On the Evangelists Podcast today, we're asking people to stop giving their lives to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_01So Glenn, we've made it to 101. 101. We survived 100.
SPEAKER_02Well, the listeners have survived 100. That's the really uh creditable thing. Uh I'm wondering whether we're gonna make it to four figures, though.
SPEAKER_0120 years.
SPEAKER_02Is that how long it would take?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm I'm up for it if you are. Another 18. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Get it.
SPEAKER_02Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01Be well old then. So if you missed our 100th uh episode last time, check it out. We took a look back over the last hundred episodes. We picked out a few favourite clips from that. Before we go on, why not sign up to receive your free Speak Life Daily? It's a small pocket sized booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing around the world. Did you know thousands are responding to the gospel in Cameroon? That thirty thousand find Christ every day in China, or about the shipment of eighty thousand Bibles to Cuba. Not only this, but it also gives insider information about what Glenn is up to and the work of Speak Life and also Daily Inspiration. We'll give you the web address to go to at the end of the program. So, Glenn, what are we going to do today?
SPEAKER_02We're going to think about this topic uh Stop Giving Your Life to Jesus, uh, which was the title for a talk uh that was given to me uh for a youth work summit that I spoke at uh a couple of weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01Controversial.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, being an evangelist. Provocative titles are good, and certainly being an evangelist, but not telling people to give their lives to Jesus sounds pretty counterintuitive. So that's uh yeah, that's grabbed people's attention a little bit.
SPEAKER_01So what what's the context then of this?
SPEAKER_02So it was uh Youth Works Summit, uh, which is a whole bunch of youth workers from around the country, and uh it's a really wide mix of uh youth workers, some from Catholic backgrounds, uh some more evangelical, some more liberal. Um and so yeah, a real melting point and an opportunity to hear people speak for just ten minutes on some aspect as it pertains to youth work. And um yeah, I I just thought, given my own experiences as a youth, that uh this this topic was pretty close to my heart and that it might hit home with a few other youth workers and a few others who have grown up within youth work, and that proved to be the case. So, yeah, having been told to constantly give my life to Jesus throughout my teenage years, I thought I'd um buck the trend and tell people to stop. So this is what I came up with.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well let's let's take a listen then.
SPEAKER_02I gave my life to Jesus about a thousand times at teenage shrines of rare, uh rare experience. They blared delirious and then dared obedience. I'd swear allegiance, soul bed and serious, each prayer more daring than the previous. On stage the preacher saw we staunch hardcore flocked to the fore to knock, knock, knock on heaven's door. He claimed salvations like he was keeping score. Yet none were sure but he, and none doubted more than me. So I prayed again to firm cement it, making sure I really meant it. Vowed my life to be amended, willed my all to dust descended, gave my heart to be expended, and then when all my prayers were ended, there was nothing but myself lamented. Oh, I pretended all was mended and extended, lifted hands, but within I could not understand. What more could he demand? I gave my life to Jesus a thousand different ways. No single day would pass without this act. I would contract to yield my every part, to make one more fresh start, to be more set apart. And in return, I'd yearn for him to impart one more trace of grace into my heart. I gave my life to Jesus, though faith continued flagging, though doubts were ever nagging, zeal sagging, dragging down to duty's basement. But never mind, I still had my bracelet. Oh dear bracelet, give me strength anew, the bracelet counseled. What would Jesus do? And to answer, all I could think was that he would sink to his knees in passioned pleas, just like at Gethsemane. And