Last night one of my Judo students asked the greatest
question that I could ever hope of a Martial arts student, “how do I go about
sharing the Gospel with people I train with?” This student and his wife have
recently enrolled in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school to better their ground game,
and now the Holy Spirit is urging them to be missional among a closed off
people. The struggle, as the student put it, “they all have heard the Gospel
before.”
I’ve been slowly considering how I live a “Daily Gospel,”
so that I might say as the Apostle Paul said, “imitate me as I imitate Christ.”
This imitation of Christ flows from a knowledge of The Gospel, to a Love of theGospel, to a Bibline Life to now Bibline Speech.
As I mentioned in the prior Daily Gospel post, some Christians
live a laissez faire life and others live a confrontational lifestyle.
The life my student lives and the question he posed show that he does not live
on one extreme or the other. He genuinely wants his new martial arts brothers
and sisters to know of Christ, but he doesn’t want to be confrontational since
they’ve already experienced that. Essentially, this student is striving for
what Steve Timmis said our lives are to look like. “Ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel
intentionality.”
For myself, this student and many of my other students, we
do martial arts not only to better ourselves physically, and to protect our
loved ones, but also so that we might have a unique means of sharing Christ. As
I told him, at some point you’ll know that it is time to have the “Gospel”
conversation. I ALWAYS precede my conversation about the Gospel by asking about
the person’s life. (This strategy may not work for everyone...)
Me: Hey_____, so tell me about your
life –
Them: I grew up…, or I’m a military brat…or
I’ve got a crappy background…or My family was killed in a tragic car accident…
After they answer my petition for information, I always
follow it up with a respectful response. – I must be honest. It is a struggle
to humbly and respectfully respond to everyone’s backgrounds. I honestly
struggle to show respect to my friends that are LGBT or Muslim.
After the initial conversation I usually pick up with a
question such as:
So did your family go to church while you were growing up?
(Of course if they are Muslim or another religion there are different questions
to ask / topics to discuss.)
While this is a “closed” question, they can answer yes or
no, my follow up question determines how I share the Gospel.
Why did
you stop going?
Why
do you think you didn’t go?
I’ve only
encountered 5 responses. (In order of frequency)
1. I’ve seen the hypocrisy and want nothing to do with “those
people.”
2. I can’t believe in a “good” God when there is so much
suffering.
3. I don’t believe Christianity is the only right religion.
4. I don’t believe God exists.
5. I don’t believe Jesus really was God.
Our “Bibline life” MUST be
followed up with “Bibline Speech.” If Bibline Speech does not follow up a
Bibline life then neither the life nor the speech is truly biblical.
In the posts to come I’ll give my
personal responses to these 5 common responses.
Spurgeon
reflecting upon John Bunyan’s life said, “Prick him anywhere - his blood is Bibline, the very
essence of the Bible flows from him.”
