I had a great conversation with some friends around a hookah tonight. Of course we jumped all over the place. But at once, one friend shared an excellent observation about faith. His faith specifically, but applicable to all honest faith, I think.

Faith cannot be because of the evidence; otherwise it wouldn’t be faith. But evidence can cause us to stand more firmly in the faith we hold.

I think this is an excellent observation. I didn’t search out the evidence supporting Christ’s lordship then make a logical decision to have faith. Rather, before I really knew what was going on, Christ changed me heart and faith was born. Now, I stand more confidently in my faith knowing that strong evidence also supports it.

I think this also is the trap of street-corner apologetics (so to speak). Souls are not won on the evidence, they’re won on the message.

So kudos to Zach for a thought provoking observation. And on that, lets try and save souls the way God would have us, with His message, rather than our argument.

CS Lewis writes:

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

Convicting sentiment. Could it be that the church today is so ineffective in our world today precisely because she’s so concerned with getting things right in our world?

Concerned so much with the form and function here that she never stops to think about there? There’s a reason the book of Revelation was given. Interesting how little it’s regarded.

I attended a funeral today. I was hired by the family to photograph the occasion. It seems that the family is scattered abroad and many members couldn’t return for the funeral. So they thought the best option would be to document the service.

The funeral held was for an elderly woman—a sister in Christ—and a mother. The occasion was bittersweet. Waves of remorse rolled right along side waves of joy.

During the service, a close family member rightly used the occasion to preach the Gospel. By that I mean he used the opportunity as a springboard to present the hearers with an invitation to Christ. He did not go into great exegetical detail, or even follow any specific biblical thought. But the intentions were obvious and the message was clear.

This reminded me that birth and death are really the only things that give us humans any real context for existence. It is a very peculiar thing to be alive—to exist at all. One day we don’t exist anywhere, nor has anyone here even thought of us. Then all of a sudden we do exist, until one day our body dies and as far as the human mind knows on its own, we go back to not existing.

Existing is taken for granted; most rarely even think of how weird it really is. It becomes only natural to see here and now as the end all be all of everything. It’s not hard to see how the spiritual can be pushed hard to the back of a persons mind.

It’s only when faced with birth and death that people’s eyes really forced open to the context of our existence. It’s in those moments especially that people’s hearts seem to be the softest and we would be fools to neglect such an opportunity.

In Colossians 4:5 we’re taught to “make the most of every opportunity.” How much more life’s most crucial opportunities?

I hope that at my own funeral the discussion will be less about me and more about what Jesus has done for me. And, that the opportunity in other’s lives will be seized to preach His Gospel of grace and love and forgiveness to them as well.

James 4:4 says,

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

In the past couple weeks this verse has become a bit haunting to me. I know that it doesn’t speak directly to my situation, but the principals apply nonetheless.

As I’ve been developing a discipline in prayer of the past couple of months, one of the things I’ve tried to make a priority is prayer for the lost. Specifically individuals in or around my life that don’t know Jesus yet. I think this has begun to deepen the seriousness of their plight in my heart and mind. When I’m around them, their spiritual condition is more on the forefront of my mind than it was in the past.

The trouble is, though my mind is there, my actions aren’t following yet.

It was recently that I was out with a handful of believers and about as many non-believers. At some point during the evening, I looked around and noticed that we weren’t too much different from them. At least not obviously. I don’t mean to imply these were particularly rough people. They were friendly, nice enough and weren’t even especially vulgar. But they weren’t loving either.

Neither were we.

And that’s the problem. Not especially loving to each other, to them or obviously to anyone else. I can’t help but wonder how we expect questions about “the hope that we have” when we’re not even obviously different.

Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we dawn exclusively black and white attire, with big hats and belt buckles. Nor am I really suggesting that there should be frivolous encouragements thrown around. I’m simply saying that our choices and actions should be shining with love for each other. That is how the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples–heck that’s how I became a believer.

I can’t help but feel like God is often working in spite of his Church, rather than through it.

It seems that people often read verses in the bible about the way God works through believers and assume that it’s true of them. But simply because the bible says that God does it, doesn’t mean he always does it. And, judging my what I’ve seen throughout most of my walk, in me and in my brothers and sisters, it seems unlikely that those verses are talking about us!

I would like to see, through prayer and Spirit lead sanctification, my own choices and my own attitudes, along with the whole church, shift. So that when the world sees us they will actually have a reason to wonder.

A Faith Worth Sharing is a book worth reading. Although, it was far from the best (as literature goes), I can confidently say that it is among the most genuinely encouraging books that I have ever read. Not because it said a bunch of stuff I wanted to hear either. It didn’t.

