Then some others were there, blowing trumpets, doing some weird stuff, and I crossed the road. They were an embarrassment to everyone, caused most of the preaching of the gospel out in the street to stop - it was such an offence. That's not how you win the world - to win people, you've got to be wise. To win people, you've got to be wise. You've got to allow God to work in your life, and develop authenticity, so that you can enter the world of others; and not put them off by religion, not put them off by weirdness, but actually engage them, so they see you have something they really want.
So we've got some amazing things we do in the church, so let me just throw a few things out, because if we're going to become whole, it helps if we actually see what it is we do that covers up our life. A lot of Christians, we substitute activities, we substitute activities for authentic relationship. We just get busy doing stuff, and so we do church stuff, and now we feel real good, because we're doing stuff for God. Well it's right to serve the Lord, it's right to do things for God, but God wants an authentic relationship first. He puts relationship over doing.
Doing flows out of relationship, so some people do stuff, and in church we've got a whole range of weirdness of our own. You can't believe it. When you hear some people talk, you haven't got a clue what they're talking about. It's very spiritual. [Laughter] Too spiritual for me, I can't understand. Neither can anyone else, so how does that help anyone? It doesn't, it's just a fig leaf, over someone who's broken on the inside. It doesn't help, and so church is full of these kinds of things that we do. We get very, very busy, and serve, serve, serve, serve, served and help and that's right to do serving and helping, but we don't neglect our relationship with the Lord. Other times we have, kind of like, God talk, you know? After you've done the God talk stuff, people think: whoa, I don't know much, I don't know anything. So think about that; if people walk away from your God talk, and they feel that they actually don't know anything, or nothing much, you're projecting pride and ego, and they're feeling put down. This is not good. This is not the way to win the world! This is the way to weirdness.
It actually totally removes you from the heart of God; so we have to look, and guard, that how we talk, how we connect, how we communicate, what we do with one another, actually genuinely and authentically connects with people. Ooh, you know it's the other one beside you isn't it aye? Of course exaggerating what we've had - now experiences in God are necessary. We can only share with people what we have experienced. We have to have revelation of God. We must have experience of God, but our experience of God is to lead us to represent Him, not to make us look important. It's so very, very modest - and then of course the other thing we do in church is, we just apply bits of the Bible we like, so we don't do the other stuff. Now I'm really going to hammer this one on the Good Samaritan, because I know this is one people don't like. See, we like to go to church, and do the ministry, but actually ministry is about serving people. It's kind of like this: what can I do to help you?
It's not complicated. You don't have to be rocket scientists to help people, but you do actually have to be authentic, and have some skills to enter their world. If we're broken, and we don't have the skills, our impact is limited; so why do you need to grow as a Christian? Why do you need to develop? Why do you need to grow? Here's the reason why: so you can enter into deeper relationship with the Lord, and you can represent Him better to people, and have greater impact with people. So if your life is broken, and the only people you can connect with are Christians, you should do something about it, because you're sidelined and irrelevant, irrelevant to what God is up to. Come on, think about it. That's what the Pharisees and religious world were like in Jesus' day, irrelevant to the nation of their day, and Jesus showed what a man full of the Holy Ghost does. He gets involved with people that people don't like, and get upset about, and He ministers to them, and upsets them as well, all kinds of stuff.