Category: A Word or Two

You Never Know

A wonderful thing begins when the rule and reign over your life is ceded to the One who has given you new life, Jesus Christ. You abandon the sense of needing all the answers and needing to be in control and you never know what a day might hold or what wondrous thing might unfold. 

Which must mean that you never know (1) what will come of an everyday conversation. At the end of John’s gospel we find Nicodemus at the foot of the cross, a fearless follower of Jesus who defies the Sanhedrin and identifies fully with Christ. But he doesn’t get there if the conversation doesn’t happen in John 3.

So I repeat myself, you never know what will come of a conversation. You with one of your children, you with a friend at work … you with that guy you meet at the auto parts store all the time. I meet people all the time who say to me, “Pastor, I’ll never forget the time you said…” and I’m too shy to admit that I sure can’t remember having said that.

But words last and conversations matter. Part of what it means to sew the good seed of good news, is to treat every conversation with the possibilities it contains. You never know when it might be the conversation of a life time. 

Because there are times when like a young mom you walk someone toward the right understanding of what it means to be a child of God. Yet on a lot of days, you don’t have the chance to give the gospel explicitly. But folks should be able to read the gospel in you implicitly by what you say and how you relate to them. Every conversation is a doorway for Jesus to be seen through.

And another you never know is that you never know (2) how God might use you. Nicodemus proves that it’s not about credentials or status. It’s about who is reigning in your heart.

I remember a young man who ran a small trucking company, the kind of guy with grease under his finger nails from work and creases in his forehead from worry about work. His name was Gord and I was his pastor. 

Gord was an introvert of the first order. Shy, quiet, a back ground kind of guy. He had a high school education, loved his family, loved golf and hockey… if you mentioned Augustine in a sermon, he’d probably ask you what team he played for. And Gord would often say of himself that he was a just a garden variety follower of Jesus. 

But I always saw him as a great saint. Because he lived in such a way that people were drawn to him…they admired and trusted him. I remember a year or so after he moved out of our area, bumping into a neighbor of his at the grocery store. We knew each other a bit but we both knew Gord well and his name came up quite naturally in our conversation.

And Gord’s old neighbor said to me, “Ya know, the thing about Gord was, if ever I was going through a hard time, he’d be the guy I turned to.” Not to me, a pastor. Not to a credentialed counselor. Not to a lawyer. But to a guy with a grade 12 education who loved Jesus.

Somewhere this morning, Gord is probably wondering if his life really mattered to anyone. He has no idea. And neither do you, because you never know how God will use you. It’s not about your spiritual credentials. It’s about your spiritual life.

Steve

The Conversation of a Lifetime

‘He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”’
John 3:2-4

The man who was certain of everything is suddenly uncertain. The man who had control over his world is suddenly finding things beyond his control. The man who had it all figured out has his brain turned in figure 8’s.

Jesus reply to him, says in effect, “There is a reason you cannot figure this out Nic. You cannot see the Kingdom because you are not in it. You are not a part of it.” Nic who has all the best of spiritual pedigree does not have an adequate faith to see or enter or be a part of the Kingdom of God. He must be born again. He must be born from above.

His spiritual status, his Jewish nationality, his conformity to the law … his knowledge, his understanding, his prestigious religious role as noted in v. 10 … none of this is good enough. But he has no other spiritual card he can play. All human effort is never going to be enough. But all he’s got is who he is and what he is and Jesus says, that’s not enough. You must be born again.

Nic, like all of his generation, is looking for the Kingdom of God on earth. They want David’s throne restored and the Roman’s thrown out, and this great theocratic realm set up. But the Kingdom of God is not about a realm, it’s about a reign. It is the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in the human heart. A reborn heart, a new born life, born from above by the Spirit of God. It’s not about rebirthing a nation. It’s about building a Kingdom.

Nic learned that evening and we must learn anew: that you cannot buy or serve or work your way into the Kingdom of heaven. You cannot sacrifice, flatter or ingratiate your way into the kingdom of heaven. You can not beg, plead, pose your way in or reason, argue or debate your way in. You cannot moralize, theorize or rationalize your way in.

Jesus doesn’t care if you’ve got all the credentials of a Nic, or how religious you are, or how spiritual you seem, or what status you have or what degrees you hold: there is only one door-faith; there is only one means-grace; there is only one way-Jesus Christ; and there is only one outcome-eternal life. 

 …you never know (1) what will come of an everyday conversation. At the end of John’s gospel we find Nic at the foot of the cross, a fearless follower of Jesus who defies the Sanhedrin and identifies with fully with Christ. But he doesn’t get there if this conversation doesn’t happen in John 3.