**Violating People Spiritually - Part 3 **
In the 3rd chapter of Acts, Peter fastened his eyes on a lame man and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6 KJV). Then he took the hand of the lame man and lifted him up.
In that encounter, the lame man was healed so that he was able to walk and jump as he entered the temple with Peter and John.
But what if you made that technique the basis for a healing ministry? What if you decided that your approach to people in sick beds or wheelchairs would be to fasten your eyes upon them, and then say the words that Peter said to the lame man, and then pull them up forcibly out of their sick beds or wheelchairs?
How do you think that would go? What would be the results?
Most likely, if you base your ministry on that technique, your approach would result in many people being hurt. Your “healing” encounters would leave people in worse conditions than they were in before you came along. And if you did all of this in the name of Jesus, it would most likely drive people further away from Jesus.
But why? Why did it work perfectly for Peter, but performing exactly the same actions would not work for you?
Because Peter was not following a pre-determined technique. Peter had no agenda of his own. Peter was walking with God. Peter waited until God prompted him to take the actions that he did with the lame man, and then he simply obeyed what God was prompting Him to do. And as far as we know, this is the only time in his life that Peter approached a lame man in this way.
If God had prompted Peter instead to heal the lame man by singing a song to him, or by just touching him gently, then that is what Peter would have done, because he wasn’t following his own will … and the lame man would have been healed.
Peter had learned to respond to anything that the Holy Spirit prompted him to do. This is the approach to ministry that Jesus modeled for us in his own life.
“So Jesus answered them by saying, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself [of His own accord], unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever things the Father does, the Son [in His turn] also does in the same way.”—John 5:19 (AMP)
If we approach our ministry encounters determined to follow a pre-arranged script or technique, and we are not sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings, it is almost guaranteed that we will hurt people and drive them further away from Jesus.
Have No Agenda
After a lifetime of attending church in America, what will you have learned?
If you spend a lifetime attending church in America, you will have learned how to sing songs together in groups and how to listen politely to lectures (In religious meetings, we call them sermons.). But one thing is almost certain. After a lifetime of attending church in America, most believers will have no idea how to be effective witnesses for Christ outside the walls of the church.
People who were raised in church are typically very bad at evangelism, usually hurting more people than they help.
Training church members to be effective witnesses for Christ involves unlearning a lot of misconceptions about what effective outreach should look like. Outreach training involves a lot of correction and tearing down a lot of strongholds and assumptions in the minds of church members.
Maybe the best way to approach outreach training is for each of us to assume that what we have believed about outreach and evangelism is wrong. That’s a good starting place. We must completely replace our ideas of evangelism with a new paradigm. Ironically, our new paradigm for effective evangelism must be based on the very oldest model that was given to us in the earliest days of the Christian Church. That model is the ministry of Jesus.
As a young evangelist-in-training, I was told that when I encountered a non-believer, I needed to steer every conversation to the subject of Jesus and the Gospel in three sentences. I was also told that if I did not share the Gospel message with every non-believer that I encountered, God would hold me personally responsible for their eternal fate.
That’s really an impossible burden to carry. It also bears no resemblance to Jesus’ approach to ministry.
Jesus did not immediately tell people who He was. When demons declared Him to be “the Holy One of God,” Jesus silenced them. After Peter’s confession of faith in Matthew 16:20, Jesus firmly instructed His disciples not to tell anyone Who He was. Often when he healed people, he instructed them not to tell anyone what had happened.
In the same way, we have learned that it is usually best not to announce to people that we are Christians when we first meet them. We’ve learned that if we immediately present ourselves as Christians, it often causes people to back off, and we lose any chance to have a meaningful encounter with them.
Jesus’ approach to outreach was completely different from our traditional evangelistic approaches. Jesus didn’t prioritize “witnessing” to people or sharing a salvation message.
Instead, Jesus focused His ministry on meeting the needs of the people He encountered. Jesus set the focus of His ministry in His very first ministry encounter with Andrew in John 1:38 when He asked, “What are you looking for? [And what is it you wish?]” (AMPC).
Other Bible versions translate these words as “What do you want?” or “What are you seeking?”
Jesus did not make a move in any encounter until he was made aware of what the person’s need was. He never assumed what they needed most, even with Bartimaeus, who was obviously blind.
“Jesus asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said, ‘Teacher, I want to see.’”—Mark 10:51 (CEB)
And then, after he learned what this man deeply desired, Jesus focused his ministry on meeting the man’s need and giving him the desire of his heart.
As a result, Bartimaeus followed Jesus as his disciple.
