We had another great group of posts from people sharing how they are reaching the culture through their unique gifts, talents and interests. Robin’s post really touched on a point that I feel is important in this discussion–that of sharing the Lord through your personal life in a very natural way:
When God called me out of writing for the general market and into writing for Him, it opened many doors of opportunity to share. One that I cherish was when I was interviewed for the Romance Writers Report. Naturally, this wasn’t a Christian venue, but I simply answered truthfully which meant sometimes talking about God …
At the close of the interview, I was asked if I had anything I would like to add. I said, “No, but if anyone has any questions, I’ll share anything except my weight.” I said it with a laugh and meant it to be kind of a joke. A throw-away line, I thought.
Then I received an email from a writer who asked if I’d meant what I said. She had questions about my relationship with God. This opened an exchange of emails that culminated in one where she wrote that she had asked Jesus into her heart.
I believe that when we are authentic and transparent doors will open for ministry in the most surprising places.
As we read these posts and the depth of them emerges, it seems like this is the direction that the Lord is taking us in the “Please Forgive James” series.
Consider these questions and share your responses with us:
1) Have you ever had an experience like Robin’s? If so, what did it look like?
2) How does authenticity in your relationships with friends invite conversations about your faith?
- Tri
p.s. Tune in tomorrow for a special video in the quest to discover who James is
6 responses so far ↓
Mike // December 4, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I agree, authenticity is key. I only had to dance around the fire in full native headdress plumage and chant at the mouth of the cave to draw the God of the universe out twice. Ok, that never happened more than once.
Put simply, he’s been the one trying to get my attention. When he did, there was no question about his authentic motives. I know he has never not involved himself in my life. I’m glad he is who he says he is.
I can’t say there has been a defining blockbuster event in my life that describes my story of authenticity, but I do know it is filled with tons of mini genuine faith orchestrated moments. It is part of what characterizes me.
I regularly speak about the love of Jesus not because I’m driven to succeed in that arena, but because it is who I am. As a result I’ve been able to pray with co-workers and customers on the job.
I’m not saying this to add a feather to my cap but to say authenticity is respected.
James // December 5, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Delete my prevous entry, I found “the chip”! thanks.
1)I’ve never had an experience quite like Robin’s yet, but I hope to. The genuine nature of Robin’s faith invited another to the same because of her uniqueness,transparency and willingness to be open. Thanks for sharing it Robin.
My journey towards authenticity has been a long one. For years I was a very willing hearer of God’s word but not a willing doer. I lacked discipline in prayer and bible study… in following on, to really know Him. The static nature of my life opened the door to major life failures.
They came like a flood 20 years ago, followed by 10 years of single parenting and 8 years alone. I did a great deal of self examination during those years… first, taking full responsibility for the divorce I had caused. And after that, probing back to my school days when I started a habit of criticism; saying mean spirited things to other children. As God began to open up memories of the hurtful things I’d said to people over the years, I began to weep earnest tears of repentance, asking his forgiveness for each instance. I had always known I was sinful, but now I was owning up to my past mistakes without inwardly holding ANY others even partially responsble. There was no longer a place for “Yeah… but!” in my view of past errors. So you can understand how poignant the sentence “Please forgive James” is to me,even though I’m not that James, for God has forgiven me much and the phrase hits home.
2)A friend who’s been in on my journey toward authenticity is my dear foreign wife of 2 years. Though presently an unbeliever, she’s done more for my grasp of what meekness is than I could have imagined possible. But please understand…our life together was misery for both of us at the onset. She thought she was marrying a man of wordly status, only to discover a poet-handiman-dirt digger who prefers patched Carhartts over new ones. I thought I was marrying a woman hungry to know the Lord, only to discover that the hunger was really for the things of this world. We argued alot, regardless of the fact that neither of us could speak the other’s language well. She wanted bigger and better, to which I’d reply, “you married a man not a house!” As her language abilities improved I found myself at the receiving end of more blatant insults, when it suddenly occured to me that 1) I deserved every unkind word delivered… after all, hadn’t I done the same to all the undeserving ones I’d wounded in the past? How else could I possibly understand how badly it hurt? 2)Father, I forgive my wife, for without you, she just doesn’t know better. 3) Since I do, there’s really no good in letting my feelings get hurt because it only ressurects the old “worn out” model of Jim that’s already been put to death. So little by little, I stopped engaging in our petty wars; learning to be more humble, and seeing a change come over my wife. I’ve learned a bit about humor lately and keeping the dialogue uplifting, expressing thankfulness and generosity. And the girl I married, who first mirrored back my former self to me, is beginning to mirror back kindness and respect. She’s even done a wonderful sewing job on the old Carhartts she once begged me to throw away! :0)
Thank you Lord for my dear wife. Thank you for giving me the person I needed, rather than the one I’d envisioned. Draw her to repentance, faith and a life of serving others. Grant that we can serve in that life together for the remainder of our days. Thank you Jesus. -lw
just me // December 5, 2008 at 1:31 pm
God is such an incredible God! And it is so humbling when he chooses to use us in His plan. I was with a self-described atheist friend when God told me I needed to share with him. So. I told him how much our friendship meant, and how I respected his right to believe as he chose, but I told him in my many years of bedside care as a nurse I had yet to meet a dying atheist, and that God promises “if you look for Me you will find Me”. I told him it is my belief that I was assigned certain patients to care for that were dying, or in some way facing their mortality because I was supposed to share with them, and I always tried to embraced that opportunity. I hope someday in heaven, someone walks up to me and says “I am glad you were my nurse – that’s why I’m here”. Whether it was holding a hand and praying with someone, or saying, “You and I both know you are hours away from your death. I have something very important to share with you if it all right with you.” Hearing is the last sense to go, so even though they were in a coma-like state, I shared what God had put on my heart. My friend was intrigued by what I was saying, and heard the sincerity, openness, compassion, and the non-judgmental genuineness of my words. It is an incredibly humbling feeling when God chooses to use us for His purposes. So my friend began his journey to search for God and began attending church. It was Easter Sunday and he said it was as if a light bulb came on over his head, and the scales suddenly fell away from his eyes and he invited Jesus to be his personal Saviour. My friend is now my best friend, my husband, who at the age of 30, decided to begin his journey to find or disprove God.
