Bruce’s Ministry

Being The Light

Posted by Bruce Norton on Mar 24 2009

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
   Matt 28:18-20 (NIV)

 

Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations is part of what we call the Great Commission.  As followers of Christ we are commanded to teach others and to bring them to Jesus.  It is important to note that it says nothing about changing their hearts.  It says nothing about making them accept Jesus.  It only says to teach them and to disciple them.  To disciple someone means to mentor them – to guide them on their journey.  In order to mentor someone, they must first want to be mentored.  You cannot mentor someone who does not want and ask for it.  You cannot teach someone who does not want to learn. 

 

We have all seen the homeless street preacher talking about fire and brimstone and how the end is near.  We look at him and think how weird he is, or wonder what mental or emotional problems he is struggling with.  We have seen the people picketing the abortion clinics or the funerals of soldiers killed in action and thought how horrible these militant people are who call themselves Christians.  We have all known someone who goes to Church every Sunday and takes advantage of people the other six days of the week and thought what a hypocrite. So why would any non-believer want to follow Christ if it meant becoming a militant hypocrite with mental problems?  While the message in the first two examples may be right, the delivery is all wrong.  I will not be interested in becoming a part of anything where I will get attacked.  And that is what most people feel when they encounter these people.  The answer lies not in making people do something, but in making something attractive to them.  Moths are attracted to physical light.  Turn on a light at night and they will come.  Humans are attracted to spiritual light.  Be the light and they will come.  But they will only come when they are ready.

 

Susan is a dear friend of mine.  I met her and her family when her eldest daughter stopped breathing when she was three days old.  I have been in and out of their lives, and they have been in and out of my life ever since.  Susan reached out to me about seven weeks ago.  She told me that she and her kids left her husband and that they were living in an apartment now.  Clearly she was miserable and looking for help.  Step one for me was to find out as much as I could about her situation and where her head was.  While I was prying into her life, I got one of the answers I was really looking for.  She told me that she had another friend named Kevin who was telling her that if she only accept Jesus into her life that God would make everything better.  She said he was driving her nuts with all this Jesus talk and she was avoiding his phone calls.  Now, I knew that was a place I could not go with her yet.

 

After some thought and prayer, my initial strategy to help her was to simply listen and guide.  And while my guidance was Biblical, and I taught Biblical principles such as forgiveness, humility, and the sin of selfishness, I used secular arguments as reasons why they were important.   I also told her and the rest of her family, including her husband, that I loved them – that the love I have for them is a gift given freely and that there is nothing they can do to make me love them more and there is nothing they can do to make me love them less.  The conversations continued like this for about three or four weeks.  Then something truly miraculous happened. 

 

The Holy Spirit guided me to point out that in her conversations with me she often used the term, "by the grace of God."  I continued by telling her that the love I expressed to her and her family, while not nearly as strong, is a model of God’s love for her and her family.  I continued by telling her that her father was supposed to model that love for her but he was too broken to do so.  Her husband was supposed to model that love for her and her daughters but he was too broken to do so.  But while I am no less broken than they are, I am just not broken in a way that interferes with my ability to model God’s love for her.  That happened on a Wednesday.

 

Just two days later on Friday, she admitted to me that she had found her Bible and started reading the book of John.  That admission led to a two hour discussion on faith.  While often challenged by Satan’s email from Hell, she has been open to faith based conversations ever since.

 

It is important to note that I did not change her heart.  I did not make her want to be close to Jesus.  All I did was be that spiritual light and let the Holy Spirit speak to her through me.  God is the one who did the work.  He worked in me to understand that all I need to do is to be the light.  He worked in her to bring her closer to Him.  The transformation of her life still has a long way to go.  There is still much suffering that she is going through.  And while I hope I am wrong, I think I have had a small glimpse into why it is so important for her to be transformed now.

 

About a week or two after she and I had that two hour conversation on faith, she found a lump in her breast.  It seems to be an aggressively rapidly growing lump.  My sense is that her world is going to be turned upside down, that her priorities in life will also be changed forever, and that her re-found faith in God will play a major role in her future and in the future of her family.  I will let you know how things play out.  But, imagine what would have happened if the Holy Spirit had not guided me not to push faith in the beginning. 

 

I wonder how many people I pushed away from Jesus in my attempts to bring them closer.  How many people have you pushed away?   Fortunately, we will probably never know the answer to that question.  And, while it is important not to approve of ungodly things in this world, maybe it isn’t so important to preach against them either.  Or, maybe it is important that we don’t preach against them to non-believers, but to wait and guide believers away from sin after Jesus has changed their heart to a point where they are ready to hear the message.  Maybe for non-believers the most important thing we can do is to simply life our lives in a manner that is pleasing to God.  Maybe for non-believers we simply need to express and model God’s love for them.

 

Maybe we simply need to be the light.

 

Bruce..