with almighty self-surrender, there he rendered all to God who silent, let him fall. So, what should I do? I too would heed that call and likewise sprawl before the splendor. This crawl became my pattern. Each new day I'd flatten self before the Lord, press down to gain reward that never came. But still I'd call. And all the while the preachers told me, give control, not part but holy, give your heart, your life, your all. But rarely do I recall being told what he gave, my Lord, to save. Except they slipped it in to conscript us. And they gripped us with Jesus whipped, our Savior stripped, the blood it dripped from the cross, but they ripped it from its gospel frame to say, now you, you do the same. And thus Christ's offering was flipped. We were guilt-tripped by the very act that saved us. So it was engraved, instilled. The cross is a standard unfulfilled by us. Oh, but we'd try. My how we would try. We'd bow the knee and bear the load. It was the very least we owed. I gave my life to Jesus, but somewhere down the road I slid. My faith undid, even amid my church, my prayers, even as I bid for heaven's care. Beneath the lid, the venom hid. I was your youth group's keenest kid. But no one hated God more than I did. See, with him, it's just take, take, take without a break. His thirst for blood, who can slake? At least vampires get you just once. But this God held perpetual hunts. I gave my life to Jesus, but I guess it was no good. I did what I could to appease him, but no pleasing seemed possible. So this elder brother turned prodigal. And I could chronicle the years headed east, a far country unpoliced. It was a famine disguised as a feast. A pigsty passed off as release. But there, at the end of the track, with life out of whack, there in pitch black, there, what brought me back was this book. Because this book, as I read, didn't say what they said. To those with bowed heads under piety's dread by their leaders misled, this book said, repent and believe the good news. The kingdom of God is at hand. There he stands in your stead. Your king lifts your head. He has shouldered your dread, arms outstretched till they bled. As I read, I met him. The Father's dear gift now offered to lift those who are cowering. The feeble, empowering, the clean, the filthy, clean, showering, the lowly now towering in him. So that night on his knees, Gethsemane's pleas, those prayers were said for me. You see, I am not Jesus there in the garden begging for pardon. I'm Peter. And despite all my boasts, I'm asleep at my post, and Jesus does it all for me. You want to give Jesus your life? Talk about cart before horse. Can we resource the source who flows like a river? He is the giver, and we just receive. That's what it means to believe. So I'll leave my own appeal. To the preachers who feel that they must stir up zeal, then let it be his, we reveal. You say, give your heart. This says Christ is the donor. You say yield your life. This says he was always the owner. You say get on fire. This says you are the light. You say keep running to God. This says walk in Christ. You say, dare to be a missional, intentional, incarnational, contextualize, no compromise, cannot become to a radical, red letter, fully devoted disciple. This says follow. This says take. You say press into God. This says you're hidden in Christ. You say be a world changer. This says lead a quiet life. You say surrender all. This says you're not your own. You say step up to the plate. This says you're raised to the throne. You say burnout. This says shine. You say work on your personal relationship with Jesus. This says, I am my beloved, and he is mine. Folks, look at the book and unhook from this wearisome, will-driven view. Stop giving your life to Jesus. He's the giver, delivered for you. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so uh it seemed to have been received quite well. Yeah, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02You know, by made them think Yeah, I mean, certainly the the number one reaction from people has been me too. Right. Um both on the day and then subsequently online, people again and again are saying that that was my experience. And yeah, and I just have to say, well, it was it was birthed out of out of my own youth, really.
SPEAKER_01I mean, obviously there's quite a bit of your story in that. You didn't exaggerate any of that.