Dennis // December 7, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Tri- I’m posting this as you are preaching. Thank you for reaching out through this blog to challange anyone and everyone who is a searcher.
Your points today on the contrasts between those without Christ and those WITH Christ reminds me that the gifts we have to offer others are available to give EVERYDAY. It’s not for others to beg us to tell them about Jesus. It’s up to us to freely give joy to others.
Blog on, brother…..
Den
DennisMansfield.com
Melissa // December 8, 2008 at 10:57 am
As far as seeing my faith bring someone to Christ, so far, it hasn’t happened. Or perhaps I should say that so far, God has chosen to keep me humble by allowing others that privilege. But I do know that by simply living my faith, my roommate is still open, although not receptive, to the idea of God and church. She told me once that while she was very hurt by Christians in the past, she won’t completely throw out the idea of God. Oddly enough, its my own arguments with God that have kept her thinking about this faith concept.
When I say arguments with God, I mean that quite literally. And to be very honest, I think those moments have truly made my faith authentic. Some of our great patriarchs argued with God and I have no doubt that He welcomes honest questions. I should note that God usually wins. (Actually, I’m pretty sure He always wins, its just sometimes I come around to His side so I feel like I had a leg to stand on).
It was one of these moments that made my roommate (and very dear friend) comment on my faith. I hadn’t been listening to her for a few moments. I wanted to vent my frustrations but my venting was purely from selfish motivations. I had been hurt and so I wanted to gossip and be malicious to someone who wasn’t connected with the other person. As I was about to say something, God went “Nope, not talking about it.” The conversation continued something like this.
Me: “Why not?”
God: “Because you’re bringing it up for selfish motivations.”
Me: “Well, what if she brings it up?”
God: “Okay, if she brings it up, you can talk about it.”
Me: “Cool.” pause “But she doesn’t know anything about the situation or that anything happened.”
God: “Funny how that works out.”
Me: “Well, that’s not fair.”
God: “A lot of things aren’t fair.”
Me: “What if I hint at it?”
God: “No.”
Me: “Please?”
God: “No.”
Me: “Why not?”
God: “I said so.”
Me: “You sound like my mother.”
God: “You should listen to her too.”
Me: “Fine, I won’t bring it up.”
It was at the end of this that my roommate finally got my attention. She asked what I was thinking that distracted me and I told her that God and I were arguing because I wanted to talk about things I shouldn’t. She told me that it was statements like those, that made her still leave a window open for God. Because to her, if God allows for discussion, even if He ultimately wins, He’s worth listening to.
Doug // December 8, 2008 at 4:49 pm
First I have to confess I get my Vineyard through the website and not on Sunday morning. Am I still a legal blogger? Thank you to the techs who make this a great site to visit….I had a long conversation with a guy in my Bible study a couple weeks ago about this very topic of authenticity. Many of the things he challenged me on had to do with our mission if we are authentic Christians. We talked about the hungry, suicidal, elderly, addicts and many more so in need of the touch of our Lord. Where I got challenged was in our discussion of our main message to bring to the world. The message that Jesus satisfied God’s justice against us on the cross and we need to repent and stop going our own way. He shared with me a couple of quotes from Spurgeon that went into my head like a hot branding iron because I knew they were right and true. The first on our evangelism:
“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for”
….So as we continued to talk we looked at all the ways we can surrender our lives and be authentic and vulnerable to those around us for the sake of His gospel. How to truly have love and not just an agenda.The second quote we looked at was so helpful to me in this journey because it made me realize how often I am not authentic at all in my view of who God is. Because of that I often run in my own strength( which is a run with no power) instead of his. God is love but he is also wild and dangerous! This quote helped bring me back to a place where I wonderfully tremble at his word and get my image of God from scripture and not my head:
“At the present day, I am afraid that nine people out of ten do not believe
in the God Who is revealed to us in the Bible. I can point you to
newspapers, to periodicals, and also to pulpits by the score in which there
is a new god set up to be worshipped-not the God of the Old Testament; He is
said to be too strict, too severe, too stern for our modern teachers. They shudder at the very mention of the God of the Puritans. If Jonathan Edwards were to rise from the dead, they would not listen to him for a minute; they would say that they had quite a new god since his day. But, brethren, I believe in the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; this is my God, the God Who drowned Pharoah and his host at the Red Sea and moved His people to sing, “Hallelujah!” as He did it; the God Who caused the earth to open and swallow up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and all their company. A terrible God is the God Whom I adore-He is the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, full of mercy,compassion, and grace, tender and
gentle, yet just and dreadful in His holiness and terrible out of His holy places. This is the God Whom we worship, and He Who comes to Him will take Him to be his Instructor, and so shall he learn aright all that he needs to know”.
So do we scream hell fire and brimstone? No, I think we bring the true gospel with humbleness, gentleness and a broken spirit but with NO compromise on truth. Peace and grace to you all as we encourage each other to bring the light of the forgiveness of Christ to the broken world.
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