4/9/19 Toby (see conversation HERE)
Do you have in your heart “an inclination toward the things
of God”? Consider yourself blessed!
I had an interesting outreach conversation with Toby, a
believer out for a prayer walk at the park, who told how he came to faith in
Jesus. One interesting thing he told me explained
a lot about the approach many believers take toward evangelism. He told about a conversation with his mother
as a young boy in which she prayed the sinner’s prayer with him. He doesn’t think he had been saved at that
point because he didn’t really understand who Jesus was or what he had done. Nonetheless he said “Ever since I sat down and
prayed that prayer with my Mom, there was always in my heart an inclination
toward the things of God”
Like many young people, when Toby left the cocoon and
subculture of his local church and went off to college he began to get lost in the
freedom and new, worldly experiences of college life, forgetting the faith he
had left behind. He had some hard
questions about the faith community he grew up in, but eventually began to get
dissatisfied with the college scene, and to seek spiritual answers on his
own.
And then he did something that most from a non-Christian
upbringing don’t do. He sought out
answers for himself from Christian sources, going against the grain of the culture
around him for perhaps the first time in his life. Similar to the Amish concept of “Rumspringa”
in which young people leave the church community to decide on matters of faith
for themselves, Toby had left but now came back to the faith and a faith group
of his own volition. God had become a
reality for him in the “Babylon” of college in a way He never did back in his
church community.
As I talk with believers and unbelievers about their
spiritual experiences, I see a general pattern.
The pattern is that people who have experienced Christian community and
biblical training have in their heart “an inclination toward the things of God”,
even though they may not have come to know Jesus personally. They have an advantage over those outside the
Church because they’ve been prayed for by the church and loved ones, they have
at least some biblical background and godly role models, and they are blessed
by God’s promise to their godly parents that if they “Train up a child in the
way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
People with a church background have at least been able to “taste
and see that the Lord is good.” I
believe Toby’s church background helped him sense the worldly emptiness of his
college crowd and to know where to turn for answers. In contrast, those with no church background have
no standard to compare the worldly crowd to.
They often don’t realize something is missing, or when they do they don’t
know where to look for answers.
Romans 3 tells us that “there is no one who seeks God”. This is why Christians need to take the
initiative in sharing the Gospel. It’s
not that unbelievers have no spiritual interest. Many could be described as spiritual seekers,
but they’re not seeking the God of the Bible.
They seek a god defined by their own terms. Because all people have a God-given
conscience, many respond with a spiritual quest to justify themselves, whether
by their own efforts or by following the tenants of a works-based
religion. But what they are looking for is
not the justification that comes through Jesus.
They seek self-righteousness, not Christ-righteousness.
And that’s something I don’t think many pastors and
Christians from church backgrounds agree with or understand. They are oriented to minister to people who
have in their heart “an inclination toward the things of God”. They think all people have an inclination
toward God like those who have grown up in a church household, or like the
visitors they meet in church on Sunday mornings because of Christian background
or Christian outreach. What this means
for evangelistic ministry is that they rely on unbelievers to take the initiative,
to ask the right questions, to find their way to Christian events, to show up
in church on Sunday mornings, rather than relying on believers to go out into
all the world to preach the Gospel.
In a churched nation like ours, there are plenty of unbelievers
from church backgrounds who know where to go when they have questions or a
crisis. But the problem is that there
are increasing numbers of biblically illiterate and unchurched people who don’t
even know they are lost. Christians need
to be willing to reach out to them wherever they are at, to break the bad news
that they are, indeed, lost, and to offer the hope of being found in Christ. Let’s not get fooled into thinking everyone
has in their heart “an inclination toward the things of God”.
Thanks, Toby, for allowing me to record an interesting
conversation! Its at https://youtu.be/wLtpcCVw33s
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