Peter's Dilemma
One morning this past week, the Lord
brought to my mind this illustration, and I felt compelled to share it with you
as others in the body of Christ. I had
been reading in the Gospels earlier that morning, and the events of Acts
Chapter 2 in the Bible came to my mind- the day of Pentecost. I encourage you to read the chapter for
yourself, but for the moment, here’s a brief summary: After the one hundred and
twenty believers were filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter addressed the crowd,
explaining the phenomenon to the people of Jerusalem, and began preaching to
them. The end of the chapter tells us
that about three thousand people were added to the number of believers.
Now
for the illustration. Let’s take the
disciple Peter and place him in today’s twenty-first century. To start with, let’s have fun and get an
image in our mind of what Peter might look like on an everyday occasion if he
lived nowadays. He’d probably be wearing
blue jeans, not the modern fashion statement of skinny jeans, I doubt they’d be
name-brand Levis, and his pants wouldn’t be riding low like a gangster’s. He’d probably have a pair of sneakers on, not
an expensive brand and probably not brand-new; the white might be a little
dirt-stained, and he probably had to replace the shoelaces a few weeks ago, but
the shoes still have good wear left in them.
I see him wearing a regular plain-colored t-shirt, and no, not a
name-brand either like American Eagle nor an Under Armor shirt that emphasizes
his biceps. Brown hair cut nicely… not
shaggy long hair or a Mohawk. He combs
it neatly in the morning, but besides that, he probably doesn’t do much with
it. I can’t picture Peter with gelled
spikes in his hair. Over all, his
appearance is well-kept since his body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but
very unassuming so as not to draw notice to himself but to Christ in him. He’s bold with a passion to reach people with
the message of the Gospel, and he’s excited and determined to win the world for
Jesus. He’s on fire for God.
All
right, now that we have our mental image of Peter, let’s watch as he ministers
to the crowd outside of a Wal-Mart supercenter in the same flat-out,
straight-forward approach that he addresses the crowd in Acts Chapter 2. Here’s how I imagine it to go: To start his day, Peter decides to first just
stand outside of the grocery store’s automatic doors and minister to the
shoppers coming in and out. His first
approach is to simply start stopping people and telling them the Good News and
how much Jesus loves them, proclaiming the Gospel. Nobody really pays him much attention and
just walks by, some without even glancing his way. They think he’s just another one of those
typical goody-two-shoes Christians.
Next, he tries passing out Christian tracts. Whether they listened to him or not, this way
he could place something in their hand for them to read later at least, he
reasons. Some people think he’s trying
to sell something and hurry by, holding up a hand as a refusal and muttering a
“No thank you, I’m not interested.” Some
of them politely accept it with a smile and a nod, but when he turns his back,
he sees with his peripheral vision as they toss it into the trashcan before
moving on their way. Others don’t even
have the decency to try to throw it away without his notice and toss it into
the trash while he stands there watching.
And still some deposit it into a shopping buggy for “someone who needs
it more.”
It’s
time to be bolder for his Savior, he decides.
It’s time to get involved in people’s lives and make a difference. With that new mentality, he approaches a
woman who appears to be struggling pushing her shopping cart and managing her
wandering young children as they all cross the parking lot. He courteously offers to help her by pushing
the cart, but she hurries away as though she’s scared of him and shoots him an
unnecessary glare over her shoulder as she gathers her children closer to her,
perhaps suspecting him of being a kidnapper.
Next
he approaches an elderly man who is passing by in his wheelchair. He asks if he can pray for the man’s healing,
knowing with full confidence that the Lord could make the man walk again, but
the older man rejects the proposal, insisting that the doctors said he would
never walk again in his life. “These old
legs just don’t work anymore, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it,” he
insists adamantly. As the man wheels
into the store, a young woman hurries out the automatic doors just when one of
the plastic bags she carries breaks, and her grocery items spill onto the
sidewalk and begin to roll into the crosswalk of the parking lot. What better way to demonstrate Christ’s love
for this girl than through an act of service and aid, Peter decides as he sees
this. So Peter commences to help the
girl just as he would his own sister, only the young lady eagerly begins flirting
with him, much to his surprise and utter shock.
He then decides it would be a wise decision to wait until his good
friend John and his brother Andrew arrive to join him before he tries ministering
to women again. Rather, he directs his
attention to only men for the time being.
After this
dismaying incident, two young men, obviously gay and proud of it, pass by
toward the store entryway. Concerned for
their eternal futures, Peter takes it upon himself to approach them and
confront them with their deeds. One of
the guys begins cussing at him and tells him that it’s none of his business,
warning him to stay out of the situation.
Peter continues pleading with them to repent of their sin and to accept forgiveness
and salvation in Christ Jesus, reminding them that their actions together are
an abomination to the Lord, but the young men refuse to listen and continue on
their way.
Several more
witnessing attempts follow with a frustrated man showing Peter a gun he carried
in his pocket, another offended man threatening to call the police, and another
entering into a heated rage and accusing Peter of being a liar and “nothing
more than a hypocritical Christian.”
Each failed attempt grieved Peter’s heart to see the condition of the
world in which he lived. Clearly,
Peter’s approach to evangelism that he had used in the Bible times Jerusalem
was not successful anymore. Where were
the three thousand converts in his modern-day ministry?
