Dear Friends,
Last night at our Life Group Bible
Study, one of our members shared some exciting news about one of her
friends who recently had come to faith in Jesus Christ. She and her
husband had been repeatedly witnessing to this this person, but their efforts
were to no avail.
Unresponsive to their efforts, she
would typically respond "I am a good person," and "I don't
believe in all of that 'sin stuff'" you are always talking about.
Through tears of joy, she related
how a friend had shared the good news of the gospel with her, and she had just
put her faith in Christ.
And then she said to my friend:
"She kept telling me the same thing you had always been telling me."
Her story reminded me of a similar
story I recently re read by pastor and author Steve Brown.
Written almost 40 years ago in a
sermon transcript I had filed; Steve shared the following story.
"I talked to a young lady about
Christ, about three years ago. I had gone to her within the context of an
evangelistic program, and I sat down with this young lady and her husband. and
I took almost an hour to explain the gospel and how Jesus loved her and how she
could receive Jesus and become a Christian."
"Her response was blank!
A dead wall! I want you to know I never saw anybody so insensitive to the
Gospel of Christ."
"She was sweet and nice about
it, and she simply said, 'It doesn't make sense.' 'I don't understand it.' 'I
don't know how it can be made real in my life.'"
" About a year later, I had an
opportunity, after explaining the Gospel to her 20 times, to tell her
again about Christ, and after I finished, do you know what she said?"
"She said, 'Steve, why didn't
you tell me this before?'"'
"What was happening? I'll tell
you what was happening. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, God was revealing
Himself to her. Her heart had been finally touched and the scales of
unbelief had been removed from her eyes."
"I said, 'Jane, what do
you think I've been telling you for a year now?'"
A person can hear the gospel again
and again and remain unmoved, and then suddenly the Holy Spirit moves within,
and a heart is changed, and a person is born again.
What previously she couldn't believe,
and which sounded stupid and ridiculous, now became alive and the result was
life changing.
1 Corinthians 2:14, tells us that
"the unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the spirit of God, for
they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are
spiritually discerned."
When someone talks about sin's power
to blind you to your sin, He is talking about something frightening, something
radical, something that has the power to prevent you from seeing the
devastating consequences of your sinful nature.
Author and pastor John Piper writes,
"No one merely decides to experience the Christian Scriptures as the all
compelling, all satisfying truth of one's life. Seeing is a gift. And so, the
free embrace of God's word is a gift. God's spirit opens the eyes of our heart,
and what was once boring, or absurd or foolish, or mythical is now
self-evidently real."
It is the supernatural act of the
Spirit that opens our eyes and penetrates our hearts and brings truth that
results in genuine repentance. Such truth reminds us that it is our sin that
nailed Christ to the cross, and it His forgiveness that enables us to
experience a life changing event that makes us a new person. We joyfully
discover that the "old has passed away, the new has come."
If this message seems too strange,
and too ridiculous to believe, you now know why. The scales from your eyes have
yet to be lifted.
There is something wrong with us.
"We are dead in our trespasses and (the) sins in which (we) once
walked." Ephesians 2:1, and it is only the Holy Spirit that can touch our
hearts and through faith make us alive.
Because this friend joyfully
discovered the truth that all her "sin stuff" really mattered, she
has found a new life that lasts forever, and so can you.
Yours in faith and friendship,
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