Howdy Do! After a relatively long hiatus from the blogging world, I have decided to make a return. It isn’t that my time is any more free than it was when I last posted (though I am arguably less stressed out about my role at my secular job, a field sales manager for a medical device company); I do have a sense, though, that I have stuff to say.
Thing is: There are tons of folks in our lives (and yes, I am talking to you; yes, you…yeah. I am looking at you) who need to hear about the mercy and love of Jesus Christ. There. I said it. And it isn’t that “they need church” (or Church – ask me the difference, if you want); church is a second, third, or subsequent thing they need. And too often, I think we “Church folks” are so busy making sure that everyone is following the rules, that we forget to lead with the love of Christ, whose Father “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).
I’ve always found that next line in the same passage (John 3:17) so interesting: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” And for all the presence of that statement, that Jesus came so that the world “might be saved through Him”, we often hear our Church leaders lead with fire and brimstone, and condemnation.
How did Jesus approach the Samaritan woman at the well? He started a conversation with her. And even when she wasn’t honest with Him, he merely pointed out that He knew the truth of her life. Then, he offered her a different Way: Himself. And her response? She went and told the whole town that she’d met Someone “who told me everything I have done. (John 4:29)”
She was among the first lay evangelists, who shared the Good News of Jesus Christ with other people, “who then began to believe in Jesus because of the word of the woman* who testified, ‘He told me everything I have done.'” It wasn’t some professional preacher who brought those folks to faith in Jesus Christ: it was an outcast woman who’d had five husbands, someone who went to the well at noon in order to avoid her neighbors, someone who ultimately brought many in her town to faith in Jesus…because she was so moved by meeting Jesus, and coming into relationship with Him, that she couldn’t not talk about Him!
Y’all: if a person nobody wanted to deal with, because of her lifestyle, can bring people to the joy and peace of faith in Jesus…why can’t you and I do it? And if she can encounter Him in the normal course of a day’s events, why can’t you and I?
People need to hear about Jesus. They don’t need to hear about all the regulations and rules (those come later, after they have a “why” to go along with the “what” of the Church); they need to hear first the we love them, and that we love them because God loves them. They need to hear about the person of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. First.
Because without Christ, the rest of it is just a really big club with a lot of subordinate organizations and a lot of rules. Without Jesus, it’s really just all about us.
And it ain’t all about us.
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Tall, Bald, and Called 
OK, so…Jesus.
Howdy Do! After a relatively long hiatus from the blogging world, I have decided to make a return. It isn’t that my time is any more free than it was when I last posted (though I am arguably less stressed out about my role at my secular job, a field sales manager for a medical device company); I do have a sense, though, that I have stuff to say.
Thing is: There are tons of folks in our lives (and yes, I am talking to you; yes, you…yeah. I am looking at you) who need to hear about the mercy and love of Jesus Christ. There. I said it. And it isn’t that “they need church” (or Church – ask me the difference, if you want); church is a second, third, or subsequent thing they need. And too often, I think we “Church folks” are so busy making sure that everyone is following the rules, that we forget to lead with the love of Christ, whose Father “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).
I’ve always found that next line in the same passage (John 3:17) so interesting: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” And for all the presence of that statement, that Jesus came so that the world “might be saved through Him”, we often hear our Church leaders lead with fire and brimstone, and condemnation.
How did Jesus approach the Samaritan woman at the well? He started a conversation with her. And even when she wasn’t honest with Him, he merely pointed out that He knew the truth of her life. Then, he offered her a different Way: Himself. And her response? She went and told the whole town that she’d met Someone “who told me everything I have done. (John 4:29)”
She was among the first lay evangelists, who shared the Good News of Jesus Christ with other people, “who then began to believe in Jesus because of the word of the woman* who testified, ‘He told me everything I have done.'” It wasn’t some professional preacher who brought those folks to faith in Jesus Christ: it was an outcast woman who’d had five husbands, someone who went to the well at noon in order to avoid her neighbors, someone who ultimately brought many in her town to faith in Jesus…because she was so moved by meeting Jesus, and coming into relationship with Him, that she couldn’t not talk about Him!
Y’all: if a person nobody wanted to deal with, because of her lifestyle, can bring people to the joy and peace of faith in Jesus…why can’t you and I do it? And if she can encounter Him in the normal course of a day’s events, why can’t you and I?
People need to hear about Jesus. They don’t need to hear about all the regulations and rules (those come later, after they have a “why” to go along with the “what” of the Church); they need to hear first the we love them, and that we love them because God loves them. They need to hear about the person of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. First.
Because without Christ, the rest of it is just a really big club with a lot of subordinate organizations and a lot of rules. Without Jesus, it’s really just all about us.
And it ain’t all about us.
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