by Dan Jones<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On Monday\u00a0morning, as Kinship Christian Radio Announcer Allen Jones was helping me through my morning routine, he mentioned an article he had seen where an ordinary human being resolved to say “Hello” to ten people per day for ten days.<\/span><\/p>\n At the time I didn’t think much of it, but later that day I stumbled across that very same article as I wandered through the electron dessert that is the internet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It’s actually on a website called “Men’s Health” and it’s entitled, “I Said Hello To 10 People For 10 Days. Here’s What Happened.” The click-bait title is accompanied by the subtitle, “One man’s experiment in being friendly.”<\/span><\/p>\n In it, author Steve Calechman finds that by being friendly to other people, he actually feels better and is able to establish relationships with people.<\/span><\/p>\n My initial reaction to the article was, (Forgive me, Steve) “Well, duh.”<\/span><\/p>\n My secondary reaction was that such an article speaks absolute volumes about the state of our society today. I mean, really. When it’s news<\/em> that saying “Hello” to people is a good thing, that it’s good for you, and that you can actually begin\u00a0relationships with other people with\u00a0this bold, new, experimental method, I think it’s time we\u00a0sit up and take notice.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, I realize that would involve human beings actually prying themselves away from the 15 square inches of their cell phone screens and, oh I don’t know, looking at, talking to, and (horrors) interacting with actual live human beings. (Calm down. Most of us are not harboring infectious diseases.)<\/span><\/p>\n I can tell this is making you uncomfortable, so let’s zoom out for a second on a seemingly unrelated topic, shall we? <\/span><\/p>\n You may remember from previous blogs how I have written about an enormous wave of Christianity sweeping the “not us” part of the world. Even while Christianity is declining here in “the western world,” a revival is sweeping Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Asia, China, and South America. While we are lamenting our “post-Christian” western world, there are more Muslims coming to Christ right now than in the previous 1500 years of Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n The Holy Spirit is doing remarkable things, folks.<\/span><\/p>\n And on what may seem to be yet another seemingly unrelated bunny trail, <\/span> a dear brother named Adrian recently posted on Facebook: “The love of God does not leave me alone, it follows me everywhere, if I run with all my strength until the end of the world to get away from Him, there he finds me, I can not escape, I feel harassed by his love. “<\/span><\/p>\n Now, many of you will no doubt recognize that Adrian’s comment was influenced by Psalm 139:<\/span><\/p>\n Where can I go from your Spirit?<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Where can I flee from your presence?<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If I go up to the heavens, you are there;<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.<\/em><\/strong> (Vs. 8-9 NIV)<\/span><\/p>\n But the part that jumped out at me was that last sentence where he says he feels “harassed”<\/em><\/strong> by God’s love.<\/span><\/p>\n Granted, Adrian originally posted his comment in\u00a0Spanish (he is one of the dear brothers in Christ I met in the Dominican Republic) and I just used Google translate to be able to understand it. I thought maybe something had been lost in translation, but when I looked up the Spanish word translated as “harassed, ” I found that “acosado” means…harassed, hounded, or besieged.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately, Adrian also speaks English. So, I sent him a message asking what English word he would use where he had used “acosado” in Spanish. He confirmed that he said exactly what he meant when he said it. He does indeed feel harassed, hounded, and besieged by God’s amazing love.<\/span><\/p>\n So now, if I may tie all of these seemingly unrelated points into a big ol’ prickly thorn bush…<\/span><\/p>\n One of the reasons our society is slipping into a “post-Christian” society is our inability to effectively witness to our friends, relatives, neighbors, and co-workers. And one of the reasons we are ineffective in being witnesses is because, unlike those countries where Christianity is growing, we don’t really want<\/em> to be witnesses. Society has labeled “witnessing” as “harassment.” We certainly don’t want to harass people, now do we? \u00a0And, besides, you can’t harass people into being Christians anyway. <\/span><\/p>\n Grabbing Ted from Accounting by the tie and shouting “JESUS LOVES YOU!” into a megaphone jammed in his ear\u00a0doesn’t wouldn’t work very well, would\u00a0it?<\/span><\/p>\n But what if we relentlessly harassed our friends, our relatives, our neighbors, and our co-workers with love?<\/span><\/p>\n What if we just said, “Hello” to them? What if we actually cared about them, talked to them, listened to them, and loved them whether they looked like us, talked like us, or went to the same church we do? <\/span><\/p>\n What if we shined like the lights He has called us to be?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What if we were just ourselves, never gave up on them, and were ready when they asked us, “So who is<\/span> this Jesus anyway?”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Today’s Praise<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever. 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