Changing Your World:
By Being a Witness
Mark 6:1-13

[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, July 6, 2003]

There’s a true story told of a Russian novelist whose hobby was catching and mounting butterflies. One day while out on an expedition, he spied a specie of butterfly not yet included in his collection. He caught it and came home to his wife, excited about his find. Then, as an afterthought, he mentioned that while out in the rough hills, he’d encountered a man who had fallen and was bleeding badly. “Did you help him?” the writer’s wife wondered. “No,” he said blankly, “I had to catch that butterfly.”

We hear stories like that and we shake our heads. We wonder how people can be so cruel and insensitive. Yet, when I examine my life with something approaching objectivity, I realize that I too can be cruel and insensitive. I sometimes wonder how often in my lifetime I’ve had the ability to give someone encouragement, hope, or life and have failed to do so. How many times have I been so hung up on my agenda that I have overlooked the people around me who have been laid low by life, who are dying in one way or another?

The Bible makes it clear that without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we human beings have no hope for this life or the next. Jesus came into this world to show the compassionate face of God to the whole human race. Although every person is born a slave of sin, Jesus can set us free. When we repent—that means to turn away from sin and turn toward Christ—we receive forgiveness for our sin. The wall that exists between us and the perfect God of the universe from the moment we’re born is torn down for us by Christ. When we trust Jesus as our only God and Savior, we become reconciled to God and we have life with Him forever.

And every person who has received the gifts of reconciliation with God and new life through Jesus Christ has a mission. We’re called to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with others. It’s okay to spend time catching butterflies, or playing football, or writing poetry, or selling software, or installing plumbing, fixing cars, raising children, reading the latest Harry Potter book, savoring a pizza, or any of the millions and millions of other things we might do in the course of our days. But we’re not ever to be so focused on those things that we neglect our highest goal as human beings and our greatest task as followers of Jesus Christ: to rescue people who will die unless they know Jesus too. We are to be witnesses for Jesus Christ.

I know...just the phrase “witnesses for Jesus Christ’ conjures up images of high pressure zealots going door to door with literature or of sidewalk preachers yelling at people to repent. But being a witness for Christ doesn’t have to be a negative thing. A man I know is a successful businessperson and a committed follower of Christ. A co-worker of his had always spurned Christ and the Church. But as this co-worker observed the purposefulness and the joy of his believing colleague and how he seemed to maintain his balance and his hope even when bad things happened, he was impressed. When the co-worker’s life hit a terrible snag, he approached my friend and asked why Christ made such a difference in his life. My friend was able to say that while of course, neither he or his life were perfect, it was Jesus Christ Who made all the difference in his world. Through that man’s witness, that co-worker came to faith in Christ and his life has changed dramatically for the better. Witnesses for Christ are the ones who turn aside from catching butterflies in order to bring life to a world that is dying without Jesus!

[more to come below...]