HELPING SET OTHERS FREE
Set Free
"Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.... Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill.... By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:13-16, The Message
I. Salt that Stings, Light that Glares
• ___________________Christians
• ___________________Christians
• ___________________Christians
• ___________________Christians
II. Salt that’s Savory, Light that Attracts
• Live out a ______________Christianity
• Live out a __________________________Christianity
• Live out a ________________________Christianity
HELPING SET OTHERS FREE
Set Free
We’re just completing a series called “Set Free.” It’s been a great series. We’ve learned how following Christ can set us free from our past, from our fears, and from our failures and from our sin. Today I want to conclude by sort of turning the tables and say that now we’ve got this great stuff of how we can be set free for ourselves, how can we now turn around and help other people find freedom through Christ.
I’m particularly thinking about this because of a story from a Major who is part of our armed forced in Iraq. He tells the story of what happened a few months ago over there about a group of American soldiers who went into a little village and they were giving away clothing to the Iraqi children. A lot of school children in America sent their old clothes so these soldiers were distributing it to the kids. The kids appreciated it. That was great. But then they opened up a bag of stuffed toys and began passing out stuffed toys to the kids. The kids just flipped over these. They’d never seen anything like this. They loved them. It was a way to give them an expression of love in the midst of a difficult circumstance.
The next day a convoy of security patrols left their base camp and was driving by the same village where they’d been distributing the stuff the day before. As they were coming down the road this convoy saw down in the distance in the middle of the road, a figure who was standing there and not moving. So as the convoy got closer they noticed this figure was standing still and wouldn’t move. They got out the binoculars and looked and there was standing in the middle of the road a little five year old girl who had been part of the group from the day before. She was standing in the middle of the road hugging a stuffed animal.
They didn’t know what to do. As they approached she just wouldn’t move. They radioed the base and said, “What do we do?” They said “This could be a trap, it could be a sniper there, there could be a road side bomb. Who knows? It could be something intended to hurt you. So go around her but go very slowly and carefully as you do.” The convoy began to go. She just stood there in the middle of the road hugging her little stuffed animal. As the convoy went around her they looked and they realized why she was standing in the road. She was standing in front of a landmine that had been planted the night before on the road. She was trying to save from harm these soldiers. She was expressing her love to them because they had first shown their love for her.
When I heard that I thought if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ you love God because He first loved you. He sent His Son to die that we might find freedom, be set free. To know Him personally, to spend eternity with Him in heaven. Yet we all know people in our family or our neighborhoods or at work or wherever and we know people that we know they’re going down a road in life. We can see the land mines they can’t see yet. We can see these land mines of alienation from God. Of bitterness, of fear, and of insecurity and of disconnectedness from God’s purpose for their life. And ultimately isolation from God forever. We see those land mines and we want to protect them. So we want to stand in front of them and say, “Don’t keep going down this road that you’ve been going down. Take a detour. Take God’s road. God’s road is different. Down God’s road you’re going to find peace and liberation and love and acceptance and grace and community and purpose and goodness and security. And ultimately you’re going to find a place with Him forever in heaven.”
If you’re a Christian, God wants you to help your friends to find the route to heaven that He’s already shown to you. The question I want to pose is, How do we do that in the 21st century. How do we pull that off?
Look at this paraphrase of verses from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:13-16. I love the way this paraphrase in The Message puts this passage. This is Jesus speaking. He says, “Let Me tell you why you are here. [That’s a good opening isn’t it? You’ve been wondering, let me tell you why you’re here.] You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God flavors of this earth. Here’s another way to put it. You’re here to be light bringing out the God colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. [Underline “God is not a secret to be kept.”] We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. By opening up to others you’ll prompt people to open up with God this generous Father in heaven.”
So here’s Jesus saying, I want you, if you’re My follower, I want you to reach other people and help set them free by being salt and light.
What does He mean by salt? Think about what salt does. Salt makes people thirsty. It spices things up. It’s a preservative. It enhances flavor. So Jesus in effect is saying, “Live the kind of life that will make people thirst for the truth about Me. Live the kind of life that will spice things up by stimulating people to think about their values and their beliefs. That will retard the rate of moral decay in society and that will show people that following Me will enhance, spice up, their life.”
