Quite simply, I have never seen that work. It is completely antagonistic and does nothing to melt the heart of the person with whom you are struggling:
Influencing people to move from point A to point B happens best when we begin with the work of melting their hearts.You want your teenager, spouse, student, co-worker, neighbor to hear and care about what you have to say? Then first make sure you have cared enough about them to melt their heart, honor them, love on them, take interest in what interests them. Attitudes (including our own) are melted as love grows.
There is a huge lesson here for us as evangelicals--believers who want others to know what we've learned in our walk as Christ-followers. Goodness, do we struggle with attitude:
At our worst, we suddenly promote ourselves to 'sin-judgers,' looking down on others for their indiscretions. Not once did Jesus look down on anyone.When we become believers in what Jesus did on the cross, we become the bride of Christ. In a marriage, is it productive to gripe either at our spouse or about others to our spouse? Griping, in fact, hardens our hearts.
If we were in the company of a physical Christ at this moment, first and foremost our hearts would be melted into puddles of love. Over and over, the biblical message is love first:
Romans 13: When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along.
Galatians 5: For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.
Ephesians 5: Mostly what God does is love you.To complete our brideship well, we must mostly love, mostly melt hearts, mostly live without the attitude of sin-judger. Yes, love is harder than judging. But it is God's favorite pastime and his most effective tool in moving us from point A to point B. That means it would be our most effective tool in our influence on people and inviting them into the faith.
Some of us were guilted into faith. We can step out of that cesspool and step back into a brideship that is courted by the very extravagant love of God. Get "remarried" to Christ with this love as the backdrop.
When we practice real love, we--as evangelicals--move into a deep realignment with the Spirit of God (1 John 3):
Let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we are living truly, living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
Once...we're no longer accusing and condemning ourselves, we're bold and free [realigned] before God! We're able to stretch our hands out and receive what we've asked for because we're doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God's command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands [to believe and love], we live deeply and surely in him, and him in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.When we allow Christ to melt our hearts toward ourselves, we can apply that melted heart to our interactions with others. Their hearts, now melting, may hear our message of Christ because it is a message of love--true love. No attitude.
Then we can become what we are intended to be: the fragrance of Christ in a hurting world.
Tomorrow: Strength comes in saying, "No."
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