A Thought

“Jesus stands out among the great moral teachers of history, a Truth that Lee Strobel finally become convinced of.  Strobel graduated from Yale Law and worked fourteen years in journalism; at one time he was the legal affairs editor of the Chicago Tribune.  In 1979 his wife, Leslie, came home and shared that she had become a Christian.  As an atheist, Strobel was shocked and dismayed.  Yet he became intrigued by the change in his wife’s character.  He had to admit he never seriously studied the unusual claims about Jesus – that He had risen from the dead and that He claimed to be the Son of God.  Strobel believe it was all nonsense, a legend others had concocted about Jesus for various reasons.  So, employing his investigative competencies and experience, he decided it was time to check out the evidence for the claims of Christianity and what the Bible taught about Jesus Christ.  After a two-year extensive study, ‘by November 8, 1981, my legend thesis, to which I had doggedly clung for so many years, had been thoroughly dismantled … The atheism I had embraced for so long buckled under the weight of historical truth.’”  Excerpt from “Living into the Life of Jesus”, Klaus Issler

The mission of the United Methodist Church is to “make disciples of Christ for the transformation of the world”.  It is what we believe we, as a Church, have been called and commissioned and set apart for.  I don’t know if this man’s wife became a United Methodist, but it seems clear that her own transformation in faith was compelling enough to crack the hard shell of her husband’s atheism.  Her character alone was not, however, the deciding factor for Mr. Strobel; but it was her character that got his attention and led him to learn more, and this led him to Scripture and, ultimately, to Truth.

We cannot always know that our Christian character will compel others to such soul-searching or even faithful conclusions about our Lord, but we can be sure that the integrity of our witness will always bear fruit.  Like it or not, people are watching us especially if they know we are disciples of Christ.  It may seem they only are looking to find fault or to reveal our hypocrisy, but I am becoming more convinced the unbelieving world is looking for a reason to embrace our Lord.  And the only reason they may need could well come from your own witness or mine.

Be Christ today in someone’s life.  He matters.  His Church matters.  Our witness matters … to Him AND to them.

Blessings,

Michael