From page 213 of The
Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers:
“If others deem my faith folly,
my meekness infirmity, my zeal madness, my hope delusion, my actions hypocrisy,
may I rejoice to suffer for thy name.”
It is important to know our
audience; Paul knew his in Athens,
and as he writes in 1 Corinthians he became all things to all men, you can’t do
that without knowing your audience. But there is a difference between being
sensitive to the communication patterns and milieu of an audience and seeking
to be sensitive to an audience to the point where the audience is never
offended. All too often seeker-sensitive thinking has as its unstated goal: “Do
not offend, no matter what, do not offend – do nothing that might cause others
to feel bad.” That is the mantra of our therapeutic society where the truth and
accountability are seen as “confrontational” and “offensive”. Others have
termed it, in the professing church, “Therapeutic Deism”.
In working through John’s Gospel
with a weekly small group I’ve been struck by how Jesus seldom stated the
obvious and often spoke in terms that people did not understand. The idea of
teaching that others should partake of His flesh and blood, and teaching it in
a synagogue of all places, is not what I’d call seeker-sensitive preaching. And
in John Chapter 5 why didn’t He ease into the idea that He is God? Why did He
pound home His divinity with the repeated, “Amen, amen, I say to you”? And why
not sit down in the Temple
in John Chapter 2 and just say, “Look here, it’s Passover right now so let me
talk to you about what the blood and the lamb really mean.”
I’m all for winsome witnessing
and conversations seasoned with salt – it can be fun and I enjoy fun; but there
are times when the fact is that sharing Christ and being faithful to Him goes
against the grain – in fact it usually goes against the grain, and then what do
we do?
Do we teach that we are called to
suffer for Jesus Christ? Do we equip our people to suffer for Him and the
Gospel? Do we teach our young professing Christians that they are called to
suffer? Let me be winsome but let me also winsomely and graciously suffer for
His sake and the sake of others. Sometimes it takes a martyrdom, such as
Stephen’s, to draw a Paul to Jesus Christ. Do you think Stephen suffered in
vain? Just as Stephen did not see the fruit of his suffering while on this
earth there are more times than not when we have no idea of the fruit of our
obedience.
Jesus says, “Except a grain of
wheat falls into the ground and dies it abides alone, but if it dies it bears
much fruit.” What would we say to Jesus today if He should say to us, “My son,
My daughter, I’m looking for a seed willing to fall into the ground and die for
the sake of this man, this woman, this child, this family, this city, this
nation, this world”? When those times come do we say, “Here I am Lord, sow me
into the ground”?
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