[Faith-talk] {Spam?} Daily Thought for Thursday, May 12, 2016

[Paul Smith]

Hello and good day to most of you for the second time.  I hope that 
your day is faring well, by God's matchless grace and His providential care.

Today's article is taken from the British Christian publication 
"Evangelicals Now" for October 2015.  It was written by John Piper and 
is entitled "Secularism Can't Stop Conversions," rendered as follows:

John Piper addresses a question on many Christians' minds today.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with some pastors in England.  In spite 
of the fact that Britain has been outpacing the United States in the 
usual signs of secularisation, one of the pastors said that 
developments in the last couple of years, even in Britain, have had a 
new effect on people in the church.  It seems now to many believers 
that true Christians hold views so different from the culture that they 
wonder if anyone can be converted.

I think this is a common feeling.  Will deeply secular people, with 
little or no Christian background, see the moral implications of 
following Christ as so unimaginable that they treat Christianity as 
equivalent to the Greek myths of Zeus and Hermes?

Here are three biblical perspectives that make that kind of pessimism 
unwarranted in the church.

1.  God is always at work loosening individual people from the 
group-think of the prevailing culture of unbelief.

It is a mistake to look at the "culture" and assume that all the 
unbelieving people are in lockstep with the spirit of the age.  In 
fact, someone's child just died.  Someone just found out he has cancer. 
Someone just lost his job at 55.  Someone just had a terrifying dream 
about hell.  Someone alone in a hotel room just happened to read the 
story of the Prodigal Son.  Someone has just decided his life of 
self-indulgence is meaningless.  A young couple just had a long 
conversation about the absence of moral standards to pass on to their 
children.  Someone just felt a weight of guilt pass over his soul, and 
a deep sense that he is accountable to a creator.

In other words, we make a huge mistake if we forget that people get 
saved one at a time as unique individuals, not as mere specimens of the 
"culture."  At any given moment in the secularisation of our culture, 
God is at work in 10,000 ways to prepare particular individuals to hear 
the gospel.

When you get on a bus, or go to the gym, or stand on the sidelines of 
your child's soccer game, the dozen other people there are not in 
lockstep with a monolithic secular culture.  There are 100 other things 
going on in their lives, and you never know (until you probe) whether 
five of these factors are actually making them disillusioned with the 
very culture you think is enslaving them.  Don't think of people as 
specimens of culture.  Think of them as individual people that 
Providence may well be leading to repentance (Romans 2:4).

Take heart from the way the New Testament paints both the big brush 
strokes of cultural darkness and in fine brush strokes of individual 
conversions.  Paul knew he was entering enemy-held territory every time 
he went to a new city.  "The prince of the power of the air was at work 
in the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2).  The "god of this age" 
was blinding all unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4).  It was an "evil age" 
(Galatians 1:4).  And Peter described this world as "living in 
sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and 
lawless idolatry" (1 Peter 4:3).  None of these broad brush strokes are 
favourable for fruitful evangelism.

But then there are the fine brush strokes of amazing conversions in 
this impossibly dark culture:

Zacchaeus, the apostate, thieving tax-collector, strangely desirous of 
seeing Jesus (Luke 19:1-8).

Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager (Luke 8:3).

The Ethiopian eunuch, who just happened to be reading Isaiah 53 when 
Philip just happened to come by (Acts 8:26-40).

Cornelius, a God-fearing military man pursued by God through Peter's 
stunnning midday vision (Acts 10).

Saul, who shared in the killing of angelic Stephen, and who breathed 
out threats and murder against Christians (Acts 9).

Sergius Paulus, an intelligent Roman proconsul of Cyprus (Acts 13:6-8).

Lydia, a well-to-do business woman (Acts 16:11-15).

An unnamed, demon-possessed slave girl (Acts 16:16-18).

A Roman jailer (Acts 16:25-34).

And, amazingly, people in the very household of Caesar (Philippians 4:22).

God saves individuals.  None of them is merely a product of sensual, 
spiritualistic, or secular culture.  God is at work loosening thousands 
and thousands from the group-think of the secular media or any other 
pretenders to cultural hegemony.

2.  Initial animosity from secular people may be a prelude to their awakening.

3.  It is no harder for God to raise the spiritually dead in 
post-Christian America than it is in Puritan America.  Dead is dead.

And there you have John Piper's short article for today, which I hope 
was a blessing to you.  Until tomorrow when, Lord willing another Daily 
Thought message and article will be posted, may the God of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in 
these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul