Bringing the Gospel Home

Witnessing to Family Members, Close Friends, and Others Who Know You Well

By Randy Newman

Good News Publishers

Copyright © 2011 Randy Newman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4335-1371-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, 11,
Introduction, 13,
1. Family: A Beatitude and Yet a Burden, 25,
2. Grace: Amazing and Yet Breaking, 51,
3. Truth: Liberating and Yet Narrow, 77,
4. Love: Always Craved, and Yet Seldom Conveyed, 105,
5. Humility: Divinely Modeled and Yet Difficult to Find, 131,
6. Time: Freeing and Yet Fleeting, 155,
7. Eternity: Comforting and Yet Terrifying, 181,
Epilogue, 209,

CHAPTER 1

FAMILY

A Beatitude and Yet a Burden

Paulette came home for Christmas break from her freshman year of college armed with enough evangelistic tracts for each of her siblings. Her two sisters and one brother were going to hear the gospel whether they wanted to or not. After all, this method of sharing the gospel in concise booklet form had worked in her life.

Having been raised in a nominal Christian family that occasionally attended church (and a rather liberal one at that), she had gone off to college with no interest in God or religion. But a campus evangelist caught her attention and started getting through to her. As she listened to his logical, intellectually respectable evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, she thought he was proclaiming a “new religion.” At least, it was new to her.

This was no open-air ranting lunatic. He spoke calmly and reasonably to a packed audience in the university’s student center auditorium and handed out comment cards for people to indicate interest in further discussion. Paulette couldn’t believe her eyes as she watched her hand writing her name and dorm address on the card and check the box marked “more information.” Less than one week later, two girls stopped by her room and presented the good news by doing something anyone could do: they read a short booklet and asked Paulette if she’d like to pray the prayer on the last page.

She did and she prayed and it changed her life.

So certainly the same pattern would play itself out back at home. She lined up her three younger siblings against the wall of her bedroom (after making sure that Mom and Dad were nowhere in sight). She gave them each their own copy of the booklet and read each page aloud. The fifteen- and thirteen-year-old sisters and the ten-year-old brother cowered in submission under their big sister’s orders to listen. When she asked them if they’d like to pray the prayer, they all said yes. Paulette was elated (and relieved). Not only were her precious sisters and darling brother joining her in this newfound faith, but this method of evangelism had not let her down.

That was over thirty years ago and her faith has remained strong.

But the fruit from her evangelistic lineup did not endure. The elder of the two sisters continued to drink her way through high school, went off to college and partied with the best of them, and only calmed down years later — after finding peace and tranquility in the New Age movement. The younger sister puzzled everyone in the family for years because, despite her good looks, she never had a boyfriend. When she told everyone she was a lesbian, that all made sense. And Paulette’s little baby brother, who showed signs of intense devotion to Christ throughout his entire four years of college, one day decided the Christian faith just doesn’t work, walked away from his marriage to a Christian woman, and still finds more relevance in secular motivational speakers than in the Scriptures.

Paulette now regrets her lining up of relatives against the wall and would urge Christians to find other strategies. This book is an attempt to explore those other methods. But before we launch into that part of the task, a bit of study about the nature of the family and the truth of the gospel needs to set the stage for training and how-tos.

God’s Plan for the Family

A singles’ pastor once told me, “There’s no drama like family drama.” Ever since, I’ve wondered why this is so. Perhaps it is because the stakes are so high. God’s design for the family is so important, so profound, and so powerful that the Devil points his most potent weapons at this most crucial target. Given that scenario, it is no wonder we feel like we’re on a contested, spiritual battlefield more often than at a serene, Norman Rockwellesque dinner table.

A full appreciation for why God loves families so much and why the Evil One hates them so much sets an important backdrop for our investigation of how to share the good news with our relatives.

Family Is Important

Our discussion of the high value God places upon the family must begin with a look at the very nature of a Trinitarian God. He calls himself “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He could have chosen terms other than ones related to family. But he didn’t. Even though the title of “father” is found less often in the Old Testament than in the New, it is not out of place in the books of the law, the prophets, and the writings. The notion that God can be understood as a caring, nurturing, protecting Abba pervades both testaments.

Just one example, a rather substantial one, should suffice for our argument. When the prophet Isaiah arrived at that climactic moment of his Immanuel prophecy, declaring that the Messiah will be with us, he revealed God’s trust-inspiring titles of “Wonder-Counselor, Almighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace” (Isa. 9:6, my translation). Right there in the midst of some of the loftiest titles of deity stands the label “Father.”

