Jack Hayford is probably my favorite living preacher/teacher. I never fail to learn something from him.
Here he shares about being a person of winsomeness who attracts others and serves as a liaison to Jesus. In these angry, judgmental times we live in, this could not be a more sure word, and one that more of us need to hear and heed.
JackHayford from Jubilee Church on Vimeo.
(HT: Adrian Warnock)
Sometimes it seems like we Evangelicals aren’t happy with anyone. Our perceived human foes are always in need of a good fixing by us, especially by our standard means of yelling at them, wrangling politicians to our side in opposition to them, manipulating media against them, and stewing about them to anyone who will listen. While the track record of positive results employing that process is somewhat abysmal, yet we press on.
In our favor, it’s hard not to think that the wheels are coming off the world. Really, a quick glance around seems to confirm as much.
I’ve written a lot of words to Christians in America over the years. I’m really no one, though. And I mean that. There’s no expectation that anyone will listen or change. Most days are shouting into the wind—like everyone else. I know that. Everyone’s got an opinion, and in America, everyone needs to express it.
But it still bothers me that with people in the American Church pointing fingers at this heretic and that sinner, we tend to forget the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or as Jesus Himself phrased it:
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
—Matthew 7:12
I can’t help but think that applying that one simple rule would change everything. And that one simple rule can be applied to EVERY aspect of life.
Such truth asks that we consider the other guy, that we think of him as ourself. Where we give ourselves grace, we should offer him the same grace in the same situations. And where we would want to be gently and lovingly corrected, we would offer the same to him.
But too often we excuse our sins and live to punish the other guy for his—even when his sin is the same as ours.
I’m increasingly peeved at the hubris that most of us operate under. Nor do I understand how it is that we’re always seeking to fix the other guy when we won’t fix ourselves first. We Evangelicals are constantly in a huff about the condition of the other guy’s eye speck and not so concerned about our own log.
The answer, of course, is a simple one. Jesus notes it in the Gospel of John:
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.” Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who had been reclining at table close to him and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”
—John 21:15-22
Here, Jesus is trying to restore Peter after Peter’s betrayal. But what very human trait does Peter exhibit? He points to John and says (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Yeah, I hear what you’re trying to say about me, but what about this other guy?”
If that doesn’t sum up Evangelicalism 2011, I don’t know what does. We seem perpetually worried about “the other guy” even as the Lord is trying to restore us to our proper position. (I find it telling that John notes this in the context of his own question about those who would betray Jesus, almost as if Peter were trying to get back at John for bringing up the issue and John includes this passage—and its answer—as a deflection back to Peter.)
Jesus’ response is so fitting, it almost makes me weep:
“…what is that to you? You follow me!”
Heaven knows that I am a messed up person. Every day I have to remind myself that the only way the Lord is going to work through me is if I’m right with Him. And that’s going to take an enormous amount of work on His part. My part is to be willing and open to receive His fixes. Yet if I’m perpetually trying to hear about someone else’s fixes and trying to fix that other person my way, I’ll neither hear nor receive my fixes.
And if I’m not prepped the way I should be to minister, then I’m wasting my time and the Lord’s.
Evangelicals, please, please, please hear this. If we don’t get our own house right, judgment will fall on it. It’s time to stop worrying about the other guy’s problems first and start asking the Lord to fix our own. We’ve become like Peter, attempting to deflect responsibility, even as the Lord is telling us what we need to be doing and to stop worrying so much about the other guy.
Every day, I hope to live not only by the Golden Rule but also by personalizing the words of Jesus: “…what is that to you, Dan? You follow me!”
What words will you live by?
In the late 1980s, I was an active footsoldier in Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion organization. Not a leader. Not an organizer. But one of the grunts who did the protests and paid for doing so. I have the battle scars. You may disagree with me if you will, but you can’t challenge my experiences.
I met some of the most concerned and dedicated people in Operation Rescue. Better people than I am. I was committed to the cause. For those others, though, the cause was their life.
I think there’s a powerful spiritual delusion that accompanies the pro-“choice” side. Planned Parenthood used to hide behind the mask of “helping women,” but their rabid opposition to General Electric’s 4D sonogram technology tore away that mask several years ago. Though the 4D technology would help women immensely, especially healthwise, it has the side effect (a negative one from Planned Parenthood’s perspective) of showing the developing fetus in crystal clarity. Makes it much harder to abort one’s child when that child flashes you a winning smile from the womb.
In short, Planned Parenthood doesn’t give a damn about women’s health. They love the money that comes from killing babies.
As for Operation Rescue, while it had a large Roman Catholic contingent, the most conservative of conservative Evangelicals made up the rest. A Rescue meeting had a lot of Bible in it, at least the ones I attended. Rescue’s name and rallying cry come from this passage in the Bible:
Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?
—Proverbs 24:11-12
The first sentence was the major theme, but what followed was often used for garnering new recruits for Rescue.
Today, I’m not active in Operation Rescue or the prolife movement. I haven’t been in 20 years. That said, I didn’t leave because of grudges or snits. I left because I felt there had to be a better way.
It’s not that babies weren’t saved. They were. But it seemed a lot of effort went into Rescue that could have been more effective if channeled into the mission Jesus gave us:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:19-20
Jesus adds this insight:
For the one who is not against us is for us.
—Mark 9:40
We tend to interpret the Bible willy-nilly. Whatever suits our position winds up quoted.
But how can we as the Church interpret anything from the Bible without a reference back to the mission Jesus gave us? I would contend that everything we do as Christians must be viewed through the lens of Matthew 28:19-20 or else we are off our mission, the mission the Lord gave us straight from his lips.
In light of this, how then should we interpret Proverbs 24:11-12?
Are we to rescue babies alone? No, we are to rescue anyone being led away to death. And since anyone whose name is not written in the Lamb’s book of life will taste the eternal agony of the second death, working to rescue those stumbling toward it becomes our primary job. The only way to interpret Proverbs 24:11-12 is that we are tasked to ensure that no one, no matter how deserving, ends up being led off to that hellish slaughter.
Physical death is horrible. In the case of the death of the unborn, babies being ripped apart in the womb should shock and horrify anyone whose soul hasn’t been seared. But the second death is an order of magnitude more horrifying than any of that. We just choose not to think it is.
Leonard Ravenhill, a favorite of this blogger, wrote this:
Charlie Peace was a criminal. Laws of God or man curbed him not. Finally the law caught up with him, and he was condemned to death. On the fatal morning in Armley Jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death-walk. Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading some Bible verses. The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading. “The Consolations of Religion,” was the reply. Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell. Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall? Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, “You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings”? All this was too much for Charlie Peace. So he preached. Listen to his on-the-eve-of-hell sermon:
“Sir,” addressing the preacher, “if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!
For all the time and energy the prolife movement has invested in fighting for the unborn, I keep wondering how many more gains we could have made if we focused on ensuring not one soul ended up in hell forever. Converts to our faith don’t tend to abort their unborn children. And in making those converts a priority, aren’t we in fact rescuing two people?
Sometimes, the good is the enemy of the best.