I think Shakespeare made this comment in one of his Sonnets or Plays. IN that instance the words were “to thyne own self be true” but in the year of our Lord two thousand and twelve; they are still just as apt.
As we thrash about trying to make our Master Christ relevant to an increasingly blasé world one that pushes in on us. we need to develop a “strategy” that will bring the nonbelievers flooding through the doors of our increasingly empty buildings. It can be said that the church is a dying institution. All that God’s enemies need to do is wait, and over time, the believers in the church will die out or get frustrated with a church that is not functioning as it should and give up.
There is a certain amount of truth in the above statement. God has left it for the believers of every generation to pick up the torch to draw others to the Father who is the Light through His son, the Master, by the actions of His believers. That sounds very complicated but it is true.
You see Jesus, during His Human Ministry, was at pains to point out to all who wanted to know that “I can do nothing beyond what the Father enables” He then followed that up with the commission to embark on mission. He goes even further to say that we would be even greater things than those He did during His career; but only those that Father permits.
Father chooses to enable people to do His work and the ones that He can use the most are the ones who have an honest relationship with Him. In the same way the people around us have an extremely uncanny ability to work out who as being straight with then from others who put on an act to try and impress them. Sadly there are significant numbers of members from the Community of Faith who feel that they need to play the Christian when in mixed company.
We can probably all recognize the “Holy Joes” and even the Evangelical Ednas in our memberships. Holy Joes Are those who take offence at any slight directed at “the Church”. They have little desire to engage the world and see it as a regrettable evil when they do. Evangelical Ednas are people who have an answer to every question from the words of the Bible and preferable from the pages of the King James Bible. These people are genuine in their faith, the problem is in their expression of that faith.
As I said in the beginning people can see through in a second. The story is told of a Christian runner who seemed to be getting paired up with a runner who didn’t believe. Now over the course of a number of races the Christian started to drop suggestions but after about three of these encounters the Non Christian turned to her fellow competitor and asked, “Are you cultivating me?” Any witness to that competitor was gone in that moment
We are uniquely crafted so that our character strengths will draw people to the Master but only when we are true to who we are. Father knows us best and for us to be the best for Him we need to fall in line with His intentions and bravely push forward with Father’s Will. As we do this among nonbelievers, as well as our Church friends, then Father will draw people to Himself who see a believer who is still being genuine with them.
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