Monday, May 8, 2017
547 - Doing, Doing, Done ...
Spirituality
Column No. 547
May
9, 2017
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Doing, Doing, Done …
By
Bob Walters
“Always
be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for
the hope that you have.” – 1 Peter 3:15
The circular firing squad that all
too often is Christians zealously trying to evangelize or impose God’s will on
nonbelievers also all too often violates the next sentence of verse 15: “But do this with gentleness
and respect.”
Oh,
how badly I want to share my faith; and oh
my – too often – how badly I do it.
Famed
preacher Bill Hybels of enormous Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago was
featured last week on Moody Radio (May 3-4, 9 a.m. WGNR 97.9 in central
Indiana, audio link at end of column) talking about sharing our Christian faith and reaching the lost. It was a Moody Founder’s Week presentation
from 1999 with great and timeless advice.
Hybels noted that the message of
Christianity is “a body of truth that must be communicated and understood
before anybody can come to faith.” He
further noted it is a message that must be presented “winsomely, creatively and
accurately” without violating the “age old law of supply and demand,” i.e., supplying
too much answer to a seeker’s simple question.
We can work on preparedness in knowledge, and we can pray for the Holy
Spirit’s leading and discernment in what to say and when to say it.
Gentleness and respect? Some of us have to work harder at it than
others.
Anyway, I didn’t realize Hybels was
a competitive sailor, and while much of his Moody presentation was about his
racing sailing crew he built of non-believers, that God loves the lost and
celebrates recovering the lost more than he celebrates retaining believers, and
that Jesus always sought out the lost, etc., he had this story …
Hybels and his wife Lynne were
vacationing alone on a sailboat in the Caribbean. As often happens in the
nautical life, they were invited aboard another vessel of several strangers for
“happy hour.” When asked what he did for
a living, without awkwardness Hybels said he was a minister. All was well and the drinks and jokes of
these new and obviously non-believing friends continued to flow. Upon the Hybels departing the boat in a
dinghy, a woman leaned over the rail and asked Bill, “I’ve always wanted to ask
a Christian, how you become one? Can you
give us a brief explanation right here?”
Bill – um, uh, uh – replied: “I spell religion
D-O – the good things people do when
they know they’ve offended a holy God. They get on this treadmill of doing,
doing, doing …wondering if they will ever hit the quota where they can feel OK
and gain entrance to the Kingdom of heaven by doing. I [was] on that treadmill. And I bailed out of religion.
“I spell Christianity D-O-N-E. It
is what God’s son Jesus Christ has done
for those of us who have violated God’s standards and who need forgiveness to
come our way as a gift – so I received Christ into my life and it changed
everything and I’d like to recommend that to any of you who are interested …”
By morning the boat sailed … but
the Holy Spirit had a shot.
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