John Piper is sharing some tools that may help Christians engage with their loved ones that are not believers.
In a sermon posted to the preacher’s Desiring God ministry website, Piper outlined some practical ways to reach nonbelievers. He insisted that it is important to begin by telling people about the good news found in Jesus Christ.
“Make the objective facts of the glorious, Jesus-exalting news clear. There’s no other way that the next steps of the gospel can happen if they don’t know the news, because it’s in the news that they see him,” he wrote. “And they have to fall in love with him to be in.”
The preacher then suggested that people should urge their loved ones to get a good look at Jesus in the story.
“Urge them to look at Jesus in the news. Look at Jesus. Look at him suffering,” he said. “Look at him being rejected. Look at him dying. Look at him rising. Look. What do you see?”
Instead of focusing on the concept of self-denial that many non-believers have heard about Christianity, Piper suggested they focus on faith.
“Don’t let them — especially if they’ve grown up in church — fasten on the word self-denial, as if it means Christians are not capable of experiencing unspeakable joy,” he said.
That doesn’t mean that people should overlook suffering. Piper encouraged people to also get real about the suffering that comes with following Christ.
“If the all-governing, all-controlling, sovereign, merciful God was weaving a fabric of beauty and hope out of sufferings, rejection, murder, and resurrection of the Son of Man — if he was weaving, stitching, in his sovereignty, a fabric out of horrors upon horrors of sinful rejection and sinful murder, a fabric of beauty and a fabric of hope — then don’t you think that he can and will weave out of the torn pieces of your life, and out of the tangled threads of your life, a beautiful tapestry for his glory,’” he said. “And then, when you’re done, you say, ‘Can I pray?’”
(Photo: screen shot)