Listening

My junior high babies have gotten me so excited to share my faith.

Not just with junior highers...because I work with them. But with people my own age.

You see, it's easy for me to share my faith to twelve and thirteen year olds. I'm cool. I'm 22. They're lame. They're twelve. See my point?

But recently, I've been desiring deep convos with people my age, people fresh out of college, struggling to figure out life and reality and all that goes on with it. People like me. I want to tell them about the love of God, how deep and rich it is. I want to bring others aboard the lifesaving ship of Jesus.

Maybe I got a little bit over excited there and over dramatic, but my point still stands. I want to share Christ with others.

I've been reading this book called Letters from a Skeptic. It's by this guy named Greg Boyd who works at Bethel School of Ministry in Cali. Anyways, he and his dad began this letter correspondence in 1988 with open dialogue about God, Jesus, the bible, and Christians. His dad didn't believe in the whole "faith thing" and Greg was open with wanting to answer his questions.

I've been a growing believer my whole life and I've never seen the love of God presented in such a way. Things I've always just taken to be took on meaning. Things like the fairness of God, or how the bible is the "word of God". I'm all vamped up.

But the most intriguing part of the book was that Greg never preached at his dad. He never went off on a tangent or talked about how ridiculous is was to NOT believe in God. Instead, he listened to the questions of a man confused by the world's view, and answered them according to God's view.

Listening.

I can't do that. I'm too good at talking. I'm too good at defending. I'm too good at making up the next funny joke or clever come-back. Listening?

I'm not going to give away the end of the book...whatever, you won't really read it, but Greg's dad becomes a believer 2 years later. And the letters were published in a book. And skeptics have been coming to know the love of God since then.

Because a son LISTENED to the questions of his dad.

I read another article today, similar to the Letters from a Skeptic. This article was called, "Lessons from Pete" (https://www.cpyu.org/Page.aspx?id=77249).

Pete was this guy that the author sat by on a plane for 2 hours, and for 2 hours, the author just listened to Pete talk about his life and his obstacles to believing in Jesus. By the end of the conversation, Pete said it was the most meaningful conversation he had ever had.

The author quotes this guy named Francis Shaeffer. Shaeffer said that if he was given one hour with a person who he didn't know and who didn't know Christ, he would spend the first 55 minutes concentrating on listening and the last 5 minutes giving the person a biblical truth that somehow applied to what he had heard during the first 55 minutes.

Do I do that? Nope. As previously mentioned, I am the last finisher in the race of listeners. I tune out and peace out mentally.

So that's something for me to work on listening...if I want to share the gospel, maybe it's not about verbally giving. Maybe its about being. Being there to listen. Being there to care. Just being there like Christ was there.

And it's the love of God, the "being there", that draws people into a relationship with the Creator of the Universe.

All that to say, pray for me, that I may have opportunities to listen to a hurting and dying world.

A Revived Passion

I've developed a new passion for researching our culture.

I've normally gotten very involved in the culture and media of the day, but as I've drawn closer to the Lord these past months, I've realized that what I need to do is "research" this culture, and not truly get involved.

I'm trying to teach this to my junior highers. Check out that blog to see more:

http://rootedjuniorhai.blogspot.com