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When Eternity
Holds Its Breath
L EE ST ROBEL
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thing dramatic was going to happen. And it did — but not in the
way I had anticipated.
I walked into the business office and looked around. The place
appeared empty except for my friend, who was sitting at his desk.
Perfect! I reminded him that Easter was coming and asked if he
would want to come to church with Leslie and me. He turned me
down cold. I asked if he was interested at all in spiritual matters,
and he emphatically said no. I asked if he had any questions about
God, and again he said no. I talked to him about why the resur-
rection was so important, but he clearly wasn’t interested.
With all of my evangelistic overtures being instantly shut
down, I was beginning to get a little embarrassed. Why was he
so disinterested in talking about spiritual matters if God was in-
deed prodding me to talk with him? Finally, I stammered, “Well,
uh, if you’ve ever got any questions, um, I guess you know where
my desk is,” and I walked out.
What was that all about? I couldn’t understand why he was
so adamantly resistant. In the end, I concluded that maybe I was
going to be one link in a very long chain of people and experi-
ences that would eventually lead him to Christ. Still, as far as I
know he remains a skeptic to this day.
Fast-forward several years. By this time I was a teaching pas-
tor at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago.
After I spoke one Sunday morning, a middle-aged man came up,
shook my hand, and said, “I just want to thank you for the spiri-
tual influence you’ve had in my life.”
“That’s very nice,” I said, “but who are you?”
“Let me tell you my story,” he replied. “A few years ago I lost
my job. I didn’t have any money, and I was afraid I was going to
lose my house. I called a friend of mine who runs a newspaper
and said, ‘Do you have any work for me?’ He asked, ‘Can you tile
floors?’ Well, I had tiled my bathroom once, so I said, ‘Sure.’ He
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told me, ‘We need some tiling done at the newspaper. If you can
do that, we can pay you.’
“So one day, not long before Easter, I was on my hands and
knees behind a desk in the business office of the newspaper, fix-
ing some tiles, when you walked into the room. I don’t think you
even saw me. You started talking about God and Jesus and Easter
and the church to some guy, and he wasn’t interested at all. But I
was crouching there listening, and my heart was beating fast, and
I started thinking, ‘I need God! I need to go to church!’
“As soon as you left, I called my wife and said, ‘We’re going to
church this Easter.’ She said, ‘You’re kidding!’ I said, ‘No, we are.’
We ended up coming to this church that Easter, and my wife,
my teenage son, and I all came to faith in Christ. I just wanted
to thank you.”
I was dumbstruck! Who could have foreseen that, except the
amazing God of grace?
Anyone who has ever read the Bible knows that God wants us
to be involved with spreading his good news far and wide. What
is mysterious is why he chooses to include us in his redemptive
mission. Could it be because of the way he uses unexpected ad-
ventures to enrich our lives?
Inevitably, our faith is deepened when we sense God leading
us into evangelistic encounters, when we see him answer our
prayers for spiritually befuddled friends, and when we witness
how the gospel continues to revolutionize people who put their
trust in Christ.
The truth is that I’ve become a fanatic when it comes to radi-
cal life change. Nothing is more fulfilling than seeing ordinary
people turned into extraordinary followers of God, imbued with
his Spirit and enabled by his power to make incredible differ-
ences in the lives of others.
Atheists who become missionaries. Once wayward kids who
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Enrolling
in the Adventure
M A R K M I T T EL BERG
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Action Principle
You may not have realized it before, but as a Christian you too
are called into the unexpected adventure of spreading the faith
to others. How do I know? Because a “Christian,” by definition, is
a follower of Jesus Christ, the one who came “to seek and to save
what was lost” (Luke 19:10) and who then commissioned us to
follow his example and “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19).
We were redeemed, in part, for the purpose of reaching others for
Christ. Therefore, we’ll never be complete in our experience with
God until we allow him to use us to spread his message to others.
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resisted it. Why? In part, ironically, because I was afraid that God
was going to take away my fun and sense of adventure. I had con-
vinced myself that Christianity, though correct in its teachings,
was a lifestyle for people who couldn’t do much else. It certainly
did not evoke in me thoughts of risk-taking or excitement.
Can you relate to that? Part of the problem, I guess, is a re-
sponse to some of the religious people around us. They’re nice
people, but risk and adventure seem to have left their lives some-
where in the last millennium — if they were ever there in the first
place. It’s not surprising if we react to
their examples with a yawn. Churches
Begin to transform the
can be pretty sleepy places, and we need
culture of your church by
to change that.
first seeking God’s revival
You can begin to transform the
in your own soul.
culture of your church by first seeking
God’s revival in your own soul, reinstat-
ing in your own heart his vision for reaching this lost and dying
world. Cultivate passion and excitement for the unexpected ad-
venture, and you’ll be amazed at how you — regardless of your
age, gender, background, or experience — can stir up your church
to become a more spiritually dynamic and contagious place.
Another reason we might have misconceptions of the Chris-
tian life is because we underestimate God’s character and misun-
derstand his desires for us. We think, strangely, that his goal is to
curtail our freedom and stifle our spirit so that he can somehow
better contain and control us. But this is a woefully mistaken per-
ception of the all-powerful and all-wise God, who created beauty,
nature, color, emotion, art, and life itself — not to mention in-
grained in us the desire for adventure and excitement.
No, our God is the God of creativity and imagination. He’s an
unpredictable being of perfection as well as spontaneity. He cares
for the people he created with a strong and undying love, and he
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