Think about what light does. Light illuminates. It exposes. It draws people toward something. That’s why they spend all that money at the Spectrum center over in Irvine to put these spotlights in the sky at night. Why? So people will be attracted to come to that place. So Jesus, in effect is saying “Live the kind of life that will illuminate My truth for people. It will shine My compassion into dark places of despair. That will attract people toward Me because ultimately,” He said, “I am the light of life.”
I think this is an incredible vote of confidence that God is giving to His followers. He’s saying I’m going to entrust you with the most important message of all. How people can be reconciled with God. How they can find purpose in this world. How they can spend eternity with God forever. The most important message in the world, God says, I’m going to disseminate it through My followers. And I want them to disseminate it by being salt and light.
This is the great adventure of the Christian life. To be able to go out and say, I’ve been set free by God but there are others who are in shackles so to speak. I can help them be set free.
I think that’s the most exciting thing of all. In fact, I had something happen a while back. It’s kind of embarrassing but it kind of illustrates what an adventure it is. I was down in the south and I was speaking at a conference with my ministry partner, Mark. The next day we were going to go to breakfast at one of these restaurants called The Crackerbarrel. What these Crackerbarrel restaurants apparently have is these rocking chairs on the front porch so people can sit in the rocking chair and kind of people watch. So we’re walking over from the hotel to this Crackerbarrel and there’s a rocking chair with a young woman in it. It’s maybe eighteen years old, dark hair, dark eyes. There’s a guy sitting next to her about the same age. So we’ve got to walk in front of them to get to the door. Just as I pass in front of this young woman I hear her say, “What’s a deist?”
I thought, I just wrote a book about this! I turned around and looked her in the eye and said, “A deist is someone who believes that God created the earth but then He walked away. A deist believes that God set a giant clock into motion in the universe but then He just walked away and doesn’t care any more. A deist believes that God is distant and detaches and disinterested. But that’s not what the evidence shows. The evidence of science for instance, the evidence of physics. And biochemistry. Have you ever thought how biochemistry shows God’s continual involvement? Then look at Jesus entering human history.” I’m going on and on giving her all this evidence of science. She just looked at me, her eyes getting bigger and bigger as saucers. Finally I turned to my friend and said, “Can you believe this? I happened to walk in front of her and she says, ‘What’s a deist?’” My friend Mark said, “Lee! She said buenos dias!”
I wish that were a joke but it actually happened. But by then the ice was broken. We got into a great conversation about God. It turns out she was there for a track meet her boyfriend was in. So we got to meet the coach and the other team members. We set around for two hours talking about Jesus. So who knows what’s going to happen, even in a bizarre circumstance like that?
But that’s why I think it’s such a great adventure – an opportunity to be able to help share with others that they can find freedom and be set free too.
Here’s the problem. Even though Jesus meant these metaphors of salt and light in a positive way as I indicated sometimes those metaphors of salt and light can be negative. Sometimes salt, if you put it in a wound can burn. If you eat too much salt you get high blood pressures. There’s some negative things that can happen with salt. The same with light. If you’re driving down a two-lane road at night and the oncoming cars has the high beams on it causes you to avert your eyes because of the glare. The truth is that inadvertently some Christians are like salt that stings and light that glares. They accidentally, inadvertently repel people from God instead of attracting them.
At least I found that to be true when I was an atheist. I ran into at least four kinds of Christians that repel me away from God. I want to kind of walk through those. If you’re a seeker today, see if you can identify with any of this. Or if you’re a Christian ask yourself, is there a bit of this in me?
