Lesson One, Discussion H

H. How is John's mission a model for your mission today? How might you "prepare" people for the Lord?

Just moving this here to keep the threads neat. :-)

H. How is John's mission a model for your mission today? How might you "prepare" people for the Lord?
Post by Barbara Alexander Today at 14:39

John's mission was to prepare the way for the Lord, Jesus Christ. He called the people to repent of their sins and turn their lives around. I can tell you the quickest way I know of to turn off someone you would like to "introduce" to the love of God and come to recognize the meaning of Christ's death on the cross, is to start out by telling the person he needs to repent of his sins and get baptized.
I don't know how to "prepare" anyone. I wish I did know how. The best advice I've heard on this subject is a remark Tara made: "I want to live my life in such a way that people say, 'I want a piece of that'." i.e. I want to be as happy and joyful and full of life as you are. If anyone of you knows of something more I can do, I'd be most interested to hear of it and do it.

I think John's mission could be a model for my mission by showing me that, like Mom said, people usually need to be gently led to Christ. The original meaning of the word "repent" is "turn your course" John told people, "Listen! Turn your course! The Kingdom of God is coming! Don't miss it!" So, if we use that as a model, we could "prepare" people for the Lord by thinking of ourselves as "barkers" in the old circus vernacular. Look! Come see this, it's amazing! You don't see things like this everyday! Take a few minutes and come see this!" And then, of course, great care should be taken to show them something worth seeing! "See these people feeding the poor? They're doing it because Jesus told them that was the way to experience real love! Have you ever experienced real, other centered love? Man, I gotta tell you, giving other centered love away is the greatest feeling! And when you receive it? Oh my goodness, it's indescribable. Let me show you!"

I think the best way to "prepare" people for the Lord is NOT to sell them "Fire Insurance" (which, in my opinion is what MOST religion does,) but to give them a reason to express joy, love, hope, peace.

I want to demonstrate to people the enormous difference between an inconvenience (losing your wallet) and a catastrophe (not having clean water to drink for yourself and your family.) I want to be able to say, (metaphorically, though doing it in reality would be beyond awesome, too!) "Hey, last year, we went to Africa and drilled SEVEN wells for people without clean water. Man, it was something else!" and then when someone else says, "Yeah, but didn't you lose your wallet over there?" I want to be able to say, "Oh, sure, but you know, once I got it replaced it was no big deal. Just a minor inconvenience. You know what? This year we want to build TEN wells and if I have to lose my wallet again to make that happen, well, I think that's a pretty good deal!" I want to emphasize that God gives us life, not that he protects us from death. I want to share that God give us love and hope and joy and peace, not that he punishes us for our "sins". I want to demonstrate that the only person in the entire history of the world who didn't sin was Jesus Christ himself, so who am I to judge your sin? Your sin is no more sinful that mine, your sin is no more or less worthy of eternal punishment than mine. And if I condemn out of hand "unrepentant sin" without acknowledging the infinite number of times I sin without repentance each and every hour, then I must accept that I probably will not win over any converts. Jesus doesn't love us because we try to fight against sin. We try to fight against sin because Jesus loves us.

I want to emphasize that God gives us life, not that he protects us from death. Love this, Tara! Come to think of it, if he protected us from death, there would be no life. Sort of like not letting the candle flame burn because you don't want it to go out.