SPEAKER_02Actually, I I actually I toned it down a bit. I was I was even more melodramatic in my teenage years. I mean I I d I do remember at times literally going to the scariest places I could near where where we lived and s being prostrate face down, pressing my face into the dirt and saying, Take me, use me, your will be done. And and I still remember that sort of delicious teenage thrill of sort of quivering uh self-sacrifice and and uh feeling of of momentousness in all those sorts of things, followed almost instantly by feelings of emptiness and desperation and and yeah, literally running home and and looking in the mirror to see if God had received my prayer or you know, had there been a change. I was literally looking for like a light shining above my head or you know, something funny a funny look in my eyes, and that kind of thing. And and you know, that's just sort of temperamentally the way I was wired and that kind of thing, but but the more I've spoken to other people, the more I've said, yeah, we we were the same. Um so I guess I guess it it communicates to people because it it comes out of personal experience. But it's been interesting to me to see how widespread that same personal experience has been. People constantly giving their lives to Jesus. So you you see this as a as a problem sort of more widely across youth work and Yeah, I really I really do, and and partly it's it's this sense of teenagers are very aspirational and hope-filled, and you do feel like you can take on the world and change the world, and if you're a youth leader, you do feel like you want to equip the youth to to take on the world and and be a world changer and all that sort of stuff. And and when you're a teenager you you do feel like Yeah, if only everyone just listened to me and you know life would be so much better. And so I I just think that youth work can often go with that flow of Yes, it's down to you, and it's down to your obedience, and it's down to how much you want this, and if you really want this, why can't you change the world? Come on, you can do it if you if you try hard enough.
SPEAKER_01Which kind of makes it a work again, doesn't it? It's like trying to achieve your salvation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And maybe part of it is is a kind of a when you hive off youth and children's work from the local church and you know, the kids are now gonna go out and not listen to the sermon. And in a lot of churches, even teenagers who are like 18 years old don't even get stay in and hear the sermon. Even though they're well able at school to listen to, you know, forty-five minute lessons on history, we somehow think that they can't listen to, you know, a thirty-five minute sermon or whatever. And so sometimes we kinda dumb down what we do to children and youth because we've specialized in it, and so we we feel like we've got to simplify everything. But then if you you're always simplifying everything, you feel like you've already given the gospel to the youth because you've simplified it into these three diagrams and um like three two one or something. And and you've boiled everything down into this very simple thing, and so you don't want to keep giving people the gospel every week. Because the gospel's old hat, you've already done the gospel. And what you know parents want is for their kids to have given their lives to Jesus. Um But the funny thing is, faith comes by hearing, and it comes by hearing the word of Christ. It comes by hearing a promise. Faith is the response to a promise, Christ being held out to you. Um faith is not so much in the Bible talked about as a command that you obey. Command and obedience are more to do with the law. Faith is more to do with promise and gospel. So if you really want people to believe in Jesus, and you really want people to be converted, you really need to be preaching the gospel. But maybe theologically and maybe because of certain things to do with youth work, we want people to become Christians, and so we keep giving them a law to obey. The law of surrender all to Jesus. Um Yeah, so I I I see it all throughout youth work, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So does it go further than youth work though?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think I think I think it's a massive problem for the whole church, actually. It's interesting, um uh Dermot McCulloch did I think it was a seven-part series on Christianity with BBC, and he devoted one of his episodes, I think it was seven episodes, but he th he devoted one of the seven to evangelicalism. And it was it was the I mean I still remember watching this episode, and it's the kind of thing where you you just run out of things to throw at the TV screen. No, that's wrong, that's wrong, no, that's you're completely caricaturing there, and you know, you're not getting it at all. And uh and one of the things that I was, you know, first you throw the remote control and you throw your shoes and then you throw the cat and um and he he said uh early on in the episode, he said, if you want to get your head around evangelicalism, it's all about your choice for God. That's it. That is evangelicalism in a nutshell. It's your choice for God, and it's trying to get people to make their bold choices for God. And you know, when he said that, I was like, No, no, first of all, it's God's choice for us, and first of all, it's God reaching down to us, and you know, we can do nothing to save ourselves, and and theologically, of course, you can object to that in all sorts of ways. Jesus says, You have not chosen me, I've chosen you, and all that sort of stuff. Theologically you can object to that, but what McCulloch then did was sort of tour around the world and wherever evangelicalism was strong, just show the practice of it, and the practice of it was indeed all sorts of altar calls, all sorts of people making their bold choices for God. And while theologically you might want to object to evangelicalism is about your choice for God, actually in practice I think i i it does tend to be like that. And for instance, so I was out in Africa a few years ago, and um uh it was it was just normal practice in all the churches where I went to to offer an altar call at the end of ev every sort of sermon. And and there would be scores and scores of people coming forwards, and you ask them, Is this your first time? Oh no, I was here last week and the week before that, and the week before that, and the week before that. And this has become the sacraments of evangelicalism, giving your life to God. So I I think it's really, really widespread. And it's interesting because you kind of think you kind of think of Roman Catholicism as that kind of thing, don't you? You're always making these sacrifices before God and you never know whether you've done enough and because uh uh at a popular level, uh that so often is how Roman Catholicism plays out. That's you know, it's a a lot more nuanced than that in the catechism uh of the Roman Catholic Church, but on the ground in Roman Catholicism there is a lot of you know sacrifices being made for God and nobody knowing whether they've done enough. But before we point the finger there, maybe there's three fingers pointing back at evangelicalism where we've got our own kind of sacraments of choice, these altar calls, these signing of cards, these walking an aisle, and all that sort of stuff. And and maybe we're doing the same sorts of things, but just with a different set of rituals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Have you sort of had people come back to you, you know, reacted to the poem in a in a negative way?