1. I was put off by what’s called in-your-face Christianity.
This is like the guy…I used to walk from the train in Chicago to my job at the Chicago Tribune where I was a legal editor. I used to pass this one street corner. The guy would stand there with
a bullhorn and shouting into the bullhorn really angry, so loud. It distorted his words so you had no idea what he was saying. He was waving a Bible in his hand and shouting in his angry way. I would pass him every day and say, If that’s what Christianity is, count me out! I don’t want anything to do with it. I recently came across a book that describes how Christians can attach a loud speaker to their car so they can preach to people while they drive around. You’re actually supposed to find a car and say, “Pull over right now and receive Jesus!” You’ve heard of drive by shootings. These are drive by shoutings, which is maybe even worse!
But it seemed like these in-your-face Christians were always trying to engage me in spiritual discussions at the most inopportune times. They’d knock on your door when you were trying to take a nap on a Saturday afternoon. Or you’re in a movie theater and it’s crowded and you’re looking for an empty chair. Finally you think you see one so you’re going between the rows and you say, “Excuse me is that chair saved?” And the guy says, “I don’t know if that chair’s saved but the real question is are you saved!” And I go set on the other side someplace.
The truth is I resented strangers trying to poke their nose into something as personal as my spiritual beliefs.
2. I was repelled by Greeting Card Christians.
These are people whose understanding of their faith is so shallow that they can only talk about it in kind of simple-minded cliches you find on Christmas cards. So as a skeptic I would ask these million dollar questions about spiritual issues and they’d give me a twenty-five cent answer or no answer at all. I’d think to myself, how can they believe in something when they themselves obviously don’t understand it. That turned me off.
3. Holier-Than Thou Christians repelled me as well.
Holier-than-thou Christians. They’re those smug and self-righteous Christians who paint themselves as being much better than they really are and paint everybody else as being much worse than they really are. So when I was around these people I’d feel so much more condemnation than compassion. I got the idea as an atheist if I walked into one of their churches that people would frantically whisper behind my back. “Look out! There’s one of those hell bound pagans. Quick. Lock up the valuables. Protect the women. Gather the children.” That’s kind of a turn off.
4. The cosmetic Christians.
By this I mean Christians who had sort of a skin-deep spirituality that looked pretty good on the outside but didn’t penetrate deep enough to change their values and their character. In fact, interestingly, a Gallup survey recently showed that only thirteen percent of Christians in America have a faith that penetrates deeply enough to change their core values.
Like the newspaperman who I knew in Chicago who was one of the most unscrupulous reporters in the city. Yet he let everybody know what a church going family man he was. Or the police officer I knew who was one of the most racist individuals I’d ever met. But he never missed a Sunday at church. Nothing repels people from God more than cosmetic Christians.
Can you relate to any of that? Do you ever run into people that resembles those four categories of Christians?
I am so grateful that when I was a skeptic I didn’t just run into those kinds of Christians. I also ran into a guy named Ron and a guy named David and I guy named Jerry and a gal named Linda whose saltiness made me thirst for the Jesus that they knew. How were they salt and light in a way that attracted me as an atheist toward God? I want to tell you their stories over the next few minutes.
I want to start with Ron. What did Ron do? Ron lived out a costly Christianity. What do I mean by that? I mean Ron lived out his faith even when it cost him something. Let me tell you a little bit about Ron.
Ron, at the age of eight, took a hammer and threw it at his mother’s head and tried to kill her. He was taken away to juvenile court and that started a whole series of experiences with the criminal justice system. Ron was a sociopath. He was a violent, hateful individual. He dropped out of school. He got mixed up with drugs. He joined a street gang called the Bellaires. In the 1970s the Bellaires was the street gang that terrorized Chicago. He was so brutal and so full of rage that over a period of time he was promoted to second in command of the Bellaires street gang.
There was a rival gang over on Palmer street in Chicago. One day some of the Palmer street gang found one of Ron’s friends and beat him to within an inch of his life. When Ron found out about this he vowed he’d have revenge. So he went and got a gun and he went hunting for the guys in the Palmer street gang, specifically a guy named Bob who was the head guy beating up his friend. He went over to a tavern where all the Palmer street gang would usually hang out. He waited and waited and finally out come six of the Palmer street gang. He looked, anxious to find Bob so he could kill him. But Bob wasn’t there. But Bob’s brother Gary was. Ron’s mind was so depraved he came up with a plot. He said, I’m going to kill Gary right now then in a couple of days when they have Gary’s funeral his brother Bob is going to come to the funeral and I’m going to ambush Bob at the funeral and kill him too. I’m going to kill both of them.
