Instinct

For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Matthew 10:20

When my son was three years old, he and I were involved as pedestrians in a car accident.  My foot was run over by a car that bumped my son as it came to a stop. As the driver saw my son he swerved and braked to miss him but slid over my left foot. I can remember looking down and seeing the tire thinking, “Get off my foot.” As soon as I was free I went to my son and picked him up. It didn’t even occur to me that my foot would be injured. (Not sure if that was stupidity or shock.)

A neighbor came out and asked if he could help me. I said, “I think you have to hold me up.” I realized, after rushing a few feet and picking up my son, that I could not stand on my own any longer.

A mother is wired to help her child. What had happened to me did not even register until he was in my arms.

I wish I had that same instinct when it comes to being bold with the truth I know about the Lord. People’s spiritual lives are sometimes at stake right in front of me and I fail to respond to their need for the gospel.

There are a couple of people in my life who have made it clear that they are not interested in my faith or my biblical worldview, so I am quiet when we are together. Often, that is when others are around.

In recent teaching on John 8 I saw my problem in not understanding what Jesus had done. Jesus was speaking to the hostile Pharisees. They attacked his verbal arguments but He did not hesitate to tell them their father was the devil. They attacked him spiritually accusing Him of having a demon, and they attacked Him physically by throwing stones at Him because they did not like the message He spoke or the influence He had on others.

Jesus knew these men would oppose Him and that it would get ugly. He spoke the hard truth to the Pharisees anyway. In the midst of these conversations is a verse that is surprising. John 8:30, “ As he was saying these things, many believed in him.”

The things He was saying were not easy to grasp. John 8:24  He said to them, ” I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” And, John 8:34-35, Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.”

Jesus talked about sin and Hell and some believed. What is it that I fear when Jesus had such courage to say what needed to be said for those who would believe? I think I spend too much time worrying about the one who doesn’t want to hear when there may be someone close by and listening whose heart God has prepared to believe.

Why am I not as concerned for an unbeliever’s spiritual state as I was for my own son’s physical state, regardless of whether or not there is a hostile person in the room? Just as the Lord, not I, protected my son in that accident, He is the one who saves spiritually. The power is His, the need to understand and instinctively trust that power is mine.