We had a missions event at our church yesterday. I was kind of surprised that so few people went - our church is supposed to be a church-planting church. But I went, and Kal went, and Stephen, and a few other friends.
The speaker told us how one of the most effective methods of evangalism in the Middle East is "life-style evangalism", because a lot of Muslims have a very incorrect view of Christianity - they think everyone in Hollywood is Christian. I've written about this before when I was evangalising to Maryam. Here's an excert:
Because she thought that all Westerners were Christians, and most Westerns are basically self-centred and rather decedent, she thought that Christianity was a religion that encouraged that. When she moved to Australia from Iran she continued to think that most Westerners were Christian, but that because they never went to church or prayed it was a religion that even they didn’t believe in, and was one that gave them a licence to live generally immoral lives.
Recently Maryam told me how working with me has changed her view of that. She said how it was very good that I was a Christian, because my religion made me a good person. She realised that a Christian is someone who actually tries to live differently from the world, and when she saw this she was very impressed.
Afterwards I was talking to a recently married friend. She was saying how she wasn't sure she wanted children soon because it's the last days and it's going to be awful for pregnant women and nursing mothers in the last days. So I gave her an earful.
By choosing not to have children because she's scared she is essentially being disobedient to scripture (even if you don't believe the Bible forbids birth control). She is failing to trust God because she's scared. She is also eliminating the prescribed main method of evangalism set out in scripture. (Teaching your children and others in a household family context.) What's more, this method has been shown throughout history as being highly effective in the long run, and was being talked about in that very meeting as being the most effective way of reaching out to Muslims in the Middle East.
And she won't because she's scared.
Makes me cross, it really does. Because if God has commanded it, we need to do it. We shouldn't be running because it looks hard, or scarey, or impossible. We serve a God who delights to do the impossible because it shows Himself as mighty!
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6.
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