So Ron took his gun, jumped out of hiding, ran up to Gary and stuck the gun in his chest and yelled “Bellaires!” and he pulled the trigger. The gun went click and misfired. Now he’s got six very angry street gang members. And he’s backpedaling wondering what he’s going to do. He put the gun in the air and pulled the trigger and this time it goes off. So now they all scatter. Ron starts chasing Gary down the sidewalk boldly shooting at him. Finally he hits Gary in the back. The bullet goes in and lodges next to his liver and Gary falls face forward onto the sidewalk. Ron catches up to Gary and he turns him over. And Gary’s begging and pleading, “Don’t shoot me. Don’t kill me. Don’t shoot me again.” And Ron without an ounce of compassion takes the gun and puts it in his face and pulls the trigger. It goes click! He’s out of bullets. Now there’s a siren in the distance and he knows the police and coming and no question he’s going to get caught. They know exactly who did this. So he runs. He’s figuring with his police record attempted murder, he’s going to get twenty years in the penitentiary.
He couldn’t do that so he fled with his girlfriend to Canada. He came back down to the United States again and moved to Portland, Oregon. While he was in Portland he needed a job. He went to a metal fabricating shop and he applied for a job. He got the job, the first legitimate job of his life. The four guys who ran this little operation were Christians. They were salty Christians, full of light. They took Ron in and they told him about Jesus. They told him that Jesus could even change a sociopath like Ron, and Ron gave his life to Jesus. And sure enough God began to change him – his character, his values, his attitude, his worldview, his behavior, his relationships. Over time Ron became not just a member of his church but a leader in his local church. Ron became a respected member of the community. He married his girlfriend. They had a little girl by the name of Olivia.
But then one day Ron realized, “I’ve been reconciled with God but I’m not reconciled with society. There’s still a warrant out for my arrest for attempted murder in Chicago. I’m living a lie. I’m pretending like everything’s fine when I’m wanted for attempted murder.” So he knew the only right thing to do was to go to Chicago and turn himself in and face twenty years in the penitentiary.
So he kissed his wife good bye, got on a train and went to Chicago. He walked into the criminal court house. That’s where I came in. At the time I was an atheist but I was a legal reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I’m used to all these defendants coming into the courthouse trying to get off. Trying to get off the hook, trying to hoodwink the jury, trying to beat the wrap. Everybody’s “not guilty.” Yeah, right! But Ron walks in and he gets up before a judge and he says to the judge, “I’m guilty of attempted murder. I did it. I shot this guy in the back and I tried to kill him. If I need to go to prison, I need to go to prison. But I’ve become a Christian. I understand now that the right thing to do is come, admit what I’ve done, and to ask for forgiveness and to say I’m sorry.”
I’m watching this and it’s blowing me away. This was not cosmetic Christianity. When somebody takes a costly step like that you know it’s prompted by a faith that’s deep and it’s radically transformed a human being. That attracted me towards Christianity. Why? Because we live in wishy-washy times where the national motto might as well be Take the Easy Way Out. When somebody does something, not because it’s pleasant to them, not because it’s convenient to them, but because it’s the right thing to do even though there’s a huge price tag attached, that intrigues others and it inspires others. It causes others to respect them for the depth of their faith. We used to all people like that “heroes.” In fact I was so intrigued by what Ron did, he didn’t have to approach me to talk about Jesus, I approached him. I wanted to know what transformed a sociopath with a criminal record into a leader of a church.
It was very interesting what the judge did. The judge looked at Ron and said, “I can send you to prison for twenty years. A guy with a rap sheet like yours, cold blooded shooting this guy in the back, trying to kill him. But the judge said you Ron, I believe you’re a changed man. The testimony I’ve heard about your new life convinces me you are no longer a danger to society. So, Ron, my ruling is go home to your wife. You’re a free man.” He gave him probation and let him go.
