Turn Or Burn

Last weekend I went to a thing called 99. For those of you who live in Tulsa, it’s just like Nightmare at Guts. It’s a “haunted” house type thing where they are showing you ways people die because of their negative choices. The point of it, at least from what I perceived, is that they are trying to scare people into giving their lives to Jesus. I can see trying to scare people to stop making their negative choices, but not into loving Jesus. Loving Jesus is a choice that we have to make and I don’t think we can be scared into it. Terror is a negative thing so why would we want to start people’s relationship with Jesus with a negative thing? When Jesus was on this earth, He spoke of hope and love and grace. He never said anything about “turn or burn”. 2 Thessalonians 2:16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope, Jesus loved us! He came to comfort us and give us hope, not to scare us. So where did we come up with this idea to try to scare people into believing? When I think about this, I compare it to an abusive husband who scares his wife into covering her bruises instead of telling someone. 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 ⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. No where in this does it say love scares you into believing. Helping someone to become a believer is something that needs to be done in love. Jesus loved, that’s perfectly clear in every single thing He did. That’s why He came to earth in the first place. He loves us so much, that He gave up His life for our sins. That is a wonderful thing that we can’t even begin to fathom. Why do we turn it into a 30 minute “haunted” house to try and scare people into believing that? When I hear a parent that is telling their kid “you’re going to go to hell if you lie to me” or something else along those lines, I cringe because they are giving their child the wrong idea about God and Jesus. Yes, it is wrong to lie to your parents; but God is not going to send them to hell for that. If that was how God worked, we would all be going to hell. Thankfully, that’s not how He works. He loves us unconditionally and gave His only Son for us. Jesus came to earth to show us how to love. He came to show us what it means to have a relationship with people based on love and that’s how we need to help people become believers. By loving them and showing them what it means to be truly loved by Jesus. Matthew 3:14 You are the light of the world You are the light, that means you and me and everyone else around you. Being a light does not mean sending people into darkness to try and scare them into believing. It means loving them and living your life as such that when people look at you they know that you are glorifying Jesus.

~ by scootergirl1978 on May 15, 2009.