THINKING ABOUT TRANSFORMING THE WORLD? DON’T!

Have you ever thought about making a difference? Or maybe you have big dreams of transforming the world. Perhaps you are a follower of Jesus, and you feel that God is calling you to do big things with your life. If I could give you just one word of advice, “Don’t!”

In the eighth chapter of The Book of Acts, a man named Philip (one of Jesus’ disciples) is called by the Angel of the Lord to get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to the desert Gaza. Philip was living in a big city, near the best shopping, the best restaurants, you name it he had it at his feet. Philip was also a part of a vibrant growing church; The church of Samaria was increasing daily, lives were being changed and people were being transformed. As a pastor, those are the kind of moments I live for. There is nothing better than seeing lives changed and people transformed, and Philip was getting to see this every day. Philip had it good! He was a part of a church where everyone shared in common, and not one person went without. Why would anyone want to leave such a good thing?

Consider your own life, you likely have some really good things going for you.  What you need to know is, if you really want to do great things with your life there is a chance that those “good things” might not be  good anymore.

The Angel of the Lord speaks to Philip, “Get UP!” and “Go.” And Phillip, “got up and went.”

We may not be called to travel thousands of miles, but we are at very least called to get out of the lazy boy from time to time and go out into our community… And as we go day by day, we are called to take with us the good news of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes the road we travel is a familiar one, well paved and easy to maneuver, but most often we are called like Philip to take the road less traveled; You see there were two roads to Gaza, and led by the Holy Spirit Philip takes the toughest road; And as Philip goes he meets an Ethiopian traveling home who was a convert to the Jewish faith. The Ethiopian was hungry for God’s word and he couldn’t wait to get home before he began to read the writings of the prophet Isaiah, saying,

 “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before it’s shearer, so He does not open His mouth. In His humiliation justice was denied Him. Who will describe His generation? For His life is taken from the earth.”

Once again, we read that Philip was told to “Go” and once again, Philip “went.” Keep in mind at this point in our story that Philip has left the comfort of his home, his family and his friends. He is now traveling down a rough road where he sees a man from a completely different background, and who also held a high position of great authority.
What I am attempting to show you is that the two men could not have been more different. They had very little in common; Perhaps the only similar quality was they were bound by the tie which binds each of us together and that is a need for salvation which comes only through Jesus the Christ.

As Philip runs up to this man who was nothing like him, he hears him reading the Scriptures; Philip simply and perhaps boldly ask, “do you understand what you’re reading?” To which the man replies, “How can I unless someone guides me…”

We live in a world today full of people who have little to no guidance… All the time I meet people who say they are atheists, agnostic, or spiritual, but when you talk to them they are just confused; and I don’t blame them. We live in a consumer culture; What this means is that we have been taught that if we don’t like one church, just walk a mile down the street and you can join a new one; or perhaps even more telling of our culture is that people have started to believe that they can create their own religions. Today our world believes that we can take a little from the Christian faith, a little from the Hindu faith, a little from the Jewish faith, etc. And I am not saying there are not things to be learned from others, but what I am saying is that a person cannot be a Christian and a Muslim. I guess they would be called “A Christlim” or a “mustian.”

You know as well as I do that you can call yourself anything you want to, If you want to call yourself a pumpkin and a marshmallow, or a pumpkinmellow, you can but it doesn’t make it true. But our consumer culture says that we can have it all. And with all the many choices our people walk into the giant faith Wal-Mart and come out saying, I just couldn’t decide. There was no one inside who seemed to be able to explain any of it to me. I guess I don’t believe in anything.

The sad part about those who go shopping around from religion to religion is that they are earnestly looking for a home, a place to belong, but when there is no one to help them, and so many choices they walk out frustrated; and it’s not always that they don’t believe in God, it’s that they don’t think that God believes in them.

What people need is someone to guide them. We are not likely to reverse the negative effects of our consumeristic culture overnight, maybe not ever; so what we need in our churches are people who are willing to work in the faith super market.

What we need are people when asked to lead, they get up and go!

We need to Rethink what it means to witness and realize that people are no longer coming into the church to hear the good news; People are in the coffee shops, in the malls, in the restaurants and in the supermarkets, all of them are looking for something; I believe the Church has what they are looking for, what they need!

This is where the post gets tough. Most of us church going types walk out of our church buildings on Sunday, and head into our homes or to places where we feel comfortable, but God is not calling you or me to be comfortable, he’s calling us to be faithful.

He’s calling us to go!

Like Philip we are called to take the good news to unusual people, in unusual places.

You may be called to go to places you have never imagined yourself going.

You may have to leave family and friends, and perhaps the scariest part of all is when you take the gospel to the most unusual people in the most unusual corners of this community, you may witness the power of God, by His Holy Spirit, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ in ways you could have never imagined.

What you may find is that God is using you and your life and your testimony to affect the lives of others; and that’s a scary place to be in. To know that your witness can change lives and transform communities that’s quite a responsibility. Very few of us want this kind of responsibility, this type of pressure; or the humiliation that comes from realizing that there is one living in you that is greater than yourself.

It’s not a comfortable place to be in.

I told you at the beginning, not to witness because when you do lives will change and communities will be transformed, and the life that will surely change will be your own. If you are happy with the way things are going, if you like the status quo, just stay, don’t go… But if you are willing to be obedient and faithful to the God who loves you, then get up and go… Rethink Witnessing…