Talking to plants

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about silly things that we do. I told her about pretending my car is a fighter jet when I am driving long distances, to keep from being bored. She told me that she talks to her plants, trying to carry a conversation. Plants, of course, don't respond, so we made a few jokes back and forth, and that was that. Well, that was that until last night.

Last night, I was watering my plant and I remembered the conversation and had a little giggle over it again, but soon after I began to think about how futile it would be to actually try conversing with a plant. I thought to myself "It's about as logical as arguing with a wall, or talking to a dead person!" Then it hit me: I talk to 'plants', everyday. Let me explain.

Last night at work, I sat at a table with a few people at break. It was myself and another Christian, and two people who are not believers. Suddenly one of them said something like "Man if Jesus came back right now, I'd be going straight to hell" to which my Christian friend replied "I don't think you realize the gravity of the situation of going to hell". What happened next was 20 minutes of us going back and forth trying to explain God and the Gospel. At the end of this conversation, the young man still thought it was funny to joke about himself going to Hell, and proceeded to mock our beliefs. It was as if I was at home speaking to my plant. No matter how much I could appeal to it, it will not respond to what I am saying. This young man did not respond to the beauty of the Gospel. Quite a few people do not ever respond to the Gospel, despite our best appeals.

I was listening to a pastor speak on his pastoral training once. His professor took his class to a cemetery and proceeded to tell them to preach the Gospel to the dead people, and get them to repent and live forever with Christ. The students all giggled at the thought, because it was such a silly idea. However, the professor stood there seriously. One brave student stepped forward and awkwardly began to preach to a tombstone, calling it to repentance. Nothing happened. Other students then gave it a try. Some where very articulate, some focused on emotional appeal. All had the same result. The professor ended the class by saying "What you have done today is very similar to what you will do out there in the future".

In Romans 1, Paul lays out a case that the Gospel is the power of God to save men, yet man is so sick and twisted that they exchange the truth of God in order to worship created things. They are dead to truth, and live for lies. This makes what we do as Christians extremely difficult. I am not sure of the numbers, but I can imagine that the rate of people truly converting to Jesus Christ is a low number. I am not talking about the big revivals where people give their lives to Jesus for the 37th time, and in two weeks continue to live like they were still in captivity. Those conversions, I honestly believe, are not true. The parable of the soil says that some seeds fall on bad soil, and immediately spring up, but because they have no good root system, they wither when the sun gets too hot. These are not true conversions then. So if we look at actual conversions which turn into a disciplined Christian life, then I think the number is quite lower than we expect. But that is the world that we are given.

What are we to do then? 3/4 of the seeds sown in the parable result in nothing. And if its true that preaching to the world is like preaching to a cemetery of dead people, then it seems futile to carry on. Yet, we read that Jesus left the 99 to go find the one. It might seem ridiculous to leave 99 perfectly good sheep to go find one dumb sheep that lost its way. Jesus felt that it was necessary to do so. And because we were once that one lost sheep, we now must become like the Shepherd who came after us. Even if the task seems silly, futile, or outright impossible, we MUST go and preach the Gospel to people. We know that for at LEAST 3/4 of the people we speak to, the seed will not grow into a fruit bearing, life changing experience, we still must have the desire to still keep sowing the seeds. If God were to say to any one of us "Go to this far away land where there are no believers. You will preach the gospel to many, but only one will receive it" we should then begin to pack our bags. That one soul is worth it.

And you know what else? Despite the overwhelming odds against us, we have God who has the power to create all of existence by a few words. This is the same God that tells us to GO!

To sum this up, I say this: We have a great task befallen to us. If we are honest, it seems, well, impossible. Yet, before Jesus hanging on the Cross, the world thought it impossible to be fully reconciled to God. Before His resurrection, it was impossible for a man to come back from death. We have a God that did both, against all the odds. And the same power that rose Christ from the dead is given to us to go to others and bring them out of death.

That is our task. Let's do it.