I remember covering this as a reporter thinking, “This is incredible!” I ran after Ron and said, “What do you think about what the judge did?” I’ll never forget what Ron said. He knew I was an atheist because I’d talked to him before. He looked me in the eye and said, “Lee, what that judge did is show me grace. You know what? God will show you grace too if you just let Him.”
Ron’s words had a special credibility to me because he was a man who was willing to pay a huge price because it was the right thing to do. Ron was one of the links that eventually led me to faith. Just as an aside, that was thirty years ago. Whatever happened to Ron? I saw him about a month ago. He is sacrificing his whole life to live in the inner city of Portland, Oregon to be the associate pastor of a local church and to reach out to the gang members of that community to say “God could set you free like He set me free.”
Friends, if you want to know what it means to be salt and light here’s one answer. Live out your faith even when you have to pay a personal price. When you take your faith that seriously then others who are watching will take it seriously too.
What does that mean? What does that mean for you? It means different things to different people.
It might mean paying the cost of refusing to cut ethical corners that your boss is insisting that you do. You have to take a stand and say, “With all due respect I can’t do that. It is wrong, it is unethical, it is illegal. I’m a Christian and I can’t do that for you.” It means paying a cost. You may lose your job.
It may mean sacrificing your vacation time and going on a mission trip to serve people in need. People who need to know Christ. And spending your time reaching them.
It might mean investing in resources like books and tapes and things like that to give to your non-believing friends to help them find the truth about Christ.
It might mean paying a social price by speaking up in a group that’s belittling Christianity. Speaking up saying, “Wait. I don’t think you understand what Christianity is about. I let me tell you about it.”
It might mean coming clean to your boss and admitting that you’ve been using resources at work for your own personal needs. You’ve been taking work supplies. You’ve been pilfering things. You’ve been using work supplies for your own use. Admitting that to you boss and saying, I need to pay you back for the cost that I’ve taken from the company over time. Pay restitution.
It might mean that you have a possession and you feel like there’s someone else in need and he or she needs that possession more than I do. And you’re giving it up.
It might mean admitting that you made a mistake at work and being willing to take the consequences instead of trying to hoist off responsibility onto somebody else.
Those are costly steps. But they are salty steps. And people who are watching you see a faith that’s penetrated deep enough to change your character to the degree that you’re willing to do something even though it’s not convenient, it’s not easy. But it’s right. That is going to attract people toward your faith.
That’s how Ron influenced me. When I saw him recently I thanked him again. I said, “Ron, I thank you for who you are and I thank you for what you did. You were a link that led me toward God.”
Second, let me tell you how a Christian named David influenced me.
He lived out a compassionate Christianity. What do I mean by that? He didn’t just tell me that Christ loved me but he was willing to show me through his actions. This goes back to January of 1976. Neither Leslie or I were Christians at the time. I was an atheist. She was agnostic. She gave birth to our first child, Allison. We were like first parents always are. We were giddy. We were obnoxious. In the recovery room I remember calling my friends, “You know how babies are so wrinkly and ugly when they’re born. Our baby isn’t! She’s so beautiful!” Until we got the pictures back later! But in your eyes you see everything wonderful. Parenthood is great.
Then about 36 hours later we’re in Leslie’s room waiting for them to bring Allison in for her feeding. They didn’t come and they didn’t come. We’re looking like, What’s going on? Finally there’s a knock on the door and a whole troop of doctors come in and they don’t look happy. They said, “We’ve got some troubling news for you. Your daughter is very ill and we have no idea what it is. We need you to sign all these forms for a spinal tap and all these other things. We’ve already transferred her to the neo-natal intensive care unit. We don’t know what it is. You just need to prepare yourself. This is serious. You need to prepare yourself for the worst.”
We just burst into tears, weeping and sobbing. Especially when you don’t have God in your life and you feel so alone in moments like that. So helpless. It was just devastating. We’d go and see her. This tiny little baby hooked up to all these machines, a little intravenous needle in her ankle. Not very responsive. And all these other kids fighting for their lives. It was awful, awful!
