Orlando, FL 2009: Once racers exit pit row, champions soldier their way to the front and serve notice that world records and great feats of savvy belong to the realm of leaders. May the previously average or sleepy players awaken, notice, and join.

From Trent Ling:

“Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.”  2 Corinthians 5:11.

People of the world generally only know of religious people (those who say religious things, attend religious ceremonies, yet lack any real spiritual power).  The world thus knows not of the Bible, God, Christ, or the Spirit, despite each being real, available, and readily interactive.  Thus, it will always be up to disciples of Jesus to impress the real deal upon the lost, because the lost can only assume Christ to be no big deal, just as he is no big deal to the religious world (where “church” attendance is high but insight therefrom is low).  If disciples do not push and set the pace, it will never be set and no lost person will ever become a disciple because disciples must actually be made.  People cannot become disciples by birth or by osmosis.  Just as the leading edges in racing or technology are forged by those willing to push the envelope, disciples must assume this leading role to alert the lost and dying world that the only real alternative does exist and stands available for those tired of settling for little and less, day by day.

Make no mistake, this aggressive posture by disciples is purely for the good of the lost.  The world cannot tell its right hand from its left.  Jonah 4:11.  Only foolhardy disciples of Jesus could ever expect the world to figure out the mysteries and secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven.  And, only naïve and forgetful disciples of Jesus would ever expect the world to appreciate the magnitude of the stakes surrounding the Jesus questions.  Disciples must usurp the world’s opportunity to make scatterbrained assessments of Christ, and must persuade compellingly.  Let us Lead and Persuade.

I personally recall that for all of the troubles facing those who brought me to Christ (and those troubles were many), God had me under their relentless pursuit so that the barrage of truth coming my way might stick with me and ultimately jar me to the realization that the truth was what I had been missing all along.  Left to my own devices, and conversely offered little more than a casual spiritual conversation, it never would have occurred to me to pursue Christ, the very Author of life.  The urgency had to be shown by those who knew better because I was nowhere near waking up on my own (and neither is anybody else).

We disciples get with great numbers of lost people, but in many cases, these same people do not give their relationship with God a second thought beyond our initiation of the topic.  Doggedly, we must revere and join God as he goads (Acts 26:14), walls in (Lamentation 3:7), and presses (2 Corinthians 4:8) those who will not and cannot ever figure this thing out.  Let us never expect people to come to life spiritually on their own.  It never happens and we cannot read of it in the Scriptures.  Rather, let us help others in the same directed, salty, and unrelenting way in which we have been helped, delivered, and loved.  We must declare in life and in word that we are not the religion that they have long and rightly ignored.  Short of this, lost people will never know the stakes or the forsaken opportunities that lie before them.

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