The Power of God’s Pleasure

Following is an excerpt from an article of the same title by Steve Sjogren as posted on his blog.

All of us have gifts, whether we know Christ or not.

I have found that one of the most powerful ways to lead people toward Christ is to give them a chance to use their gifts in serving others. In using their gifts they will experience, to borrow a famous idea from the film Chariots of Fire,
“the pleasure of God.”
We would generally agree that leading people away from strange views and perspectives to a scriptural view of Jesus is extremely difficult. Once people have given themselves to a “cultic” view of Jesus, it is difficult to find their way back to a clear-cut biblical view of him.

Yet I have seen a number of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, both of those groups believe in the Arian view of Christ that he was only man and not God, come to a saving relationship with Christ through using their gifts to serve others.

Early on in my stint as a leader there was no way that I would have allowed a non-believer any shot at serving along side of other believers. But then along came a handful of Mormons who initially said they were interested in caring for those in need. Could they help in giving groceries and clothes away? After thinking it through we said they could, but they had to be paired up with older, mature believers who were grounded in the faith. Read the rest here.


I found this principle to be true when I was involved in leading The Alpha Course. New and nominal believers were often given small group co-leader positions.. they proved to be great in small group settings and brought a lot of life with them.. experienced believers often had the opposite affect as they spouted bible verses and had a hard time relating to new people. Giving people a chance to use their gifts in serving others is the heart of what leadership is.. at least what it should be.

4 comments:

  1. I like this and it makes sense. I think sometimes people aren't given the opportunity to use their gifts because someone "above them" may not think they are "ready" which is really a step in the wrong direction. Hope that made sense!

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  2. Thanks for the post. Personally, I've found it hard to invite a friend to church time and again, but its been pretty easy to say "Heh, I'm going down to Habitat for Humanity next Saturday... want to come?"

    And usually, during the lunch break, one of my friends will ask a question like... "so what's your church like?"

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  3. Great post brother.
    Keep up the wonder work you are doing blogging. I totally agree with you brother. I hope you have a blessed week.

    In Him,
    Kinney Mabry
    Aka
    Preacherman

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  4. Great post. One one of reasons I quit blogging is because I've become disillusioned with much of what Christianity is:

    Christianity is, too often, a lot of people telling other people that they aren't Christians. That's "pop Christianity" anyway. It's rocked my spiritual well being, sadly.

    I'll confess, buried here in your comments, that my faith life has been better. For now I'm not doing very well with my Christian brothers. I want to avoid them. Not sure why. I don't like how cruel we are to one another. I don't like the fact that people are knocking but we won't let them in... I don't like it that we're kicking people out.

    Seriously, I think I may be going theologically liberal to the point that my own brothers and sisters might, in many cases, reject me. Its all a put off.

    Yep...

    On second thought, maybe its not so much that my faith life has been better off.

    ReplyDelete

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