Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Near Lost - Low Hanging Fruit


Living and Discipling among the Lost – Finding the Hungry

And Jesus turned and saw them following, and *said to them, "What do you seek?" They said to Him, "Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?" He *said to them, "Come, and you will see." So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. (John 1:38-39)

A group of brand new Lieutenants had just finished physical training in their first days of infantry training. They were enthusiastically talking about their new found fellowship and commonality in Christ. Without thinking, one of them invited a straphanger to check out the Bible study. As the words left his mouth, he realized he was talking to one of the most profane officers in the platoon. Expecting a rejection full of explicatives, he received quite the opposite response. “Sure, I’ll be there. I need to get some religion.” A few weeks later the young office gave his life to Christ.

This kind of spiritual hunger is more prevalent than one may think. We call these who are ready to meet Jesus “low hanging fruit.” As a community, we have led many men and women to Christ in recent years. I think it has a lot to do with our evangelistic posture.

There really is no gimmick, we are simply leaning forward in the foxhole. That’s what I mean by an evangelistic posture. When a soldier talks about leaning forward in the foxhole, it means he’s alert and ready. We can adopt the same posture as fishers of men. We eagerly seek the lost and invite them to join us in a study about Jesus.

We run a very aggressive invitation campaign (we call it recruiting). With a core of about 30 laborers we will invite between 400 to 600 men and women to Bible study in a week. You say, “How absurd! Your numbers are surely exaggerated.” Part of our tactics is to stand outside 4 different mess halls and invite soldiers to the Bible study or Chapel. It’s very easy for us to talk to that many people in a week’s time. You may say, “Well, you probably get mostly Christians.” Correct, but there are a handful of non-Christians in each of our 5 Bible studies. There is a venue in these studies for these seekers to hear about Jesus and ask questions. And it is not a one shot deal. They are invited to various social functions (mostly in our homes) and we begin forming friendships with them and continue to answer their questions. We are just putting ourselves within arm’s length of those whom the Holy Spirit is already tugging on. That’s how we are leading so many to Christ. The power of an invitation to the hungry.
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