Habits of Holiness: #3- A Heart for Lost People!

“Only six months?! Doc, you’ve got to be kidding me!” “No, Larry. It’s true. You only have six months (that’s 180 days or 4,320 hours or 259,200 minutes or 15,552,000 seconds) left on this earth.” Then I woke up.

But what if that were true? What if I had only 15,552,000 seconds remaining in the hour glass of my life? What would I do for the next six months? How would my life change? What priorities would take center stage in my life? How would such news impact my relationship with others — my unsaved friends, my fellow Christians, my wife, my children and grandchildren?

Now, I’ve not been told that I only have six months to live, but what if that were true?

We’ve looked at two holy habits that ought to be in our lives — even if we’ve got twenty more years to live: (1) we must spend time in God’s Word, and (2) we’ve got to stop playing at praying!

The Lord has also been burdening my heart the last few years with the truth that many of us are NOT friends of sinners like the Lord Jesus was (Mt. 11:19).

I feel so strong about our proclivity to listen only to Christian music, have only Christian wallpaper, hang around only Christian people, and eat only Christian casseroles that I’ve recently written a book entitled Unlike Jesus: One Area Where Jesus-Followers Excel. Granted, it’s a bit of a negative title, but I believe we need to be awakened from an ungodly enchantment that says the fewer non-Christian friends we have the holier we are. That’s a belief that smells like smoke and comes from the PIT!

An assignment for you: Spend some time with one of your unsaved friends this week. Leave a comment below how your time together went.

 

 

 

 

 

Some Thoughts on FRIENDSHIP — From an INTROVERT! (Part 1) WRITING PROJECTS!

Some people are surprised when they learn that I test out as an introvert.  An “expressive” introvert.  But an introvert nonetheless. I’ve taken the Myers/Briggs, the Briggs and Stratton, and the Disc Personality tests.  And I come out as an introvert.

My daughter Amy is the same. Being around people too much exhausts us. She says she wants to buy me that T-shirt that says, “INTROVERTS UNITE!  IN YOUR OWN HOMES!  BY YOURSELVES!”  (I’d wear that T-shirt).

All of that to say that the Lord has a tremendous sense of humor.  He is working on me this year to stretch me. It looks like I’ll be writing two books on . . . friendship!  I’ve been working on the issue of friendship evangelism as I’m processing the idea of the Lord Jesus being “a friend of sinners” (Mt. 11:19).  That work is tentatively entitled Unlike Jesus:  One Area Where Jesus-Followers Excel.  I don’t know if that will be the final title (it’s kind of negative), but I’m convinced that Satan has won and continues to win a great victory by convincing believers that the fewer non-Christian friends they have the godlier they are. We confuse the command in James 4:4 not to be friends of the world with the idea that that must mean we can’t be friends of sinners.

It also looks likely that I will be writing a book on friendship in general. The working title for that second work is With Friends Like These . . . Biblical Friendships from Job to Jesus.  This project will allow me to survey friendship in both the Old and New Testaments (I’m presently working on Abraham, “the friend of God”), consider Job and his friends (who theologically “mug” him for thirty chapters), think about how Jesus was a friend to His disciples (taking particular notice of His response to His sick friend Lazarus in John 11), and include some material on believers’ being friends of sinners.

I’m going to ask you, the reader, for something very specific.  Would you pray for me and these two writing projects at least once a week over the next few months?  If you agree to do this, you may let me know privately through my email (theoprof@bellsouth.net) or publicly in the comment section below.  THANKS!

 

What Did Jesus Pray About? (Part 15)

Imagine yourself hiding behind a bush as you listen to the Lord Jesus pray to His Father.  He prays outloud and you get to hear exactly what His burdens are.  A primary burden of His high priestly prayer here in John 17 is the believer’s relationship to the WORLD.

We’ve been looking at the seventeen uses of the term WORLD (“cosmos”) in our last several posts.  Let’s continue our study and look at #11 found in verse 16.

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before 1the world began.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples

⁶ “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of 2the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸ For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. ⁹ I pray for them. I am not praying for 3the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹ I will remain in 4the world no longer, but they are still in 5the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. ¹² While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

¹³ “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in 6the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. ¹⁴ I have given them your word and 7the world has hated them, for they are not of 8the world any more than I am of 9the world. ¹⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of 10the world but that you protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They are not of 11the world, even as I am not of it. ¹⁷ Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you sent me into 12the world, I have sent them into 13the world. ¹⁹ For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

Jesus Prays for All Believers

²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that 14the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then 15the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of 16the world.

²⁵ “Righteous Father, though 17the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”