In this
illustration, Peter has a dilemma, but it isn’t only Peter’s dilemma… it’s our
dilemma as the church and body of believers.
Peter had the right heart and the right motive in the example I
described for you above, but his ministry efforts weren’t working. Just take a look around you the next time
you’re in the grocery store or the workplace or the school cafeteria, and
you’ll realize that our witnessing efforts aren’t working either. So what’s the problem? What went wrong? Why didn’t Peter’s approach from the New
Testament work in today’s society? This
illustration may have been a bit humorous, and yes, it was only my opinion of
what such an incident might look like, but truthfully, this account probably
wasn’t too far off from reality. Peter
in this illustration represents the average man- each of us individuals, and we
often find ourselves in Peter’s shoes when we attempt to go into the world and
share the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ. But why?
Why are the results we receive so different from those that Peter witnessed
in response to his address to the crowd on the day of Pentecost?
Well, a problem
like this takes evaluation. Are people’s
hearts just more hardened nowadays than they were back then? Is today’s society just different than the
society of Jerusalem in Peter’s time?
Maybe so, and yes, our society probably is different to an extent,
but human nature doesn’t change with cultures and eras. So that can’t be the main problem; I honestly
don’t believe that the blame can fall entirely upon society alone.
Here are a few
suggestions I have for an answer: 1. First
things first… are Christians today really and truly followers of Jesus
Christ? Do we honestly believe
everything we say we do? Or do we just
know the dialogue and rhetoric of religiosity and are adept at playing the part,
but are really like “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but
on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean”? (Mt
23:27) How can we expect others to
believe something we ourselves don’t even believe? 2. Have we truly been filled by the Holy
Spirit and empowered by Him? Have we
experienced the day of Pentecost in our own lives? 3. We may be devoted followers of Christ and
be Holy Spirit-filled Christians, but do we have genuine and unquestioning
faith? The kind of faith that in Matthew
17 Jesus says can move mountains? If we
don’t have that kind of faith, we can’t exactly expect to see miracles of faith
occur, can we? 4. Are we devoted
followers of Christ or only “sometimes Christians”? As believers, we are called to stand apart
from the world, to be in the world but not of the world. We are to be the light in the darkness and
the salt of the earth (Mt 5:13-16), but if our lives reflect our faith only
sometimes and we hypocritically live to fit in with the world at other times,
then why should others want to believe in our faith if they don’t see any
difference between a life with God and a life without Him? Don’t be the kind of one-and-off Christian
that gives Christianity and Christ a bad name.
And 5. Are we truly ministering from the Lord’s prompting? Sometimes I wonder if we get so pepped up and
excited about going out there into the world and winning all those lost souls
for Christ that we move out of our own decisions rather than waiting on the
Lord and seeking His will, and therefore, He’s no longer at the center of our
mission. For example, perhaps in haste, we
decide the most effective way to reach a family with the Gospel is to show them
the love of Christ through meeting a financial need in their lives, but maybe
His way was for us to show them the humility and servant’s heart of Jesus by simply
offering to run an errand for them on a busy day in their schedule or playing
taxi-driver and driving their kids to all their sports practices one day. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a
passion to share the Gospel with others- quite the contrary, in fact- and our
ideas for witnessing might be excellent avenues for ministry, but perhaps unless
we seek His guidance, the people’s hearts will not be prepared to receive the
message we have to bring forth and the light we’re trying to shine into their
lives and into their homes.
With that said,
here’s a proposition summed up of the points above where I feel the problem may
lie: either we aren’t really Christians, we aren’t empowered by the Holy
Spirit, we aren’t believers of genuine faith, we don’t faithfully live out our
faith, or we get so caught up in the zealousness of witnessing that we fail to
seek the Lord’s guidance and therefore go forth without the preparation and
presence of God. I’m not sure where you
find yourself in that list, that’s something only you and God can answer, but I
urge you to give it some consideration along with me as we seek together as the
body of Christ God’s guidance and direction on how to best share His love and
His hope of salvation with the world today.
The world in which we live needs Peters and Pauls to rise up in the
homes, the grocery stores, the shops, the restaurants, the banks, the gas
stations, the offices, the schools, the governments, the cities, the counties,
the states, the nations… the whole earth, wherever the Lord has placed
you. Where you find yourself in this
season of your life is not an accident, the people you interact with day-to-day
is not coincidence. The Lord has placed
you where you are for a reason, and He’s looking to raise up a radical follower
there who will make a stand for Him and the righteous things of God.
“‘Go
into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” Mark 16: 15
~We’ve all
heard of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,” but heart-chords? I was struggling to decide what to name my
blog. I wanted it to be a name that was
both creative and meaningful. As I
pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic guitar where it stands in my bedroom,
and the Lord reminded me that our hearts- our lives- are instruments. They are constantly in song, but what melody
our heart plays is each of our own decisions.
They can play a melody for praise or for entertainment. A musician selects his songs according to his
audience. So do we. Whether our audience is the world or the Lord,
our song will be different. This blog is
designed to first, increase my awareness in finding God and His guidance in my
every day and second, to share the music lessons He teaches me in tuning my
heart to learn the chords of praise He longs to play on my
heart-instrument. Music is a powerful
tool. Use it for His glory. “He
put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in
the Lord.” Psalm 40:3
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