As always I'm very encouraged by hearing about the work of Gospel for Asia. In their newsletter today I read something I'd love to see happening in the West.
Here are some testimonies of people converted to Christ:
...The family members repeatedly and earnestly said prayers to their local gods and goddesses... "Why are the gods against us?" they wondered... [Sager received a tract]... At once Sager wanted to know more about this new God, so the pastor explained the love of Jesus...
...The culture of the area to which [Pastor Gurdas] had been called was dominated by traditional religions, and the people were fervent about their commitment to it... Pastor Gurdas himself was also deeply committed - but to serving the Almighty God...
...the family prayed and made sacrifices, desperately seeking healing. But their gods were silent...
...[Then they] realized Jesus is the true God...
"All the gods of the nations are idols." (Ps 96:5) Perhaps this should be the first axiom of missionary engagement. We are converting people to a new God and His Name is Jesus.
I think this would have incredible evangelistic power here in the West. How many westerners pray to silent gods? Yet what's our missionary strategy to them?
We tell them they've more or less got it right!! And then we tell them that Jesus is this god incarnate. So from the outset we've left them with an idol for the Father and then cast Jesus in that idolatrous mould!
And all our western testimonies run along the lines of: "I had always believed in god and then the evangelist convinced me that Jesus was the god-I'd-always-believed-in."
Please no. Let's proclaim "this new God"!
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Glory!
Yes! It is so perverse to 'baptise' the false folk gods and philosophical nonsense that people had before Jesus as if it were either the real thing [in a partial way] or maybe a half-way house.
Believing in any 'god' other than Jesus is running in the opposite direction.
When people tell me that they believe in 'god' without following Jesus I commiserate with them. "what a shame..."
Likewise, we so often compliment older brother types (especially with children in the church) because they 'behave right' and fail to say that the idol of trying to please God and man is as bad as the idol of pleasing just yourself.
We grab anything that looks vaguely right - be it moralism or deism, or even theism (less so with that, as non-Christian theists tend to be overtly Islamic or Jewish or from one of the cults) and congratulate people on what is idolatry.
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