Incarnational Love

I had an interesting dream last night.... i dreamt that i went into a pagan temple... seems interesting though that the temple had pews for people to sit on.. and i sat next to this young man and started talking to him... when he found out that i was a christian, it was like he was shutting off.. he wasn't interested to me when i trying to explain Christianity to him.. when i vaguely mentioned something about the Kingdom, it seemed that his alarm bells were ringing and he became disinterested in listening.. then i tried to make it more "culturally relevant" by trying to decontextualise my examples and illustrations and make it milder but each time i tried bringing it to my point, he would cut me off as if he didn't want to listen (and mind you, having the teaching gift and being good at arguments as i am, i knew in my dream that i would have won it... but how do you approach a guy who doesn't even wanna hear you out??)...

den he went out of the building and i followed him.. and i continued to follow him... and i remember doing him several small favours here and there which i cant really remember what.. but i knew that i had kinda given up arguing with him verbally but i was just demonstrating my concern with my actions faithfully through those small things that i was doing.. in the end as i was still following him around, he took a rest at a bench.. and i remember that he actually thanked me for all those little favours and began to open up to the gospel.. he even apologised to me for being rude and cutting me off when i was talking to him earlier...

when i woke up i realised that there were several lessons that we could learn from:
-when we wanna go after the harvest, we have to go where they are.. even if it means entering dark places.. even if it means entering their territory or their temples...
-baing culturally relevant, trying to tone down our gospel or even looking for clever illustrations will only give us a limited response... we can't afford to rely only on these things to reach this generation cos this generation is looking for something real... and they wanna see the gospel demonstrated through action..
-we cant try to win an argument at the cost of losing that window to speak into someone's life.. we have to keep that window open at all cost and we have to be careful and extremely wise in what we say to keep the other person from shutting off..
-we need to follow our targets, go out of the way faithfully and consistently to reach out to them... that's why in the sermon on the mount, Jesus tells us to go the extra mile for others...
-many times, the kingdom is found in small things... small little actions that add up and that make a difference...
-remeber to be guarded against attacks from the evil one.. i remember in my dream that i keep getting tempted with situations to distract me from my mission...
-God is in control of how it ends..

so sometimes, it's just better to shut up and let your hands talk.. the problem with this generation is that we're always looking for instant results, even in evangelism.. and if we dun see things happening like we wanna see them, we think that God's not working.. but we have to learn to trust Him and be patient, knowing that he has the end in mind since the beginning.. in Ephesians 3, paul talks about the love that supasses knowledge... So what is this love that surpasses knowledge? it's love that is incarnational, demonstrated through action.. we must become love.. enough of talk and arguments.. we must go beyond that. it's this incarnational love that's gonna win a dying generation for Jesus.. when Mark Hemans ministeres in service yesterday, he was talking about taking the glory of God to the highways and the byways.. so how many of us are willing to storm the gates of dark territory with the love of God.. penetrating structures, buildings, institutions and sytems.. in the natural, in the physical as well as in the mind and in the spiritual... we need to manifest this radical love.. then we'll see just what this radical love can do... :)

Are you on fire for Jesus? ;)