A Faith Worth Sharing by John C. Miller is, as the subtitle suggests, a book chronicling one man’s experiences sharing Jesus with an array of different people in many situations. But it’s much more than that. It’s also Miller’s confession of his own sin and God’s gracious working through his desire to see Christ’s kingdom spread to sanctify him as well.

A major theme throughout the book had to do with the contrast of a Christian’s own spiritual health versus his effectiveness in evangelism. Miller continually returns to the idea that a person must be truly humble in spirit to share the Gospel with another person. He says in quoting D. T. Niles, “Evangelism is on beggar telling another beggar where to find food”, then he adds to this sentiment, “…then eating it with them.”

It’s clear that at the core of Miller’s understanding of evangelism is a heart of humility that personally understands his beggar-dom. In the overflow of joy that has come from grace received, he wants to implore that others would go and receive that grace as well. For Miller, evangelism means laying yourself bare as a sinner before sinners and confessing what the Lord has done. I can’t disagree with him.

Unfortunately for all of us, Miller died just before finishing this book. The first nine chapters were written on his death bed and the final chapter was added by his wife. After spending nine chapters getting to know John, the final chapter from his wife proves particularly powerful.

After finishing A Faith Worth Sharing, I’ve found myself more aware of my neighbor’s need for the Lord’s grace. More aware of my own need to pray for them and to speak to them concerning the grace that I’ve received and that I hope they will also receive. And, perhaps most importantly, I am more aware of my need to continually apply the medicine of the Gospel of Jesus to my own life.

I have found a great deal of encouragement in believing that when I can’t see God working, he is still working. A Faith Worth Sharing is an extremely easy read. I highly recommend it to just about any Christian I encounter. You won’t be disappointed.

A few days ago I started reading A Faith Worth Sharing. A short book written the late John C. Miller about the lifelong classroom in which he learned to share Christ with those around him. In the most recent chapter, he had this short sentiment that stuck out to me.

“Many Christians fail to share their faith because the yare trying to do it perfectly and since they cannot do it perfectly, they remain silent. But what [I have learned] is that God is pleased to use imperfect people like me.”

This has resonated with my experience. As a younger Christian, there were many opportunities I let slip by because I feared that I would botch it. But scripture has made clear that God loves to use the ill-equipped to do awesome things. God will work in imperfect situations and our own imperfect attempts. Therefore, we should not stifle our excitement over our Lord simply because we haven’t come to the epotme of preparedness. We should shower those around us with that excitement, without fear of botching it.

Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God is bite sized insight with bible-sized encouragement. As an evangelistic tool to the generation burned by the church, it’s a gem. To the hungry believer, there are some hiccups.

The Prodigal God attempts to redefine what most understand as the Christian life using the popularly misunderstood parable of the prodigal son. The book is short and sweet. Seriously short. Like, around 130 small, devotional-sized pages. The book is broken down into seven chapters. The first two chapters deal with a brief exegesis of the text using historical context. The remaining chapters seek to use that exegesis in redefining sin, what it means to be lost and what it means to hope.

Keller does make some powerful insights into the meaning of the text, such as the direction of this parable at the Pharisees who were listening, and the bottom line: sin is not only wanton living, and forgiveness is not universal.

Throughout his text, Keller describes two types of lost people in our world. The younger brother–the loose, liberal, flagrant sinner. And, the older brother. The religious and self-righteous. These become the labels for what he uses throughout the whole book to categorize people–either an older brother, or a younger brother. Unfortunately, this is where things become a bit unstable.

Keller fails to make clear whether or not a “younger brother” or an “older brother” can in fact be true believers. There are times when it appears that he applies these labels to Christians and other times when it appears he applies them only to the lost. There is very little continuity and it causes confusion in some of his points. A concise definition would have been helpful.

Another mishap appears to be in his attempt to keep things simple. When trying to cram everyone into one of the two groups, older brothers or younger brothers, he misses people who truly don’t fit into one single category. This also may cause some to scratch their head and have difficulty understanding how they might react.

However, in an evangelistic sense, this text does a great job of explaining that strict morality is not the solution to sinful man. The two extremes are not sinful living and holy living. They are sinful living (regardless of the brand of sin) and Gospel living. This should truly be an encouragement to anyone fearful of Christianity because of their experiences in the past.

All in all, The Prodigal God was good. It was no Reason for God, but it was good none the less. And, in the right application, it may easily be the tool that God uses to soften some poor lost heart.