But in the midst of that… I could take you back to the exact location where this happened. I was walking down a hallway in the hospital and there was a phone on the wall. The phone rang and I answered it. It was for me. They’d transferred the call down there. They knew I was down there. But it was a guy named David.
Let me tell you a little bit about David. David and I were never close friends. But in the years that I knew David, and I’m not proud of this, but in the years that I knew David I lied to him, I had misled him, I made fun of him, I had broken promises to him, I had belittled and criticized ruthlessly his church and his faith and his beliefs. But David was a Christian and that’s why he was on the phone. He said, “Lee, I heard about your daughter. What can I do for you? I’ll come right down. Just say the word if you need somebody to set with you and talk. Do you need me to run some errands for you or do something? Just say the word and I’ll come down and do whatever you need. I care about you and I’m sorry you’re going through this and I want you to know, I’m going to be on my knees praying for your little girl and so is everybody in my church.”
I thought, I don’t deserve that from him. I can’t believe he’s willing to get in his car and drive sixty miles to comfort me and serve me in this crisis. That he was willing to spend time on his knees praying to his God for this baby that he doesn’t even know and strangers in his church doing the same thing. It absolutely blew me away. It’s been thirty years since that happened. Still it impacts me every time I talk about it. That’s the kind of impact that Christians have when they’re willing to go beyond mere words and put the love of Christ into action.
Jesus knew that which is why He said, “Let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” If you study the word “good” in Greek, which the New Testament is written in, the word “good” in good deeds doesn’t mean a good as opposed to bad deeds. It means good in the sense of being winsome or attractive. Jesus is saying, I want you to serve other people in such a way that’s winsome and attractive and causes their eyes to turn heavenward toward your Father in heaven who motivates you in a counter cultural way to serve other people and put them before your own needs.
If we want to be salt and light as Jesus envisioned, you know what we need to do. This would be so cool if everybody at Saddleback church did this. Develop compassion radar so we scan our neighborhood or our work places or our schools or our families. We look as Jesus did, looking for ways in which we can bring compassion in a tangible way into another person’s life in the name of Jesus Christ.
It may be a widow who lives down the block from you and all she needs is somebody to come in once a week and take her to the grocery store. That would be a huge thing for her. But there’s nobody.
There might be a single mom who lives down the street. She just needs somebody to watch her kids for one evening a week to give her a break from this grind that she’s on trying to survive.
Maybe a kid down the block. He just needs somebody to shoot baskets with him.
I don’t know what it is but if we have the compassion radar that Jesus had. I had a friend named Bill. He was a Christian. What he did was he took some money and put it in a special compartment in his wallet. Every day he prayed, “God, lead me to someone to give this money to in Your name.” Most days it didn’t happen. But then every once in a while there would be a person who was in need. And Bill had right there the opportunity to serve.
Bill died at a fairly young age. I was at his funeral. We set up microphones in the aisles and said, anybody who wants to talk about the impact that Bill had on your life come to the microphone. Person after person! I remember this one woman came to the microphone. She said, “My husband left me. He walked out the door on me. I was devastated. I showed up at this church and met this guy named Bill. He sat me down and he bought me a cup of coffee. He talked with me and he listened to me and he encouraged me. It was so great. Then as we parted we shook hands and he walked away. As he walked away I realized that he’d put something in my hand. I opened it up and it was a hundred dollar bill.” She said, “It wasn’t the hundred dollars so much. I needed the money but it wasn’t so much the hundred dollars. It was that he cared. And he said, Let me help you.”
When we do that kind of stuff, it draws people who say, I want to be a part of a family like this who cares about people in that way.
David was like that for me. He was another link in a long chain that helped lead me into the kingdom of God.
We could also live out a compassionate Christianity. We could do what Bill did. Twenty dollars in our wallets and pray every day, “God, lead me to someone.”
The third story I want to tell you involves a Christian couple named Linda and Jerry.
