With Eyes of Love

I was introduced to a young man at church yesterday by the pastor.  We began to talk and it turned into a significant conversation. He has been part of YWAM excursions into other nations and has received some training by significant names such as Reinhardt Bonke on evangelism crusades and other large meetings. But now his heart is for individual persons and to be functioning as an evangelist to bring people to the Lord personally. He told me of his experiences of him and another man going into economically depressed areas of the city. I sensed how much he really cared for those people and longed for them to know how Jesus can change their lives for the better. 

But despite what looked like a good beginning with about five men they met on the streets, it never went anywhere. The men they spoke with initially didn’t all come the next time they had arranged to meet. My new friend was somewhat discouraged but ready to find out how to make it work next time.  And so we migrated over to two big comfy leather chairs in the lobby set up for folks wanting to chat and we talked until just about everyone had left the church and then we stood in the parking lot for a while more.  There is so much to talk about in the Lord!

He had mentioned being an introvert, which tells me he would be more comfortable on a one-to-one situation or a few persons than in a crusade. This led to talking about how some of the people he’s wanting to minister the Lord to might also feel. How can he make them comfortable with what he might want to share with them, especially if what he’s saying is new to them? What would cause them to begin to trust him to even begin a friendship?  In the case of the few he met who didn’t show up for the next meeting, he had told them, “Let’s get together again for a bible study.”  Now mind you, we’re talking about a really poor section of town. What was a “bible study” likely to mean to those folks?

Consider what ‘study’ anything would mean to them:  School, right? Good chance most of them dropped out of school having failed or were totally disinterested in what they considered boring teachers had to say.  Possibly in some cases, they can’t even read very well. I know I’m stereotyping here, but we’re talking about severely economically challenged inner city folks.  Saying something like “Let’s get together for a bible study” would just seem like what they would have zero interest in. They are using up a lot of energy just dealing with daily issues and a bible study is just another thing that they anticipate failing at, something to give them more rules they can’t keep. That’s most people’s idea of Bible study until they get to know who Father God really is through Jesus. They're likely thinking of do’s and don’ts from a God whose standards they know they can’t meet.  

Someone doesn’t have to be in a poor inner-city situation though to relate to feeling this way about God. I’m speaking in extremes here but how many people are actually interested in a good intellectual discussion on the bible when they’re really hungry for food, or strung out on drugs, or they are in the middle of a divorce or just lost their only source of income, or their kids are in trouble and they don’t know what to do? Or for that matter, there just is no one who cares enough to look them in their eyes with eyes of love that say they care, or who will give them a hug, no matter what they may look or smell like. These things could apply anywhere, not just the inner-city. 

What people need is to experience the love of God.  We all need that!  We may have a quest to get people saved, to bring them to salvation because we ourselves know how good and safe and wonderful it is to belong to the Lord, but Jesus wants us to make love our quest first. It's not a matter of our performance, it's a matter of being like Him! I suggest doing so will result in the rest falling into place. The Lord will then lead us to be doing what He’s put in each of our your hearts to do, what He’s created each of us for.  It starts with getting in touch at a deep level with Jesus’ love for people, for individual persons, not just people in general - including His love for you personally. May I suggest taking a read through 1 Corinthians 12:1-8a, the love chapter, and thank the Lord as you make your way down that love-list.  By thanking Him, I don’t mean a perfunctory saying of the words “Thank you, Lord.”  I mean really relating to Him yourself and letting Him respond to you as you express a thankful heart to Him.  And I’m not talking about doing a “bible study” with yourself, I’m talking about getting in touch deep inside yourself with the Jesus who brings the Father’s love to you this way. 

We’ve all experienced God's love for us personally on different levels if we’re His. But there's always so much more. How about His faithfulness to be there for you, no matter what? He has known your innermost secrets and yet never once spoken or conveyed words of judgement or condemnation to you, there's only acceptance and tender-hearted love, even if He disciplined you for a while. Are you aware that once you repent of something He never brings it up to you again, because He doesn’t keep an account of your wrong doings? How long suffering is He with us always. If you ever feel condemned by God, that you’ve hopelessly failed Him, that’s not the voice of the Father you’re hearing; it’s the voice of the Accuser, the devil. Don’t listen to him. Turn to the Lord, repent where you need to, and fall into the loving arms of Jesus who always forgives.  Love isn’t so much a feeling as it is coming to know the faithfulness and kindness of our God. Sometimes it’s also about new revelations of His majesty. 

Yesterday during worship in church I experienced something not new to me but “new” in the sense of awesome in the fresh revelation it always brings. Jesus lives inside of us, right? Get in touch with Him within you and worship as if from Him. By that I mean, worship as if you are one with Him, not just you yourself worshipping – worship as if you are Jesus as He would have worshipped His Father while on earth and the Holy Spirit is likely to share with you some very precious insights between the Father and the Son.  But this time for me it was more than that.  I don’t recall the song we were even singing exactly but the worship leader began to speak about the Father, the very thing I was experiencing. Through the words and the worship what opened up to me was the unfathomable love Jesus had for His Father, His absolute trust in His goodness.  And here's the "more" part: I had the sense of the profound unity and satisfaction, the great sense of accomplishment of Jesus with Abba the rescue of the world and how They had done it together!

Words are always so inadequate when trying to explain things of the Spirit. But being in touch with Yeshua’s worship of the Father from within yourself will open up to you perhaps a deeper worship – Jesus’ worship and oneness with His Father. Yesterday’s revelation was that I suddenly had an awareness at a level I hadn’t known before of that the love of Jesus was entirely for His Father and all the rest came out of that love relationship between Jesus and His Abba.

