The Conspiracy To Silence God Will Fail

I don't know if you have noticed but there is a growing aggression against people of faith. People, who have declared faith in God to be ridiculous, are no longer content with living within their own faithless world, they are aggressively working to destroy any other world. They have been around since the dawn of time, people who refuse to believe in anything but themselves, their own intelligence, their own abilities and the great capacity for the human race to do much when combining their intelligence. They are working hard to eliminate any sign of God from society. They have been doing it for a long time but lately they have been making significant progress.

It is not unlike the blind men who wanted to gain access to Jesus as he passed by. They tried to shout through the crowd of spectators who had come out of curiosity, but the crowd tried to shut them up:

As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” (Matthew 20:29-31)

It is strange that this crowd didn't want to see a show. It is the reason most of the crowds gathered, they wanted to see the healings, the miracles. But not this crowd. They found the shouts of the blind men to be annoying and disturbing and so they tried to silence them. The thing is that it is impossible to silence someone who is truly seeking God. That is the thing that atheists and agnostics do not understand, nothing can keep a true seeker from encountering God. Signs on the sides of buses declaring there is "probably" no God do more to provoke people to seek the truth then it does to block them from God. Trying to remove all reference to God from society will only cause more people to wonder why it is an important issue to begin with.

In our modern day evangelism we often miss the point that salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a mysterious work that we must leave in the hands of God. The work of the disciples of Jesus is to be available and ready for every opportunity. We carry the message of hope and love to the world so that when it encounters someone who has been seeking God the Spirit is enabled to do his thing. The only way to eliminate Christianity from society is to remove the Christians. A faithless people can remove the crosses from the walls, the prayers from public meetings, place signs on buses but they cannot remove the Church (the disciples of Jesus) from the market place, schools, sidewalks, council meetings, government and anywhere else where people go. We are everywhere and we carry with us the light of hope for those who are desperate for it.

This is the reason why it is so important for the Body of Christ to be producing strong disciples; people of the Word, of prayer, of community. We could waste a lot of time and resources fighting to keep the crosses on the wall and prayer in public meetings but it is much wiser to put our energy into the most effective tool of the Kingdom. But we can't get lost in the training. We can't spend all our time in Bible Study, Bible Colleges, seminars, meetings after meetings. We can train until we die and yet do nothing. Our training must have a purpose and it is not simply to bring us closer to God but instead to allow that closeness to equipp us to be effective workers in the Kingdom. We need to be available so that as people shout out to God we can be close enough to hear, in our workplace, schools, on the sidewalk, in the government. We need to be out there.

The only way that the crowd could have silenced the blind men is to remove Jesus Christ because as long as the men sensed some hope of gaining their sight there was no way they were going to stop shouting. Would you have stopped? If you knew there was a compassionate God who could meet your needs would you stop seeking him? If someone stood in your way would you not do everything you could to overcome them? The blind men did not stop shouting. In fact they increased their shouts so that they could be heard. Jesus heard them and he healed them due to his compassion.

In our society there will always be those desperate for God. It does not matter how many road blocks are put in front of them, they will just shout louder to be heard. People can be as aggressive as they can to get rid of God from society but it will never work. There will always be seekers and there will always be disciples. As the seekers shout the disciples will respond and the Holy Spirit will introduce Jesus. No power on earth or in the heavenly realms can stop it. But the disciples of Jesus need to stop worrying about the insignificant and put the energy where it is most effective. We need to come out of our comfort zone, out from our church buildings, out of our colleges and our little cocoon and get out there to respond to the shouts of the "blind men". The best training is in the field and we need only look to what Jesus did and do the same; love with a selfless heart, respond with compassion and speak the truth.