Can We Move The Chicken To The Side?

It wasn’t too long ago I found myself in a remote village in tropical Asia.  I was traveling with three national partners when all of a sudden they decide to take a detour and check out a certain village.  

According to our standard procedure we find someone who smiles and engages us in conversation.  This day, we ask them for a tour of their village.  This takes a while.  We ask about history, stories and issues of pride.  We exchange gifts.  We eventually find ourselves ushered into a very large local ancestor worship site, especially considering the size of this village.

Idol Worship Begins

Worship begins while we are standing there.  Twelve young men unload and light up bundles of incense, unpack the chicken and other assorted offerings, and set it all up in front of the larger-than-life statues.  It is all done perfunctorily, for good luck if it might come their way.  Within a matter of ten minutes it is summed up with the lighting of a few rounds of firecrackers.  The oddest thing is that they don't seem to mind that strangers, including a foreigner, are in the shrine with them.

When the noise subsides the people just hang out for a while.  My partners and I start praying and conferring about our next move and how we might preach the Gospel in this place of idols.  The Holy Spirit starts flooding our minds with options.  It is decided that I will be the fall guy and so one of them introduces me, the foreigner, to talk about world religions and get to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as fast as possible.   This way the translator can’t be blamed for “repeating” my words, although my partners are much better at this work than I am.

True Worship Explained

Well, by God’s grace, they are all fascinated by my summary of world history in five minutes, and my claim that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the true and only hope for us all.  I ask if they would like to watch a 15-20 minute video that would explain it all more fully.  They agree.  We forgot the video player.  No problem, they send someone off and within a few minutes procure one.  

So, then I ask, “Could we move the chicken to the side?”  I see the opportunity for irony, to replace the idol sacrifice with the true message of life.  It works, as they have no problem with the idea.  There sits the Gospel video playing right at the feet of the replica of the great ancestor couple--cool!

Four leave during the transition from my speaking to the video.  The remaining bystanders are all fascinated by the opening scenes of the video, which explain who God is and His great work of Creation.  As the story becomes more detailed about the Fall and how sin thoroughly corrupted and enslaved humanity a couple more guys peel off.  Not much longer and yet a couple more leave.  

However, the final four make it through the whole Gospel presentation and hang out for some Q & A.  In a matter of minutes though we are left talking with one young man.  But, he seems genuinely interested, has some questions and says he will give the message further thought.  This is their first hearing of the God’s Good News in Jesus Christ.

About six of the men return with massive amounts of firecrackers to resume their ancestor worship.  That effectively breaks up our conversation and forces us to end our visit, being deafeningly loud in that tiny concrete shrine.

Lessons On Prayer And Boldness

This whole experience taught me many things.  The Scripture that captured that day in the the village is 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, especially verse 4, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

My good friends and national partners taught me to pray as often as I breathe for opportunities for the Gospel of Christ and the impressions of the Holy Spirit leading me where to share it.  They also taught me to sow the seed of the Gospel broadly regardless of how people respond, and without over-thinking the presentation.  

The third and most important lesson I learned that day was to preach more boldly than I have ever done before, and to do so fearlessly, giving less heed to personal safety, caution or human prudence, than I have in the past.

The Self-Proclaimed Half-Christian

A few years ago in Asia, I met a man named Lance, a self-proclaimed “half-Christian.”  To my surprise it was obvious that he saw this as a very good thing, being proud of his commitment, and he wanted to let me know that he was like me, a “full-Christian,” I suppose.

Was This An Invitation?

At least Lance was honest.  In America, people cover this up and say they are fully Christian when they are really only half-Christian.  So, I engaged him in a few significant conversations over the next few days.  I had never met a person espousing such a position.  I was wondering:  What does he mean?  Is there such a thing?  How would this work?  What would it look like?

At first, it seemed his comment was an open invitation to dialogue about Jesus Christ, His teachings and ultimately His Cross and glory.  And we did get to talk seriously about these things and from the Biblical text itself.  However, in time his original comment would be used again as a polite way of saying he didn’t want any more of Jesus or Christianity.