SPEAKER_02Um, yeah, I mean, a couple of people have really wanted me to clarify some stuff. I think one person on the day kind of said, Yes, I see what you're saying, and I think to a scrupulous, over-earnest teenager like you, Glenn, they need the sort of gospel that you just preached. But to someone who's just lazy and you know, they they actually need a few commands and and um so there um as as we spoke further, they they seemed to to want to say we need to balance the commands of scripture and the promises of scripture so that you don't fall off either side of the of the horse. And that for some people they need a lot of, you know, stick to beat them, a lot of a lot of law to sort of whip them up, as as well as a little bit of gospel. Some people need a lot of gospel and a little bit of law and that kind of thing. And and I and I think um that's a really common way of thinking about the whole issue of law and gospel. Quite commonly we we set law and gospel uh out as though there's sort of one is a danger on the left and one is a danger on the right, and you want to keep in the balanced middle. And the perfect sermon is one that's equally beats you with the stick and offers the carrot and balances things like that. Um but we're we're in a bit of a theme right now, aren't we? We we're against balance. Um it's not about balance, it's about flow. That actually, according to the Bible, it's not as though law and gospel are sort of the two extremes that the pendulum can swing to, that actually, first of all there's law, then there's gospel, and it does flow, you know, in that sense. That, you know, first comes Moses, then comes Jesus, you know, first comes old covenant, then comes new covenant. Um first you do see how I don't give my life to God. And as you know, as many times as I was trying to offer my life up to God, actually I I wasn't a very pleasant human being because I kept thinking that the religious life was all about shoring up this vertical relationship with God. It never crossed my mind to love my neighbour as myself. Never crossed my mind to be a good son or a good brother. It never crossed my mind to be a nice human being to other people. I'm sure you were Glenn. No, I I was just a very, you know, very earnest religious kind of kind of type. And so the law could be brought to bear on me at that at that point and say, Glenn, look, it's it's far worse. It's not just that, you know, it's not just that your offerings to God aren't quite good enough. Like, you're a dirty rotten sinner, and you thinking that you are centre stage in this whole salvation picture and that you're somehow closing the deal with God through that, that is wickedness. You know, I think Isaiah would come and say, All your righteous acts, Glenn, are filthy rags. All your righteous acts, all those things that you think are really, you know, climbing the ladder towards God, or you're giving your life to God are filthy rags. But on the far side of that preaching of the law, there's this gospel that comes, and the gospel that comes and says, Wicked, filthy sinner that you are, self-deluded sacrificer that you think you are, Jesus did it for you. So, yeah, one of the one of the pushbacks was, you know, we need to balance commands and promises. And to that I want to say, no, we need to let commands have their way with us and to show us the goodness of the law and the goodness of what God wants. But then, in terms of saving us, it's not a balance between us obeying the law and trusting in Jesus. It's The commands show us just how much we need Jesus. And then, whether it's to a lazy person or to a very scrupulous person, you then preach the gospel of Jesus and offer him for free. And at that stage, that's what the gospel is.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But Glenn, you're being uh being an evangelist.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01What do you do? Yeah. Aren't you supposed to be asking people to give their life to Jesus?