I was briefly with an old friend when I was in Israel recently. He has been in an evangelistic ministry on the streets of Israel for over thirty years. I hadn’t seen him in a number of years but I was struck with the love that poured out of his eyes when we met again.  Joy flooded his face and permeated his smile, at me and others as I watched him, even when he was interrupted by someone who was sure he only wanted to hear what they had to say. He wasn’t annoyed. Instead love just oozed out of this man. He’s taken a lot of persecution while preaching the gospel on the streets of Tel Aviv over the years, but all he’s got to give is love. His words were so surrendered to the God he loves I wanted to climb inside of his heart and know Him the way He does. 

What drew people to Jesus wasn’t just the miracles, or the loaves and fishes, but what He said that made sense to them. He spoke to them in ways they could relate to: seed planting, sheep tending, losing and finding coins…. He talked to them in their language, even though He could no doubt have discoursed on doctrinal issues way beyond what any learned Pharisee could have. He related to them where they were. His love was seen and heard and brought acceptance to them in the familiar circumstances of their lives. But some of our ways of attempting to bring people to Him don't seem to match up to His ways, as I see it. 

And while I'm on the subject, mind if I share a few concerns on evangelism?  I’m not inclined to think the Lord meant for us to feel satisfied that we’ve done our job if people just recite a prayer after us after we've given them the "God has a wonderful plan for your life" abbreviated evangelism spiel. With little coming from them in spontaneous heart-felt response to God, what does that tell them about how they are to relate to Him? That's not to say that some actually do get no-kidding really saved this way, but on the whole, if they are introduced to Him with a ‘canned’ speech, how does that teach them that they can talk to God naturally? Its not a good intro to Him as I see it. Another thing that troubles me, while I’m sharing all this. Do we tell people they’re going to heaven because of the repeating of a few sentence as do some gospel presentations without any introduction to the requirement to walk holy before the Lord?  But even then, holiness is not something taught, it’s caught. It’ll be rules and have-to’s if they don’t see it modeled in love, first for the Lord, and then toward others because we largely live out our love for God through our relationships. 

If hearts aren’t touched somehow, then the words of our presentation may sound promising while we’re talking to them, but do they stick? Jesus taught His men how to reach others through discipleship. And discipleship should be about relationship. The early church met house to house in relationships that undoubtedly functioned as a form of discipleship by those who had walked with Jesus or the sharing and the caring for one another that took place wouldn’t have happened as it did. Did you ever think of how He turned one of the Sons of Thunder and into the apostle of His love? 

Real discipleship isn’t a weekly class for an hour or two.  It’s what my brother and I once learned from a man who gave us his time and his heart as we followed him around for a while. He simply said, “Welcome to my life” and we spent a short season of our lives with him but it was a game-changer for us and I’ve never forgotten the difference that experience and he made in our lives. 

What if each one of us welcomed into our lives one other person. And then a while later your disciple learned from you and did the same thing. Multiplication in Kingdom math would exceed what 1+1 does naturally. Here’s how it works:  You’re the 1. Let’s say you disciple two other people in a given period of time.  That’s 1+2 =3.   In time you and your two disciples are each discipling two other folks; that’s the 3 of you now discipling six others. That’s 3+6=9.  Then the 9 of you are each discipling another set of two folks: 9+18=27, and on it goes. What if most people in your fellowship did that? If you all had someone into whose life you are imparting what you know of the Lord including just being their friend?  Let’s say 30 people are discipling two people a year who then go on to disciple two others, etc.  I’m terrible at math and maybe I wouldn’t get the numbers right, but I figure that’s 810 people being led into maturity in the Lord. That’s maximum church growth not just in numbers but in solid relationship and commitment.  Such discipleship relationships generally continue throughout life as friendships in the Lord, which is how the Lord intended them to be.  I don’t know about you, but that gets me pretty excited:  Doing the stuff of the Kingdom!  Yeah!! 

I will also say that such relationships will also cause you to be sure you’re right with God, and with men, lest you misrepresent the Lord to your disciples.  God set it up that way so that we are always aware of how our walk with the Lord affects others. That’s not a burden, that’s a security built into the ways of the Kingdom; we love others and want only good for them so we live accordingly. Discipleship works both ways, for the disciplee and the discipiler to the benefit of both. Befriend someone this way and your life will be all the richer for it.  We can all invest in the lives of someone else with whom we can share how we live our lives in the Lord.  If you don’t feel ready, ask the Lord to make you ready. Clean up your life – for the sake of someone else. It’ll bring you more joy than you can imagine.

Jesus said to His disciples early on in their relationship, “Follow Me and I’ll make you fishers of men.”  I have often wondered, if we aren’t fishing, are we really following?  The young man that I met yesterday is surely fishing, but he wasn’t using the right bait.  Love is the bait, not bible studies, not first off anyway. Relationship building comes first if we want to see changed lives. The words of the gospel without somehow conveying the love of the gospel isn’t really the gospel. Just saying “Jesus loves you,” or “God loves you” is so abstract to someone who doesn’t know what real love which they can trust means. And that applies to all levels of society.  It takes loving people to convey His love to others. Jesus said to “pursue love” (1 Cor. 14:1).  It’s a good place to start – for yourself, and those whose lives you will touch for Him and for eternity.