Jesus’s Beginning
Recently I have been reading through the book of Luke. In the beginning of Luke the author documents the beginnings of Jesus’s teachings. I have noticed that before Jesus started changing things and using his words to teach he first went out and healed people. The first of Jesus’s teachings were with very little words, he would often say almost nothing at all. Instead Jesus went out into the cities and healed people, he went and taught by his actions.
So often I want to teach people, I want to minister to them, I want them to hear my words, but I need to shut up and act. I must let my actions first speak for me. Why should I let my word speak for me when my actions can make the real difference.? If I want to be like Jesus I must learn to act as though I am his follower. Patience is something that I must have when I want to talk. In James 1:19 we are called to be quick to listen and slow to speak. My words must not come before my actions. Jesus did not do such a thing. St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” We can preach the gospel with out every opening our mouths. There are people that I want to know the love of God, and I must do this my my actions first and my words second.
Well said. This seems to be one of the many implied themes of being a Christian but it’s often overlooked or understated simply because it is implied . After all, the book of James (2:26) says that “Faith without action is dead.” Although somewhat obvious and implied, this needs to be said.
I see a vital connection between this entry and your most recent entry regarding how the contemporary church has greatly influence and arguably altered the gospel through it’s actions. The saying goes “actions speak louder than words,” unfortunately humans can often suck at this. If we as a body of believers are concerned about the number of people that come to the 10:00 service vs. what we are doing the rest of the week, what is that saying about our selves, our beliefs and ultimately our God? Not that we have the power to change the status or merit of Jesus, but we do have the power to steward the message of our God in a way that is honorable, truthful, and righteous.
In a perfectly messed up world, Jesus would be experienced by all regardless of peoples faith, past, demographic, location…. etc. How we work towards achieving this is a seemingly undefined and overwhelming path but faithful action is an absolute necessity.
I think that if we as a church are lost in the confusion of legalities we have lost what we are really supposed to be doing. As followers of Jesus were must follow His example and to me we have lost that example in the legalities of church. We grow up with the preordained ideas about how church services must be. Some of these things are good, some of them are useless.
I was listen to Mike Pilavachi speak at conference today and he talked about how we have made taken worship and evangelizing and chose to separate them into two things, that cannot be combining, when really worship should be evangelizing. Worship needs to be more than just songs in a building, it needs to be our lifestyles that we present to people. But at the same time the songs we sing can be an evangelistic tool that can help bring people to God’s kingdom.