I found this out during one particular dialogue we had about Jesus’ demands for morality.  His countenance quickly changed as we got into specifics.  I found out which “half” of Christianity he didn’t embrace.  He loved his carousing, womanizing, and various other illicit pursuits.  I am still puzzled over which “half” he actually did embrace--I am thinking just the sound of the name “Christian” and any benefits he could get out of using it.

Merely A Relationship Of Self-Interest

His motivation for befriending our group was purely opportunistic as a businessman seeking to advance his standing by having American friends.  However, he was useful to us, as well, as an odd sort of “person of peace” (Matthew 10), who opened doors for us and the Gospel.  He even went to bat for us with local authorities when there was concern about our activities. 

At least for that week our relationship worked, and worked for mutual benefit.  It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Mark 9:40 ESV, “For the one who is not against us is for us.”  During our team’s short visit, the Gospel was delivered not only to him, but throughout the community and over 40 people professed to become “full-Christians” and four small house churches were formed.

An Evangelism Lesson Learned

God surprises us by using the most interesting people and the most fascinating circumstances sometimes to get His Mission accomplished.  Lance actually helped us to be more forthright in our evangelism about Jesus’ moral teachings and speak clearly about both aspects of conversion--repentance and faith.  

Perhaps, if we were more upfront about this in our evangelism here at home we would make more “full-Christians” and fewer “half-Christians.”

The Hot Tub Pontificator

After a long day of work, my colleague and I were relaxing in the hot tub at our Chicago hotel.  We were talking about our progress in meetings that day, catching up on our family news, since we hadn’t seen one another in a few months, when Pete plopped himself in our midst and interrupted quite rudely.

Pete had been drinking, eyes glazed over.  He also had had some relationship troubles with his girl friend back in the room.  Pete just started talking, and talking, and talking, really being annoying.  It was getting unpleasant, and my friend and I were about to leave.  Then, Pete told us that he had just found out the day before that his mother had died.  Actually, she had died a number of months ago, but his family kept the news from him until yesterday (this was a long story).  He was in town to find resolution.

Well now we couldn’t just leave this twenty-something messed up kid alone in the hot tub.  His troubles went from pathetic to really pathetic, and amazingly complicated and dysfunctional to the point that he couldn’t be making this stuff up.  My friend and I were pastors, after all, and being such we have heard it all.  We let him dump, we felt sorry for the guy, even if he did ruin our night.

We were praying for Pete’s openness to the Gospel when all of sudden Pete started talking about his religious background.  It was a combination of traditional Roman Catholicism mixed with his own self-righteous rationalism.  My friend and I kept our identities hidden, because announcing that one is a pastor usually changes relational dynamics too quickly.  We just probed his thinking with questions, and he kept on talking and revealing things.

He was happy to find some fellow Christians he could instruct. We talked about the Gospel and the inability of man to be good enough before God, and then took it personal by telling our own stories and asking about his life. Things got heated pretty quickly as we had touched a nerve about his view of himself.  He started lecturing us on philosophy, religion, the Bible, politics and whatever else came to mind, even physically getting in our faces (probably due to the alcohol).  He dogmatically camped out on the Golden Rule as many people do, while refusing to see the irony of how he had just treated his girlfriend back in the room.

Okay, we had to reveal who we really were at this point.  He was stunned, of course, since we held this back for so long.  It turned out to be a good tactical move on our part though, the timing.  He asked us to explain the Gospel and answer various questions he has had for a while.  We cleared up some of his thinking, but his veneer of respect for us quickly wore off, and he was back to being pompous and antagonistic.  He even started lecturing us about Greek, Hebrew and Latin and all sorts of wild smokescreens to prove himself and hide from what we were telling him about Jesus Christ.

