The moment has arrived.
It’s the end of the talk and the preacher is getting ready for the big ending. He has preached up a storm and many people in the crowd tonight are feeling suitably convicted about the sin in their lives and how it has separated them from God and their need to become a Christian.
And then the theatre begin. The band starts playing slow moving music in the background, the kind that grabs hold of your emotions and hugs them tightly into submission. The preacher tells everyone in the crowd to close their eyes and assures his potential converts that no-one else but him and Jesus will see who is making a decision tonight.
Then the invitation comes. People respond by raising their hands silently until he acknowledges them. A little later they will be ushered to the front, where they will be prayed for, fill in a card and job done.
Everyone on the ministry team goes home feeling successful. More souls for the kingdom.
WAVE THEM IN THE AIR
The above story is largely tongue in cheek, but the message hidden in there is that we have tended to make it so easy for people to become Christians. Part of our marketing and sales approach has been sneaking in the word FREE as much as possible. ‘Salvation is FREE’, ‘Jesus has paid the cost’, Grace has done the work for you’, and so on.
The problem with that, is that it is true. And also completely not. I once read a quote that said, “It doesn’t cost a lot to follow Jesus, just everything.” And that is a part of the mystery that the Gospel is often described as containing.
When Jesus left behind the group of followers He had spent three years building into, He left them with a very definite message. And it wasn’t about helping people raise their hand in the air and come to the front to say a prayer. The call on the early disciples was to make more disciples.
This is an area where much of the church has failed. For too long we settled on the idea of making converts and missed out on the longer haul journey of walking with people to discipleship.
It is true. Salvation is completely FREE. God offered to all of us the opportunity to have a restored relationship with Him and He did it through sending Jesus. Jesus came and died in our place, extending the very personal invitation of being reunited with God. A lot of undeserved grace. A gift undeserved and freely given.
But Jesus also had some harder words to say:
The main difference between the idea of becoming a convert and being a disciple is the ongoing nature of relationship. A convert is someone who put up their hand at a meeting and took up their cross once and then it was done. Whereas a disciple is someone who hears these words from Jesus and realises that every single day I need to pick up my cross again, deny myself and continue to follow Him.
It is out of the understanding and appreciation of all the grace and love that God has freely given to us, that following Him emerges and will be witnessed as we demonstrate a life lived in service of others.
Completely free, but costing everything we have as we wake up every morning determined once more to deny self, take up our cross and live another day for Him.