“Jesus said, ‘Go, your faith has healed you.’ At once he was able to see, and he began to follow Jesus on the way.”—Mark 10:52 (CEB)
**I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of following Jesus’ model and having no pre-determined agenda for our encounters with people. **
I’ve learned through hard experience that if I approach my encounters with people with a pre-determined agenda that I want to accomplish, it often results in people being hurt and driven further away from Jesus.
Even if I approach people with a sincere desire to help them, but I am not sensitive to what they feel they really need in the moment, and I am not sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings, I can do more harm than good.
Imposing our agenda for ministry is a backwards approach. It will probably result in people being unnecessarily hurt. Jesus’ approach was completely opposite. He had no agenda of His own. He did not know what He would do in each encounter until He received guidance from His Father. Jesus received His agenda for each encounter from His Father as He was sensitive to discover the needs of the person in that particular moment.
Jesus’ approach was to meet people at their point of need—from THEIR point of view. He often determined what they needed by simply asking them, “What are you looking for?” or “What do you want me to do for you?”
The visits of the angel Gabriel to Roland Buck in 1977 were really a landmark in Church history that marked a transition into a new season for the Church. The messages delivered to Pastor Buck during those visitations are vital for the Church to understand.
During those visitations, Gabriel delivered messages from the heart of God to the Church. These messages are chronicled in the book, Angels on Assignment.
In the chapter entitled, “When God Says Thanks!” Pastor Buck relates this message from God’s heart,
“The angel said it was more important to be like Jesus in meeting the area of a person’s need, than to be witnessing to people about salvation. That really surprised me. We have become so conditioned to the idea that we aren’t doing anything for God unless we are able to get out and witness and to skillfully use the Word. But this angel said, ‘When you are helping people, you become a living word to them which says, “I care and God cares for you!”’ That doesn’t mean we exalt ourselves as Jesus; it simply means Jesus is living his life through us. We become a word that is alive to them, not a dead, printed word, but a living word. This is something we can do, and it is more important than witnessing, quoting scripture or teaching. Instead of witnessing, we BECOME a witness of what Jesus is really like.”
Scripture confirms what the angel said to Pastor Buck. In Matthew 25, when the nations are judged, Jesus does not evaluate people based on how many unbelievers they “witnessed” to. Rather, people are rewarded or rejected based on whether or not they met the physical and emotional needs of the people within their spheres of influence.
“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory and majesty and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him [for judgment]; and He will separate them from one another, as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats;** **and He will put the sheep on His right [the place of honor], and the goats on His left [the place of rejection].
“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father [you favored of God, appointed to eternal salvation], inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;** **I was naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me [with help and ministering care]; I was in prison, and you came to Me [ignoring personal danger].’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You as a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? And when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ The King will answer and say to them, ‘I assure you and most solemnly say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it for Me.’
“Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Leave Me, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (demons);** for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me [with help and ministering care].’ Then they also [in their turn] will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or as a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will reply to them, ‘I assure you and most solemnly say to you, to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these [my followers], you did not do it for Me.’ **Then these [unbelieving people] will go away into eternal (unending) punishment, but those who are righteous and in right standing with God [will go, by His remarkable grace] into eternal (unending) life.”—Matthew 25:31-46 (AMP)
Pastor Buck went on to relate that “The last thing the angel said on this subject was that the real desires of our heart and the longings that we have in this life will be met when we take care of another’s need in the place of Jesus. The angel stated that we could see what God’s interests really are in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. I read it, and sure enough, it was written right there in the Bible just as he had been telling me.”
“No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor and destitute. Clothe those who are cold and don’t hide from relatives who need your help. If you do these things, God will shed his own glorious light upon you. He will heal you; your godliness will lead you forward, and goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then when you call, the Lord will answer. ‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak, and to stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumors! Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an everflowing spring” (Isaiah 58:6-11 TLB).
After Pastor Phil Wyman died, people from many different walks of life—believers and non-believers—flooded his Facebook page with a seemingly unending stream of tributes to this man who had touched their lives so deeply, often by just believing in them, valuing them, accepting them, and loving them for who they were without pressuring them to change in any way. He was a true and loyal friend, and he may have been the closest thing to Jesus that some people ever met.
Phil’s life was a living example for me of what it means to be an effective witness for Christ. With his example in mind, and more importantly, remembering the example of Jesus’ ministry, I strive to have no agenda at all in my encounters with people, except to discover and help meet the needs that they feel are most pressing in their lives at the moment.
As I focus on meeting people at their point of need, it helps me to see each person I meet as “my new best friend.” When I view people this way, I naturally want to help them. I want to support them and encourage them. I want to “be there” for them, keeping in mind the Golden Rule that Jesus gave us:
“And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”—Luke 6:31 (ESV)
**Reference: **
Buck, R. (n.d.). Chapter 10: When God Says Thanks!. Angels on Assignment. https://angelsonassignment.org/thanks.html