They lived out a consistent Christianity. In other words they were real even when they didn’t even know they were being watched. Linda and Jerry lived in the same condominium building that Leslie and I lived in the suburbs of Chicago. They had a daughter who was the same age as our daughter Allison, who by the way, recovered from this mystery illness when she was an infant. They still to this day don’t know what it was. God healed her, I believe. She’s fine now and going to have our first grandchild. But Linda and Jerry’s daughter became best friends with our daughter. Leslie became best friends with Linda and I became friends with Jerry.
But the thing is, we weren’t Christians but we knew they were. So you know what we did. We had our hypocrisy radar scanning their lives 24 hours day. We were just watching. What were we looking for? We were trying to see, can we detect one of those holier-than-thou attitudes. We wanted to see how they would handle conflict when it would come up in their marriage. We wanted to see if they put on a Christian happy face and pretend that they never got angry, never got mad, never got disappointed, never got frustrated. We wanted to see if they sort of mouthed sugar coated Christian platitudes and sentimentalities, even though we knew they were hurting inside. We wanted to see whether they’d be truth tellers and whether they’d come clean when they made a mistake and ask for forgiveness. We wanted to see if we did something that hurt them would they hold a grudge. We wanted to see if they were honest about the little things in life. The one thing we wanted to see, we wanted to see what they would say about other people when those other people weren’t around.
We watched them. And you know what we found? They weren’t perfect. But then they never claimed to be. But they were very, very, very real. We saw a lot more of a gentle spirit of acceptance toward us and a lot more humility than condemnation. We saw willingness to admit when they were wrong. We saw an anxiousness to reconcile when there was conflict. We saw a readiness to acknowledge the rough edges of their character and a willingness and desire to smooth them off. We saw a refusal to play act by pretending that the Christian life is always happy and always smooth and always great. We saw a generosity towards hurting people. We saw an admission that they struggled with their faith from time to time. But most of all, undergirding everything, we saw humble, gentle people who were trying everyday to follow Jesus Christ.
They were real. They were authentic and they were genuine. They didn’t have a perfect faith but they had a consistent faith and an honest faith. They were salt and they were light. And it was Linda who led my wife Leslie to the Lord. And Linda and Jerry were both links in the chain that eventually brought me to faith.
I don’t want to make you paranoid. But if you’re a follower of Jesus you have got to know there are people who know you’re a Christian who are scanning your life with their hypocrisy radar. They are. You know that your neighbors. The people at work. They’re trying to catch you. How you react and how you behave can either repel them from God or attract them toward God. Not that we’re perfect but that we’re real and we’re honest and authentic and genuine.
I want to close by reading a part of a letter I got from a woman named Maggie. Maggie was one of those people who had been horribly repelled from God by inauthentic Christians, by inconsistent Christians. She said, “The Christianity I grew up with was so confusing to me even as a child. People said one thing but they did another. They appeared very spiritual in public but in private they were abusive. What they said and what they did never fit. There was such a discrepancy I grew to hate Christianity and did not want to be associated with the church.” That is the power of inauthentic Christians to repel people from God. But then in a remarkable set of circumstances Maggie started coming around to the church where I was the pastor in Chicago. She started asking some questions she’d write me these long letters with a zillion questions and I’d write these long answers. I finally said, “Maggie, I appreciate you asking these questions but I’m getting writer’s cramp here. We have little groups in our church made up of spiritual seekers, non-believers, led by a Christian couple. If you’d like to join one of those groups you could get your questions answered and kind of investigate Christianity at your own pace.”
So she joined one of these groups. I want to read you what she wrote about the two Christians who led her group. Because when Jesus says, I want you to be salt and light, this is what He’s talking about. She said, “When I came to church and my small group I needed gentleness. I needed to be able to ask any question. I needed to have my questions taken seriously. I needed to be treated with respect and validated. But most of all I needed to see people whose actions match what they say. I’m not looking for perfect but I am looking for real. Integrity is the word that comes to mind. I need to hear real people talk about real life and I need to know if God is or can be a part of real life. Does He care about the wounds I have? Does He care that I need a place to live? Can I ever be a whole and a healthy person? I’ve asked questions like these of the two Christians who lead my group. I’ve not been laughed at or ignored or invalidated. I’ve not been pushed or pressured in any way. In fact, I don’t understand the caring I received from them. I don’t understand that they doesn’t seem afraid of questions they don’t say things like, ‘Just have to have faith… Just need to pray more.’ They don’t seem to be afraid to tell who they really are. They just seem genuine.”
