We don't MAKE Jesus Lord. He is Lord. Of course He is Savior and Lord. I don't seem to follow what is being said here. But, just because He is Lord doesn't mean that we act like He is Lord. Fortunately for us He understands this and loves us any way.
I think there is a big danger in thinking that we somehow have a handle on doing what it takes to tow this elusive Lordship line and judge others who we don't think are getting it. When we do that we are essentially trying to make the Law Lord over those whom we don't preceive as walking in our preconceived notion of obedience, instead of telling them Jesus is Lord. When we make disciples like this we often make them twice the sons of hell as we, ourselves, are.
We stand in judgement of sinners all the time and drive them away from the love of God. When we do manage to lead them to Christ, we make their strict adherence to Law almost a prerequisite. This is wrongheaded.
I talk with the unchurched all over the country daily and the very biggest single problem they inadvertantly have with the church is that they see them building 30 and 40 million dollar towers of Babel all over the countryside, making the "Look at Us" statement, when there is poverty all around them, drug abuse, broken homes, people dying of AIDS, small handsful of the faithful missionaries such as the ones just killed in a drive-by over in Iraq while comapsssionately working to restore water to the people over there, when, in reality, there should have been more of us over ther than over here in church last Sunday. But, we can't do that because we can't give but a small fraction of our tithes to meet any real need, because most of it goes to pay the mortgage on some monsterous edifice.
That is the single largest stumbling block that I encounter--almost daily--in my effort to help people find Jesus. Such mentality does not speak of the Lordship of Christ in the minds of the lost or in the minds of anyone who really stops to consider it. We need to become less concerned with real estate and more concerned with real people and real lives. There is a whole lot of hurtin' goin' on out here and it seems like there is less money and fewer servants of Christ available to do anything about it.
We need more ministries like Keith Green had. He kept renting and buying up homes to house the homeless who he was leading to Jesus. He didn't worry about them getting their act together. They just hopped on the band wagon and got involved with helping others , along with Keith, Melody and all. None of these people were taught any kind of head knowledge at the onset of the miinistry--there was little time for it. They were too busy being the hands and feet of Jesus to those in need. In doing that they WERE getting it. They were living out the true Gospel and the rest all began to make sense. They had it in their hearts long before there was anything in their heads; and to my way of thinking, isn't that just like the Lord?
Yet those same people often went on to become one of the most powerful witnesses of the Gospel according to Jesus in the last century.
Once I am able to remove that stumbling block, once the unsaved realize that the self-centered mentality of so much of the church is foreign to the way of Christ, I seldom have any problem leading them to Him. And when they embrace Him, there is some real substance to their salvation, because they are compelled to go out there and love people into the Kingdom.
I have gone down the same delusional roads as the rest of institutionalism in my day with the same dismal results. But, since I've had my eyes opened and my heart broken, I seldom have anyone turn down the offer of salvation.
Evangelism fails because it is reduced to a trail of tracts along the way by the relentless fingerpointing and actionless words of the self-righteous. Brothers and sisters in Jesus, the lost need to know they are loved and accepted unconditionally. They already know what's wrong with them, they are looking for a God and His followers who will accept them without strings and love them inspite of their struggles, setbacks, and indescretions. When we begin to do that, the bondage of those iniquities will eventually be broken as their sorrows are traded for the Joy of The Lord.
VERY well said, and you definitely hit the right vein.