Thus, it is not without scriptural warrant that the Jewish community crafted and recites one of its holiest prayers, Avinu, Malkenu — “Our Father, Our King.” The rabbis of old recognized God’s immanent, gentle, and intimate nature found in his title “father” as well as his transcendent, royal, and holy nature seen in “king.” He is both loving and ruling, to be trusted and revered, the one we rest in and bow before. Our response to him is both as sons and servants, children and worshipers, in delight and in awe.

Jesus’ frequent use of the term “Father” for the first person of the Trinity was consistent with the Old Testament’s depiction of God as one who “is gracious and compassionate … faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made … upholds all those who fall … and watches over all who love him …” (Ps. 145:8, 13–14, 20, niv).

No wonder Paul connects the divine pattern to every earthly family in his prayer for the Ephesians, where he petitions “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:15) for strength, stability, grounding, and comprehension of God’s love (see Eph. 3:14–19). When families fulfill their God-ordained purposes, this kind of strength flows to and through all members in beautiful ways.

Consider some of the other family terminology linked to profound truths in the Scriptures. Those redeemed by the blood of Christ are called “sons” who have been “adopted.” The church is referred to as the “bride of Christ.” And, when all of time is culminated, at what kind of banquet will we feast? A “marriage supper.”

The point not to be missed is that the image of family is woven into the revelation of the godhead and displayed at crucial junctures of God’s written Word. Therefore, we must treat family with reverence and awe. It is a divinely ordained and shaped institution, not merely some culturally constructed convention that needs to be tolerated.

There are at least two implications of God’s Trinitarian nature upon our reflections about family. First, since God is relational, we who are created in his image are also relational. We are hard-wired for communal connections, of which family ties are the most intimate and important. Second, since God is others-oriented (the Father reveals the Son, the Son submits to the Father, the Holy Spirit seeks to bring glory to the Son, etc.), so we should be others-oriented. Selflessness validates our image-of-God-bearing nature. Selfishness violates it. Living our lives theocentrically, the ultimate display of other-centeredness, resonates with our very nature, our reason for being, and our deepest longings.

All this is to say that family dynamics weigh heavily in our lives. We who have been chosen by a heavenly Father, redeemed by an atoning Son, and sealed with a Holy Spirit should value family highly. Despite all the cultural trends that serve to lampoon and demean the institution of the family (even if we imagine our specific family’s portrait in the dictionary next to the word “dysfunctional”), we who have experienced the unmerited favor of God must look to him for the resources to uphold the high regard for this divinely ordained, all-important institution.

Family Is Intimate

When God established the family, he started with the most basic unit — a marriage between a man and a woman. He rolled out the blueprint for all time with this prescription: “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). When Jesus was challenged about possible escape clauses allowing for a divorce, he appealed to this “one-flesh” intimacy as the basis for preserving a marriage. When Paul argued against uniting with a prostitute, he recalled this “one-flesh” imagery as proof that mere “casual sex” was an impossibility and an oxymoron.

God further described intimacy as shamelessness by adding, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). These poetic statements imply far more than just sexual union. The man and the woman enjoyed unhindered oneness in all dimensions of their beings. They felt no need to hide from each other using fig leaves, lies, emotional withdrawal, or pretense. Adam and Eve had no need to explain, clarify, restate, employ active listening skills, offer alibis, or ever say, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Just recently, I watched a pastor and his wife receive a standing ovation from their congregation as appreciation for over thirty years of caring for the church. The applause also rose out of gratitude for their modeling a marriage that endured through trials and pains. As the volume in the sanctuary rose to a level preventing anyone from overhearing, the husband whispered something in the ear of his bride. She laughed and the two of them exchanged a look that could only come after decades of intimacy. No one else knew what he said or what she thought, but we all felt a sense of awe for the intimacy these two had forged along the way.

Among the many disastrous results of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God, painfully recounted in Genesis 3, are the impulses to hide from one another (hence the fig leaves). In other words, the fall brought about a marring of the one-flesh intimacy God intended as the foundation for family.

While obviously not to the level of sexual intimacy, a kind of openness and unashamedness should pass down from the intimate couple to all of the family, thus creating a kind of greenhouse that fosters trust, depth of communication, and a joy found nowhere else.

Please don’t miss my point. Families were instituted by God to foster intimacy, to build trust, to be the springboard from which all relationships should work, and to bring about connectedness between people. The Devil hates such goals and continues to do all he can to make families into sources of alienation rather than intimacy.

Family Makes an Impression

Families also serve as God’s training centers. Consider the many verses in Proverbs that portray the family as the setting for promoting wisdom, developing discernment, acquiring prudence, and establishing the fear of the Lord. Relational bookends shape Proverbs — beginning with a father telling his son to pursue wisdom and concluding with a beautiful portrayal of an “excellent wife.” Again, note the use of familial imagery.