Then Maggie wrote a poem. She said, “Lee, I wrote this poem for the Christian couple who lead my group.” But when I read this poem I thought, “No, this is a poem for every single follower of Jesus Christ on planet earth. This is the voice of a person who is not set free. This is a person who is so far from God and generally running the other direction, who’ve been repelled by inauthentic people. If we want to know what we need to do to live out a consistent, authentic Christian life we just need to listen to her words. So just imagine. These are not my words. She’s a 24-year-old nurse named Maggie. And this is what she says to you.
Do you know? Do you understand that you represent Jesus to me?
Do you know? Do you understand that when you treat me with gentleness it raises the question in my mind, ‘Maybe He is gentle too. Maybe He isn’t someone who laughs when I get hurt.’
Do you know? Do you understand that when you listen to my questions and you don’t laugh I think, Maybe Jesus is interested in me too?’
Do you know? Do you understand that when I hear you talk honestly about arguments and conflict and scars from your past that I think maybe I am just a regular person instead of a bad, no good little girl who deserves abuse.
If you care, then I think maybe He cares. Then this flame of hope that burns inside of me and for a while I’m afraid to breathe because it might go out.
Do you know? Do you understand that your words are His words? That your face is His face to someone like me.
Please! Be who you says you are. Please, God. Don’t let this be another trick. Please let it be real this time. Please.
Do you know? Do you understand that you, and you, and you… you represent Jesus to me.
I read that the first time and I was just so convicted I cried. I thought of all the times I haven’t been like Jesus. I thought I need to read this poem to the whole church. So I called up Maggie. “Maggie, thank you for that poem. It really was powerful. I want to get your permission to read it to the church this weekend.” She said, “Oh, Lee, haven’t you heard?” My heart sunk. I thought oh no! What inauthentic Christian has she met now that has repelled her again from God? I said, “No, Maggie, I haven’t heard. Tell me what happened.” She said, “No, it’s a good thing. On Tuesday night I gave my life to Jesus.”
I said, “Fantastic. Imagine someone like you who have come all that way. That’s so great. I’m curious. What ten facts did you learn that convinced you the Bible is the Word of God?” She said, “It wasn’t like that for me.” I’m thinking, “It was for me.” I said, “What twelve facts convinced you that the resurrection is an actual event of history?” She said, “It wasn’t like that for me.” I said, “Then what happened?” She was like embarrassed. She shrugs over the phone. She said, “I just met a whole bunch of people who are like Jesus to me.” Go figure!
I thought what a lesson! You know what the good news of that is, what the best news of all is, we don’t have to go and spend years at seminary and get a PhD to do this stuff. If we just allow God to transform our values and our character in such a way that we become like salt and light. If we just extend compassion in a practical way to hurting people in our world that they might have their eyes pointed heavenward toward the God who motivates us. If we just stop pretending to be something we’re not and we just try to be who we are, sinners forgiven by God. We can be like salt and we can be like light. It’ll be the greatest adventure of our lives. We can do this together.
Prayer:
Father, I thank You that You have entrusted us with this greatest mission on the planet and that You want us to be like salt and light to the Maggie’s of the world. I just think of the way that You so gently transformed her and healed her scars and healed her wounds and how today she is such a vibrant follower of Yours. She’s truly a miracle of Your grace. Then I think of all the Maggie’s that are in all the neighborhoods represented here. People far from You, people who have been repelled from You, people who just need a taste of salt and a glimmer of light. Father, let us be those people who bring them the hope that they too can be set free as we have been. That they too can know You personally for ever through eternity in heaven. Father, thank You that You have entrusted us with this mission. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