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's one way of putting it, isn't it? Um one way of putting it is give your life to Jesus. But and when people when people use that kind of language, we all know what they mean. Um but I I think far more the work of the evangelist is offering Christ. And I think we've we've done an episode, haven't we? Um the the pitiful practice of gaining converts. Oh yes. Um maybe we'll look that up in the show notes. Uh yeah, last year we did a uh an episode, The Pitiful Practice of Gaining Converts. Um actually, evangelism is not about gaining converts, getting people to give their lives to Jesus. The work of evangelism is offering Christ to the world. Delivering him over to people and saying, Yes, believe, be reconciled to God. And we do want people to become Christians. We want we totally believe in conversion. But the way people become converted is they've got to hear the gospel. And the gospel is not turn your life around and give it to God. That's not the gospel, that's a command. Commands are good, commands are true, commands are right, commands are proper. Commands are not the gospel. The gospel is Jesus is given to you even in all your sin. Will you take him? Will you take him? Will you take him? And so I want to be insistent in my evangelism, I want to be urgent in my evangelism, I want to I want to tell people, be reconciled to God. But uh I want people to be reconciled to the true God, who is the giving God, who is not a needy, greedy taker who is always, you know, just waiting to be praised, just waiting for for people to give him, you know, their lives. What I want people to to really see is the God who's poured himself out to death and hell for you and is yours if you'll have him, won't you have him? And I and I think I think all evangelism needs to be bold and it needs to be urgent. But I I don't think the paradigm for it all is gaining converts. I think it's offering Christ.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So we're gonna go into this a little bit more depth next week.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're gonna go into it in a bit more depth. We're gonna think about uh scriptures about it, scriptures about not giving our lives to Jesus but receiving them. We're gonna have a look at some scriptures that that look like we're sacrificing to God. A couple of scriptures that might come to mind and think about actually what's going on in those passages. Uh we're gonna think about what it looks like in our practice of evangelism, you know, should we still have prayers of commitment and that kind of thing? And we're gonna think about where is the place of pouring out our lives, because Jesus is constantly talking about pouring out our lives. But I think when we've got this issue correct, I think we get back the the true sense of discipleship and the true sense of how we are meant to pour out our lives, and it's not pouring it out to God as as though He needs our lives, but it is receiving from the giving God and pouring out to the world. And uh and so I'm I'm all into sacrifice, I'm all into taking up our cross, but uh we're just gonna talk about the the different footing that we can put that kind of sacrifice onto.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well uh we better leave it there and uh you'll have to wait to hear the episode.
SPEAKER_02You'll be tingling with anticipation.
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SPEAKER_02DJ L.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, DJ L. Now, listen, this uh I'm gonna offer an irresistible Now listen. Now listen. Stop what you were doing before. Now now it's time to listen. I'm gonna do an irresistible offer to listeners. Speaking of election. Listeners of the podcast only, we're gonna give away copies of Glenn's book 321. My story of God, the world, and you. Wow. If you're willing to help us with the podcast.
SPEAKER_02This is the law, here it goes. I've got the grace first. Balancing grace and law, this is not good.
SPEAKER_01There's a backwards flow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
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SPEAKER_03And he just looked at me when he said that.
SPEAKER_01It's not a small booklet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it could be it could be briefer.
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SPEAKER_02Okay.
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SPEAKER_01I love TEP. It's only available until the 15th of July. Okay. Excellent. So we'll leave it there and come back next time. Thanks very much for listening.
SPEAKER_03See ya.