STORY

A lot of believers in Christ can think back to the time when they first put their hope in Jesus. Remember how excited you felt about that? You wanted to tell people about what had happened in your life.

And as time went by, you met some really cool Christian folks and became friends - hung out together - got in a life group with some of them - maybe a Bible study or two ---- and over time, we kind of lost touch with the people we used to hang with. I mean, we have new lives now and we don’t have as much in common with the old friends anymore, right? It just made sense.

And the longer and longer we were Christians, the fewer number of friends we had who were not Christians -- even though unbelievers worked right next to us for eight hours a day on the job -- even though they maybe lived right next door -- even though we sat next to them in school every day.

When asked who they went to the lake with on the weekend, or who they went to the movies with on a Friday night, most believers said it was with friends from their church. And can we really fault that? Don’t we want that?

Sure. We all need Christian fellowship and community. But - think about it - shouldn’t it be that the longer we are believers and the longer we walk with Christ and the longer we understand the grace of God, the more we would desire others to experience His grace?

It just seems ironic that as we mature in the faith and get to know Scripture better and get to know Jesus better, that - statistically - fewer non-Christians get to experience those things thru relationships with us.

I’m not talking about street witnessing to total strangers; I’m talking about developing relationships with people we already know and have levels of trust with.

And it is at this point that something very strange happens to us. Once, it was natural and exciting to tell people what God had done in our lives, but slowly we begin to see offering hope to others as something the church does - and when I say ‘church,’ I mean the organization, or even the building. We just bring people to the church on a weekend and let the paid people tell them about Christ.

We stop hanging out with non-Christians - we stop going to the movies with them - we start buying little Christian stickers for our vehicles - we make trips to Great America on Christian Day when the Christian-only bands play ... and as one author says: “The transformation is complete; we have become citizens of the bubble.”

And after several years of that, we start becoming like Jonah in the Bible, who ran away from God when God told him to go to the wicked people of Ninevah -- we too stop wanting much to do with those who aren’t following God and, like Jonah, we grow numb to the fact that people all around us need the love and grace of Jesus.

It was Jesus’ pattern to enjoy deep community with His disciples, but then also from time to time to excuse Himself from that little circle of comfort and go in the direction of someone who needed to be loved or shown the way to the Father. So Jesus would often walk into the zone of the unknown and follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit and share the good news of the Kingdom.

And so should we.

“In your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15 ESV)

And be blessed.