This year I’ve been examining the claims of the Gospel with my High School students on Wednesdays (we have a podcast now!) and my College students on Thursdays. It’s been a process that has taught me one thing about people: they are scared out of their minds about committing to Jesus Christ.
What I’m about to say is very important. The Florida Hospital Church has defined its mission as “Loving people into a lifelong friendship with God”, and we ought to understand what we’re getting into.
Imagine this: You’re walking down the street one day and a man approaches you and says, “My, you have an attractive face.” You respond by saying, “Thank you,” to which he replies, “I want it.”
You’re next thought is—“What! This guy is crazy!” You’re thinking this because, if you give him your face, you will not have one (and you will look really odd without one). You are identified by your face. When your face is gone, you have nothing by which to be recognized.
This is why coming to Jesus is scary. When we identify ourselves with our “face” (i.e., good works or evil works, superiority or inferiority, religion or irreligion), “it” becomes our identity. Jesus is the one saying, “I want your face.” He says this because he wants to give you a new one. He can say this because he knows that, apart from Him, we identify ourselves with sin.
In Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God, he says, “We are all living for something and we are controlled by that, the true lord of our lives. If it is not God, it will endlessly oppress us.” Michael Card says in his book A Better Freedom that “the world seduces us with a slavery it calls ‘freedom.’”
Here’s what this all means: as we are seeking to Love people into a lifelong friendship with God, we ought to examine what we identify ourselves with. When people see you, would they sense they were being invited into a community of people who have received wonderful new identities in Christ or just another reason to be scared?
David Achata
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