To fulfill a class requirement, my friends and I spent 3 weekends visiting different religious sites and interviewing people of different faiths. Nothing made me more uncomfortable than the afternoon when we interviewed a witch, an angel interpreter and a new age practitioner. I was angry and irritated by what they had to say. Then I realized: without God’s grace, I was basically listening to myself talk!
Many Christians (including me) have the tendency to “demonize” non-believers and see people of other faiths as “incarnations” of their belief systems. When we see the lost as people we need to fix rather than human beings just like us who desperately need God’s grace, we have already lost the battle of winning their hearts.
People have to feel that they belong before they can believe. We must share more than just our beliefs with the lost. We must share our lives with them. We must not only preach the Gospel with our lips. We must live the Gospel with our lives.
What is the Gospel? That Christ, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God, but humbled Himself and took on human likeness, became obedient to death on a cross. (Philippians 2: 6-8)
We have to be careful not to let our knowledge of Bible or our experiences with God puff us up that we refuse to listen to, hang out with, love on those who are different. The Gospel we preach is NOT that people have to change to be just like us in order to be accepted by God. That is heresy! The Message we preach is Christ Jesus and the only way for people to change is through encounters with God’s love. For truth is not just a theory, truth is a Person.
- Wendy
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