“…so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” - Titus 2:10c
I have two brothers Brad and Brandon. We all grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota with my mom, dad, and dog, Kokomo (may she rest in doggie peace J ). As the oldest, one of my “jobs” was to be the guinea pig for most everything we did. It fell to me to test out all the sports, activities, and anything we did for that matter so my brothers could just fall into the good ones after I sank or swam. The list of beta testing activities was lengthy and included such things as pole vaulting, gymnastics, soccer, baseball, swimming, basketball, football, children’s choir, band, science teams, and a myriad of other mind numbing functions that would make a grown man cry. In the end, my brothers and I were known most for our achievements in baseball and I’m proud to say we were successful. Two of us played Division I baseball, one played Division II baseball, and I was fortunate enough to play professionally for a time. However, none of that would have happened if I didn’t approve of playing baseball while testing out all of those activities. If I did not make baseball look appealing to my brothers they never would have played and would not have reached the levels that they did.
“Wow Brian that’s great, but what in the world does this have to do with Lockport?”
As we prepare to open the Lockport Campus we will come across thousands of people that have been trying out all kinds of things in their lives. Some of them will have chosen to try out Religion. They will have sampled Buddhism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and every other “-ism” in between. Others will have chosen to enter into the buffet line of the World. They will come to us having sampled drugs, alcohol, sex, money, success, and Cub’s baseball. Regardless of the diversity in their choices the goal is nearly always the same. They want to be complete. They want to find something that is real and permanent in their lives to fill the empty hole they find inside of them. These are the people that we are going to meet when we open our doors.
Our responsibility as Christians is not to live perfectly. After all Jesus was the only one who did that and we are not Him. It also isn’t our calling to live our lives never seeing these people because we have our noses too far in the air. In Jesus’ time, these people were called Pharisees and He had less than positive things to say to them. No, our responsibility is to do what Paul tells us in the book of Titus when he says that in every way we should make Jesus look attractive to those around us. If you read the book (which I hope you do) you will see Paul outlining all different types of groups of how they should live. He doesn’t leave any group of people out as he talks to men, women, children, old, young, slaves, and on and on he goes. His message is not to tell them how to live perfectly, but to live in such as way that their lives make the Gospel, the Truth of Jesus, the promise of Salvation, the hope of all Nations look attractive. To have it look like something they want in their lives.
I want to be very clear. Paul doesn’t say that we make the Gospel look attractive by changing, manipulating, misquoting, altering, or sugar coating the message of Jesus so that everyone likes it. Rather he is saying that people should look at your life, your family, your decisions, your convictions, your passion for Christ and say “I want to be part of that. If they can do it, I can do it!”
That is what we want people to experience when they walk through the doors at Lockport. Not a building with a bunch of people that think they have it all figured out, but a bunch of people that are living a life that strives to be like Christ and are wanting to make the message of Jesus attractive to everyone.
Friends, the greatest part is that we can start living that way now! We don’t have to wait until September, we can start living and breathing a life that is honoring of Christ. We can start making the Gospel look good now.
All For His Glory,
Brian Hunt
Campus Pastor
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