To be sure, the book of Proverbs addresses other issues besides family. Many admonitions require individualistic application. Taming your tongue, balancing your budget, overcoming sloth, controlling your temper, cultivating generosity, and many other fruits of righteousness all rely on personal discipline and wisdom, which flow from the “fear of the Lord.” But the numerous promises for family prosperity and the many admonitions for parents to raise godly children support a high estimation of the power of family to forge character. It could even be argued that individuals are more likely to pursue wisdom and godliness if those virtues were modeled for them in the early, formative days of their lives.

The “tent of the upright,” contrasted with “the house of the wicked,” will flourish (Prov. 14:11), have “much treasure (15:6), have rooms “filled with all precious and pleasant riches” (24:4), and serve as a “nest” from whence people should not stray (27:8).

Proverbs seems to assume that a strong marriage is the backbone of every family. Hence, the wise father presents colorful contrasts between an “excellent wife” and the other variety. The good option “is a crown of her husband” (12:4), “from the Lord” (19:14), and a source of sensual delights, capable of “intoxication” (5:19). The one who finds such a wife finds a display of God’s goodness (a better understanding of that phrase than the way most translations put it — “a good thing”) and “obtains favor from the Lord” (18:22). These superlatives are even more remarkable when we remember that they are “a far cry from the not uncommon ancient idea of a wife as chattel and child bearer but no companion.”

The wise father paints a rather different picture of the alternative. A quarrelsome wife is like a “continual dripping of rain” (19:13 — an image which gets repeated in 27:15). “A desert land” is one of two locations offered as preferable to living “with a quarrelsome and fretful woman” (21:19). The other spot is “in a corner of the housetop” (21:9; 25:24).

Because God prizes family so highly, it needs protection from a variety of threats. External threats from adultery get a great deal of urgent pleading (see all the lengthy warnings in Proverbs 5–7). Internal threats that lead to strife are so bad that it would be better to have “a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife” (17:1).

And of course, the family is the institution in which to raise children to fear the Lord, with all the many blessings that flow from that starting point. Because “folly is bound up in the heart of a child” (22:15), parents should be “diligent” (13:24) to discipline their offspring, for that brings “hope” (19:18), “wisdom” (29:15), and “rest” (29:17). Only a fool would “despise his father’s instruction” (15:5). It could even “save his soul from Sheol” (23:14).

Can people who were not raised in God-fearing homes still pursue righteousness later in life? Of course. But one has to wonder if the task is more difficult for someone with a later start. It may parallel the way an adult learning a second language has a disadvantage to a native speaker who was reared with the language permeating the walls and hearts of the home.

Satan’s Plan for the Family

Given God’s high ideals for what families should be — reflections of the very nature of a loving, personal God, sources of intimacy and security, and environments that foster godly character — it should come as no surprise that the Devil would want to destroy them. Or at least that he would want to mar families so they misrepresent God’s character, alienate people from one another, or degenerate into hothouses for sinful behavior and thought.

It is no mere coincidence that the first ramifications from the fall were familial. The man, after being confronted by God about his sin in the garden, immediately pointed the finger at his wife as the cause of their demise: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). As one preacher so poetically stated it, Adam’s “bone of my bones” (see Gen. 2:23) had now become a bone of contention.

And where did the consequences of the fall next show up? In one brother’s jealousy of another, eventually leading to murder. In a remarkably short number of verses, the idyllic family resort had become a satanic ground for death.

Today the Devil employs a whole host of devices to harm families. His goal is far more than making them “dysfunctional.” In fact, the widespread acceptance of that term may be evidence that the Evil One has already succeeded at demeaning God’s high purposes for family. Isn’t “functional” a rather low goal for a family? Is that all we really want, that families “function”? Setting our goal so low and settling for merely “healing the dysfunctions” of a family, I believe, plays right into the Devil’s game plan.

Instead, we should aim for families to be healthy, thriving, intimate, beautiful, strengthening, sanctifying, and, in the truest and fullest sense of the word, good. Let’s declare a moratorium on the terms “dysfunctional” or “functional.” Instead, let’s talk of “healthy” or “unhealthy” families — especially when we talk to our families, no matter how “dysfunctional” they may be. Let’s paint a better picture for what we want our families to be, subtly telling our parents, siblings, children, and others that we hold them in high regard. We want more for them than to be “functional” — a term better suited for cogs in gears than image-bearers sitting around our dining room tables.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Bringing the Gospel Home by Randy Newman. Copyright © 2011 Randy Newman. Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
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