Walking Boldly - Treading Lightly // The Freedom to Share Jesus with Others, Part 9

We all hate people ramming their opinions, their beliefs down our throats, don’t we?  So, how can we share our faith in Jesus with others, without giving them that same experience? Good question.

To quote a comedian who used to make me really laugh a few years back. "You know what I hate? You know what I really, really hate?" I hate it when people shove their beliefs and their doctrines down my throat. I hated it way back before I was a Christian and to tell you the truth, I still hate it today. Even more so right here and now.

To me it's somehow offensive when people try and bludgeon me to death with their beliefs. When they lecture me instead of pulling alongside me. When they somehow imply that they're better than me because of what they believe.

And so many people have spent so many years watching Christians telling people about their faith in that kind of a way, that they think that's the only way it can be done. And I don't want to be like that so I'm not going to tell people about Jesus. I'm just going to shut my mouth 'cause I don't want to offend anyone by whacking them over the head and shoving my beliefs down their throat.

In society today, let's face it, for a lot of people the Church is on the nose. My hunch is a lot of it has to do with the doctrinism and the dogmatic approach of telling people about their faith. The Church is anti this and anti that and anti this.

And all that "anti" implies judgement and criticism rather than love and grace. Now don't get me wrong, you'll never hear me standing up for, say for abortion. It's not so much though what we say, I think it's how we say it.

Before I went into ministry I was in the Information Technology industry. One of the things I did was to travel a lot to conferences and do a lot of public speaking right around the world. But I began to notice, when I was quite a young man, that some speakers seemed somehow to have a superior tone yet others were at my level.

I felt like they were like me and the mentor of mine, a man that mentored me for over 20 years, a guy called Graham, explained to me what that was all about. In part someone who gets ups and speaks at the podium, who has a superior mentality. You know, "I'm the expert. I'm the one that knows all about this subject. Now you listen to me and write it down and do as I tell you."

Well that's kind of offensive these days. It may have worked back in the 1950's and 1960's but it doesn't work today. People like that make me cringe because they demonstrated an outdated notion of relationships. They demonstrate a notion of a relationship that goes back to the 1950's and 1960's which says that they are the experts and the institution stands above people and they tell us what to do and we do it.

Now that was okay back then but 99% of the time it is not going to work for people today. So in part it's a superior attitude.

Then there are other people who kind of pull alongside. Who share their experiences. Who invite me to think about what they're saying with questions. Who share not just their successes but their weaknesses and their failures and their challenges and the insights that come out of that and the stuff they still don't understand.

They talk more in terms of "us" and "we" instead of "you" and "me". You know what? I love listening to those people. I have so much to learn from people who speak in those terms because it demonstrates an attitude that says, "Hey, I'm not an expert. I don't know everything but there's a few things that I've got insights about."

Why don't we share those? Why don't we discuss them? Why don't we have a dialogue? Why don't we pull alongside one another and be better off for the experience? And to me that second type of communicator is someone who treads lightly.

Yes they reflect an attitude which is contemporary in terms of relationships which is where we all, by and large, are today but they also find language that's about "us" and "we". That's about questions. That's about engagement rather than, 'I've got this now you should do that. And I believe this therefore you should believe that and if you don't, you're wrong'.

You know, those sorts of people tend to have really reactive language like, "I don't like" and "I'm absolute" and they try to steam roll you with their beliefs. And I'm not just talking about Christians. You can go to the abortion lobby and you'll find exactly the same sort of person there.

There are people right across the social and political and religious spectrum who want to bludgeon me to death with their beliefs and my answer, like most other people, is, "Hmm, no thanks. I'm really not interested."

This concept of using our attitudes and our languages to tread lightly, to me, is a beautiful concept. To me it's relational. To me it's like I love dealing with people like that because they want to engage me rather than bludgeon me.

Now don't you think that's natural? Yet at the same time it's still possible to walk boldly, to be certain of what it is that we believe. If you're a Christ follower, if you're a Christian, my prayer for you is that you are absolutely rock solid in your faith in Jesus Christ.

That you look at everything that the world does that is right and wrong out there in the world and say, "Look, no matter what's going out there in the world, in my heart when I look at the cross I see a Jesus who loves me, who is prepared to die for me, who's coming back and when I believe in Him I'm going to have eternal life and I want to share that Jesus with other people."

I'm so certain about that and I'm so safe in that I don't have to be shy about believing in Jesus. We don't have to be uncertain in our faith just because other people don't like it. We don't have to be afraid of what other people might think of who we are and what we believe. No, no.

Are you a Christ follower? Have you put your faith in the King of kings and the Lord of lords and the creator of the universe and He died for you and me and that is a fantastic message? Does that flick your switch?

Man, it flicks my switch. It works for me every time. Do people aspire to the sort of faith that is uncertain? Would you be impressed with someone who wasn't really happy with who they are and their faith in Jesus?

Charles Spurgeon was a great preacher in the 19th century. He told a story of a young preacher that was one of his students who went out to speak at a Church and obviously this young guy was pretty uncertain about stuff when he got up to speak.

And a crusty old parishioner came up to him at the end of the service and said, "Lad, I don't expect to believe everything that you say when you get up and preach on Sunday mornings but young man, I expect you to believe it."

It's kind of true isn't it? I mean, sure people won't always agree with what you have to say about Jesus or what I have to say about Jesus. But if we profess a faith in Jesus I reckon people expect us to be passionate about it, to be real about it, to believe it and to be rock solid in our faith.

And to me it's wonderful to think of treading lightly on the one hand yet walking boldly at the same time. Treading lightly, to me, is about not having a superior, pulpit style attitude about people. About me being better because I happen to have met Jesus. And yet walking boldly is, "I do know the one in whom I have placed my faith."

And I think that when you take treading lightly and walking boldly and you put them together in the one person that equals humility. That looks like Jesus. Jesus said:

I am lowly and humble of heart. Come to me and I will give you rest.

Jesus wasn't some woos. He did both things. He trod lightly in the lives of people. He didn't come down to judge them. He didn't come to pull them down. Sure He attacked religious hypocrisy, He did that but that's about the only thing He ever attacked.

All those people out there who didn't know Him yet, who didn't believe in Him yet, He was gentle and loving and yet He was so bold in knowing who God the Father was and who God had put Him on this earth to be.

We can be certain and yet respect people and tread lightly in their lives. Jesus gave people time to unpack His story, to come to grips with who He was. Why can't we do the same?