6/20/13
Ashley about 18
Ours is a reasonable faith, but for a variety of reasons people
often overlook some very simple logic when it comes to their beliefs. For example, a young lady named Ashley told
me she attends church and totally believes in “the Book” as she calls the
Bible, but then said she never reads it.
“When you say you believe in the Bible” I asked, “Do you mean you
believe it is true and can be trusted?”
She enthusiastically agreed. “And
the Bible is filled with references to itself as being the Word of God. So we
have two options – this is either true or false, right?” She agreed and continued to affirm her belief
in the Bible as God’s word. “So you have
the opportunity to read for yourself words that have come directly from God,
but you never read the Bible?” She had agreed,
feeling a little foolish. I wasn’t
trying to make her feel bad, but just to help her see the disconnect between
believing in the Bible and never reading it.
“Sometimes we get so used to things in our life that we take them for
granted and never realize how awesome they really are” I concluded. We went on from there to a good gospel
conversation. I believe what engaged her
interest was not just my simple logic, but the fact that I used that logic directly
in response to her statements about herself, helping her see that what she had
been doing was not, in fact, logical. Sharing
the Gospel involves the use of logic and reason. When Paul “reasoned” with the Athenians in
Acts 17, he did so because Christianity is a reasonable faith, but, all too
often, people are not.
6/20/13
Jonathan early 20’s
I flagged down an oncoming bicyclist, apologizing for
stopping him but at the same time letting him know the question I wanted to ask
was important. His name is Jonathan and
he remembered me from a Gospel conversation back in 2010. His memories from the conversation were
somewhat vague, centered around the “good person” questions I had asked in
order to show him his need for forgiveness, so I went over the Gospel
again. When we had first talked three
years ago, he had been very excited to hear it, feeling like God was trying to
get his attention because another person had just talked to him about the Lord
the day before. Other than that, he had
no religious background. Now, three
years later, he had forgotten what we talked about and has had no other spiritual
conversations since. He was positive and
enthusiastic about seeing me again, but when it came time to respond to what he
was hearing he said “ I believe this and all, and I will probably follow God
some day, but I’m young and I don’t want to miss out on anything, you
know?” We talked more about his ideas of
what it means to be a Christian and I ended with this thought – “Three years
ago, you heard the same thing you heard today and decided to put it all off
until later, and what happened? You haven’t
heard from anyone else about the Gospel and have forgotten what it was even all
about. Don’t you realize the same thing
will happen again? God doesn’t owe any
of us a second chance – He didn’t have to give you another chance to hear the
Gospel. Now is the time to decide, its
either yes or no; to decide to wait until tomorrow is to say no today. I’m not trying to pressure you but just to be
realistic; you saw what happened the first time.” Jonathan saw my point and agreed with it, but
as far as I know, continues to say “no” to Jesus. I understand people need time to think things
through, but that doesn’t make the Gospel any less urgent. I had flagged Jonathan down on his bike ride
because of a sense of urgency, and now the Gospel was just as urgent at the end
of our conversation as it was at the beginning.
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