep us from submitting our wills to Christ.

In terms of leadership we look first to our fathers. This is natural and there is no harm in it. But leadership carries with it many additional burdens and responsibilities. As fathers we must demonstrate what it means to lead while striving always to please our partners. We must learn how to demonstrate justice tempered by mercy. We must learn to demonstrate forgiveness, not just within our family circle, but outside of it, when things do not go our way. We must consistently demonstrate courtesy to all regardless of age, gender, race, religion, or political views. And we must be the primary example of how to humble ourselves before God and submit our wills to Him. This lesson will have the longest and most lasting impact upon the lives of our children.

When seeking our place in the world, we look first to our mothers for a sense of belonging. This is natural and there is no harm in it. In homes where there is no father to play his own role, mothers must do their best to take on the additional mantle of leadership. But while they try to teach lessons they may not be well suited for, they should not neglect the areas they are strongest suited for. In order for us to be brave enough to go out and face the world, we begin by having confidence that our mom’s will always have a place for us under their wings. We are nurtured, comforted, and find healing in the protection of a mother’s arms. We can bathe in the deep care and concern a mother has for her young. Her daily practical lessons on the care and maintenance of a family unit should not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Adults who enter a home without a blood based relationship with the children now a part of their family unit, should do so with great deference to the existing parent, and their “style” of parenthood. But marriages where both parties submit their wills before Christ, will grow, alter, or morph over time into what He designs. This means as time passes the relationship between the children and their step-parents will grow and deepen. In these cases respect and authority must be earned by a consistent demonstration of love and service. It is not enough to speak the words, it must be demonstrated by the behavior and actions of the new parent. Love seeks out its own. Love responds to love. When love is shown in a home, it will gain respect and authority.

As children become adults their need of parents is greatly reduced, but their need of friendship and counselors on which they can rely for advice will not ever diminish. Parents can best fill a role of consiglieri for their children as they know them better than anyone else is likely to until they find marriage for themselves. We must respect the entrance of our children into the responsibility of adulthood, without abandoning them to their own devices. Though grown our worries for them transition from their physical needs and status, to their spiritual needs and status. We wonder if they walk with the Lord, or are distracted away from Him. We pray to the only God who can save them , to do so with them as He has and is with us. This has always been our greatest prayer, to save us, but to save those we love as well. We can have faith in our God’s ability and desire to grant that prayer.

When our children become parents themselves they will look to their past and imitate what they have experienced firsthand. This will be the test of success for our efforts with them. Grandchildren are yet another blessing as is the ability to have an older generation directly impact the newest one. A new parent can benefit from the experience of a grandparent, and can sometimes simply benefit from any kind of outside help. Grandparents are known for “spoiling” their grandchildren. I wonder if this comes from the wisdom of age that places a higher value on love than we did in our youth. It seems the older we become, the more we realize what is truly important, and what is fleeting. Grandparents recognize the supreme treasure of youth and love in the form of their trusting as yet untainted grandchildren. Soon enough the world will tempt them, exhaust them, and attempt to destroy their spirit. But for a while, a Grandparent can hold them, teach them, tell them stories, and enrich the culture of an entire family in so doing.

For those parents with small children who have no living Grandparents, it is worth adopting another set or two. Find an older couple in your church who may have less contact than they would like with their own families, or a couple confined to a nursing home, and visit them. Let them interact with your children. Involve them in your life and let your lives be enriched in the process. Older members of our families, whether by blood or by choice, add a dimension to our development that cannot be substituted in any other way. They add a richness to our lives. They add depth to our understanding. The wisdom that comes with age is wisdom we all need.

Protecting children is a universal desire. To be effective at it, is to begin with knowing your children, knowing their routines, patterns, interests, and behaviors. Sudden or dramatic changes in patterns you are familiar with generally indicate issues that must be discovered and addressed. An “A” student whose grades suddenly tank may be wrestling with a number of issues. It could be a new girl/boy-friend. It could be something more sinister like chemical stimulants. It could be even worse as they struggle with being victimized by a predatory adult. Not all changes in patterns of behaviors originate for negative reasons, but some do. Thus all must be investigated if protecting them remains the goal. Children rarely bring issues like these to their parent’s attention unprompted. It takes active observation, and a degree of prodding to help them open up to the truth. A sympathetic ear, and non-threatening environment will aid greatly in the process. Because of the level of evil in our world, predators have learned to conceal themselves in our nation, in our churches, and even in our families. Our best defense against predators, or paranoia, is to remain submitted to God, and alert to changes we see in our kids.

Finally, children pose an interesting question to us all – when can a person truly “know” God? What I “know” of Him now is far more than what I “knew” at 20 years of age. But this does not negate my “knowledge” at 20. The same is true even when I was only five years old. It appears that “knowing” God is more of a process than a destination. We will never be done learning about God, learning about how to Love, or appreciating our salvation from evil. Given this, do not belittle or decry, the relationship little children exhibit towards God. If they choose to participate in church traditions, let them. If they wish to be baptized at any age, let them. As Christ said … “suffer the little children to come unto me.” He did not discriminate against them for their “age”. He welcomes them all at any age. And He went further to remind us that we all look like children from His perspective, and we all really need Him. Let us not lose this important lesson as long as we live.