God of This City v3.3

Good Intentions

Confession time:
If I told you I wash my feet twelve times a year I would be lying. If I said six times a year I would still be lying.

Four.

I’ll go with four. (On average – depending on leap year and the phase of the moon and whatnot) four times a year I intentionally wash my feet. I mean, my feet do get into the shower with me at least once a day – sometimes twice, but washing your feet isn’t the easiest or most fascinating chore. Think about it… you’re on a slick, angled, porcelain like surface that becomes slicker as the shower water sprays directly on it. Now, you are expected to stand on one foot and soap up the other. Once the first is done the second becomes twice as difficult because you have to swap over to a super slick soapy foot. This may be easy for you, but I’ve realized that the older I get the harder it is to actually reach my feet! This makes my shower experience a balancing act as well as an excellent opportunity to win $100,000 on that funny video show. Therefore, I believe four times a year will suffice.

It’s not that I neglect my feet, like I said they do get into the shower with me every time I get in the shower. They do get some attention – just not the attention they deserve on a regular basis. They do get clean, but they might be a little rougher around the edges than they could be if I spent more time with them. I guess I need to be more intentional when I’m taking a shower.

We all have good intentions when it comes to our personal lives. We intentionally get up in the morning to go to work or school. We intentionally take the trash out so the house won’t stink. We intentionally wash our clothes, brush our teeth, pet the cats, yada, yada, yada... [If you’ve ever watched Seinfeld you automatically know what yada, yada, yada means. If not, just use your imagination.]

But what if we intentionally made God the God of This City? What if we went out of our way to show others who God is? What if we were a little more intentional about evangelism?

You see, evangelism was never designed to be accidental. Sure there are times when evangelism is a by-product of another church function, but even then it is intentional. I’m not exactly sure when this happened but somewhere between 33 AD and today some people decided that meeting on Sunday for an hour would draw the non-believers and non-followers [yes, as a matter of fact I do believe there is a difference] to The Message. No… Jesus was clear that we are to go into the world to spread the Good News.

Now, please don’t think I am against our Sunday morning worship services. I’m not – in fact I believe worship services are an excellent opportunity for “by-product” evangelism. However, what I’m talking about here is the command that Jesus gave us to reach those who don’t know who He is. Just as we are called to connect with our circle of influence [the people we see on a regular basis], we are also called to reach those that we don’t already know personally. We are called to be intentional.

During His time on Earth, Jesus was a master at intentional evangelism. He understood that in order to encourage people He had to know people. I believe that Jesus knew that if He showed interest in someone, “that” someone would give Him their attention.

An example? Certainly!

3 He (Jesus) left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink." 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, `Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." 11 She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? 12 "You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?" 13 Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."

15 The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw." 16 He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." 17 The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, `I have no husband'; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly." 19 The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." 25 The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us." 26 Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He."

27 At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, "What do You seek?" or, "Why do You speak with her?" 28 So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, 29 "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" 30 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." 32 But He said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." 33 So the disciples were saying to one another, "No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?" 34 Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. (John 4:3-34, NASV)

I don’t think it was any accident that Jesus went through Samaria and stopped at this well. Remember, during that period in history the Jews hated the Samaritans – so for Jesus to even explain Salvation to this Samaritan woman was radical. However, what I believe is more radical (although rather simple) is the fully intentional approach Jesus made to reach her. His strategy was simple: 1.) Go where she would be, 2.) Show interest in who she was, and 3.) Share the Truth of Salvation with her [radical, right?].

Interestingly enough, He never invited her to church [don’t go throwing sticks at me… we will discuss this in another blog. I really believe that Jesus’ plan was for His followers to lead others to Him, not just a preacher on Sunday mornings.]

So, I figure if Jesus was intentional, we should be too. We all do intentional things, right? We all go out to eat, put gas in our cars, go shopping, go to the library, go to the doctor, go to work out etc. What if, when we went out to eat, we went to the same place at least once a week and asked for the same server each time. What if we built an intentional relationship with this server on his or her terms and showed interest in who that person was [this will be harder than you may think. Servers are there to serve you – but for intentional ministry to truly work you will need to serve them. This is not the place for bad tips!] What if, over time, we come to discover who this person really is, where they are in life, what motivates or discourages them, and/or why they believe they exist? What if, during this process, we have the amazing opportunity to share the Truth with them about Jesus, His love, passion, and saving grace? What if?

As a follower of Jesus I believe I have been given the command to share Christ with other people, whether I know them or not. Consequently, for God to be the God of This City it must be my objective to be intentional with my every day life. What will this involve? First, prayer is essential to keep this from being a hit or miss deal. I pray that God will lead me to the person He has for me. Secondly, it will cost – time, money, etc. If I buy my gas from a convenience store that raises their gas prices over a competitor, it may cost me a little more for a gallon of gas in order to build an intentional relationship with the store clerk [I once heard a wise man say that pay at the pump is a killer of intentional evangelism.] Finally, consistency is key. I will absolutely, positively, without a doubt have to be constantly consistent – both with my faith and with my scheduling. If I plan to eat lunch at the same restaurant on Tuesdays to build an intentional relationship there, then I should be consistent with my scheduling. However, if I’m having a lousy Tuesday, maybe I should weigh the odds on whether or not my visit will be positive. If my attitude isn’t consistent with my faith then my authentication will suffer.

Remember my illustration about my feet? It is not that I neglect to clean my feet; it is that I am not cleaning them intentionally. The same is true for our intentional ministry. It is not that we aren’t seeing new people every day, it is that we are neglecting to build intentional relationships with those people.

Really, this all boils down to taking Jesus with you wherever you go, building intentional relationships once you are there, and then intentionally sharing the love that Jesus has to offer with them. Jesus completes His thoughts from the above passage this way:

“34 Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. 35 "Do you not say, `There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest'? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.” (John 4:34-35, NASV, italics added)

Now is the time for us to be intentionally reaching others for Christ.