tonight as i sat and listened to our house church bible study wrestle with the image of fallen babylon in revelation 18 I had stop and write what I am feeling. I was listening from the kitchen to Jeffrey, who came to Christ 3 weeks calling everyone to a place of awe and depth with God. For three weeks he has devoured the word. learning everything he can about the Bible and he is alive with the implications. He is saying things that i know already. things that i would say. but they sound different coming from him. he is drawing conclusions that feel foggy and distant to me. Profoundly simple ideas that I once knew, really knew, perhaps in a way that you can only know when they seem like life or death. and now, those same concepts, I think I know, or rather i know i used to know.
it occurs to me that there is a kind of knowing that comes through practice and a kind of knowing that comes through remembering the practice. i know that i have sat in the presence of God, i know that i have sat amazed at his inscrutable choice to love me, know me, remain faithful to me, even die for me. i have known that single revelation allowed it to so constrained my heart that i could not find words, and that the words that i did find seemed so simple and inadequate. there is a kind of knowing that Jeffrey has. and i am aware, acutely aware that i need him. that we need him. that it is really Jeffery that is doing the disciple making tonight. and i am the one with the degrees and the experience, and the reputation but we have that stuff all wrong. i have it all wrong.
why do we invite non believers into our homes? into our lives? why is evangelism important? is it, for us, another feather to prominently place in our spiritual caps so that we can say that we are engaged in the most important ministry? it is you know. The most important ministry. but do we understand why? and why it is that God has chosen us, the oh so righteous, to be his method of delivery? why us? Perhaps it is because we are also in need. and the genius of God is to broker the relationship between the long since saved and the soon to be saved because in each his grace for the other waits to be opened like a gift.
surely we offer the words of life, the gospel, the name of Jesus and the story of his coming. our testimony to Jesus is life itself, for one who would hear and heed. but what about us? what is it we need? is it not an encounter with that same savior? is it not an awakening of that same reality? and we share it, we remember it. But more than that we also receive a gift. that gift is awe.
as we have aged we have forgotten. but the new born knows the wonder of life in a way that is more profound than the middle aged. Maturity itself works against our knowing this most important truth. that God is awesome, that his grace is amazing and that his son, our savior is the fairest of 10,000. and so we need the newly born to teach us what they know better than we. we need them to disciple us in what it means to be a disciple, called, amazed, changed, committed. we invite the lost into our lives so that they can find Jesus. and we need them to as much as they need us. Jeffrey has brought new life, new insight, into this home. he is welcome because Jesus is welcome. I am learning more from Jeffrey tonight in a few minutes than i can say. I plead with you, children of God, open your lives to the lost, keep a steady flow of new believers in and out of your home. we need them because we need Jesus.