After about an hour of this, it was clearly time to close the conversation.  He was exhausted.  And we encouraged him on how to practically repair his relationship with his girlfriend.  He said he wanted answers, so we left him with a challenge to read the book of Romans.  He said he had read it before.  We challenged him to read it differently this time.  We told him to look for the answers to the questions we had been talking about regarding how a person gets right with God, and to pray and ask God to answer his questions, if he was serious.  We challenged him on his true resolution, as well.  And we told him that we would pray for him in this and all his troubles that night.

My friend and I were so glad that we stayed and listened to the pontifications of a drunken fool.  We enjoyed ministering the Gospel together.  And we talked about how often we each end up in such strange confrontational conversations with people.  We don’t like these types of Gospel talks, nor are we particularly gifted and handling them, but we sensed that night that God was truly using and guiding us throughout the event.

The next morning we saw Pete at the front desk as we were all checking out.  He apologized and was very thankful for our advice on so many subjects the previous night.  He promised to work on Romans and we told him that we prayed for him as we said we would, and so we expected him to keep his word and read Romans the way we suggested.

I have prayed for Pete this year on occasion, and his messed up family, messed up life and messed up theology.  May God be gracious and open his eyes to the glory of Jesus Christ and the salvation and life transformation there is in Him.

Faith With An Attitude

Our Lord Christ places many expectations upon His followers. In the larger section of Luke 17:1-10, He talks about certain attitudes He expects from us; and in verses 5-6 He talks about our attitude about our faith.

Luke 17:5–6 ESV “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Stop Asking For More Faith

The Apostles begin with a very good request of the Lord Jesus Christ.  They ask for more faith realizing that it is really He who can and does give more faith.  Jesus’ answer is not what they, or we, would have expected.  

Basically, Jesus tells them that the presence of true faith is more important than its quantity.  The image of the mustard seed faith is a proverbial way of referring to something very small.  Such a small amount of faith can indeed accomplish amazing things, so “Go use your faith and do something extraordinary for the Kingdom!”

For example black mulberry trees grow to be 35 feet tall, can live up to 600 years, and develop very deep root systems.  Hey, why don’t you go uproot such a tree--that would be quite a feat!  Jesus makes it sound like such trees are just sitting around waiting to obey someone with the faith to tell them to get up and go jump in the sea to their own destruction.  

Why would we want to do such a strange thing with our Christian faith?!  That is exactly the point--to go do something startling and difficult with our faith, exceeding the ordinary expectations of the world and the Church!

Start Doing More With Your Faith

You surely have experienced this at some time in your Christian walk--when you stepped out in faith to attempt something great for God.  Maybe it was just confronting someone in sin, or forgiving them, as mentioned by Luke right before this in verses 1-4.

For many of us, it might have been on a mission trip or during a community outreach, when we were stretched beyond our comfort zone.  Use your own life example for yourself.  Surely you have one story by which to be encouraged.

The application is glaringly obvious:  to do amazing things, not normal things, with the faith you have been given.  God doesn’t give us His faith just so that we can live a happy comfortable life in glorious normality!

Don’t Just Pray, Really Pray . . . Do Something!

So, how do we pray for the ministries of our churches, and for one another?  What are we asking for--just normal things or truly amazing things?  And how do we pray for our missionaries?  What are we asking for--just normal things or truly amazing things?

A little faith can be highly potent, if it is developed through a lifestyle of prayer and use.  If you want more faith, you must exercise the faith you have.  This is how faith grows, not just by sitting around, thinking about it and asking for more of it.  Ask for the glory of God, and then act accordingly with faith, for His glory in all things.

Life and ministry are meant to be experienced as a faith adventure with God.  Would you be a missional church that takes great risks, without fear of failure, for the advancement of the fame of Jesus Christ?  Would you commit to being a missional Christian who thrives upon the vision of the glory of God among all peoples and their full enjoyment of Him?

We must use the faith we have for doing amazing things.  We develop the faith expected of us by using the faith we have.  Have you been asking for more faith, but not really using what you have?  Where might the Spirit be pushing you to trust Christ and be more bold . . . and rip out some mulberry trees?

Exercise your faith, with an attitude!