Urgency and Relationship

At a Wednesday morning Bible study which I attend frequently, I recently saw a video done by Kirk Cameron called, "The Way of the Master." It was pretty engaging and challenging. Basically, Kirk wants Jesus-followers to feel and act on the urgency of saving the lost. He notes that Christians act as if offering Christ an immediate priority or even a priority at all. If a neighbor's house was burning, he observes, we wouldn't hesitate to do everything we could to get our neighbor to safety. We wouldn't be concerned about offending the neighbor, or risking rejection, or any of the other things that cause Jesus-followers to shy away from evangelism.

He's right. Established North American churches tend to act as if we have all the time in the world to share the Gospel. Many people have no time. And I'm not just talking about the folks who may die suddenly before they make a decision about eternity. I'm thinking of the folks who are on the edge of giving up. We need to hang on to a sense of urgency.

But urgency for what? Too often the only motivation is the old, classic "If you died tonight, where would you spend eternity?" Is that it? Is our goal just to move people into a category...those who have a "get-out-of-hell-free" card? Is that what being a Christian is all about? To me, following Christ is about a relationship. I have to admit that my primary motivation for committing my life to Jesus isn't about spending forever in heaven. I'm glad for that, but my primary drive is that the God of the universe seeks a relationship with me strongly enough to leap the barrier of sin and death in and through Jesus. It's being with God that matters to me. In order to share a relationship with Jesus with someone else, I need to seek, build, and nurture a relationship with that person. Bill Hybels urges us to step outside our conversational zones of comfort and to start and grow relationships with people through which others may experience Christ. Hybels has talked of relationships that go one year, five years, ten years or more before a person comes to the point of saying yes to Jesus.

I think it's a "both/and..." It is about taking the time to build and cultivate relationships, and it is about the urgency of sharing Christ. I think it's best expressed in a song by Casting Crowns - "Does Anybody Hear Her?" I commend it to you.

A little bit of a fork in the river here...What do you think? I'll see you when the waters merge again.