“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Acts 1:8
Pastor Jason Meyer, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis, said recently in talking about the church’s identity as a witness to Christ. “You can’t separate the church from it’s witness. It’s what the church is! And therefore, when the church, which is called to be a witness for Christ, instead becomes a club for Christ, it stops being a church.”
When we lose our witness to Jesus, we lose our identity as the church.
Dividing And Diluting Our Witness
One of the steps toward losing our witness is when we allow our witness to be divided. If we expect Jesus to share time as the main love and the main message of our lives, our witness will be divided and diluted.
And a divided, diluted witness is no witness at all.
Jesus warned about this very thing in Matthew 6:24. “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”
Our hearts do not have the capacity to multitask in worship. We will only serve one master.
“Our hearts do not have the capacity to multitask in worship.”
Jesus said this talking about money. He said, “You cannot serve God and money.” Serving the idol of money, or living your life for the things of this world, divides and dilutes our witness. We can’t claim true life is found only in Christ while we simultaneously claw and scratch for more of this life.
But there are plenty of other idols seeking to divide our witness. Maybe what’s dividing your witness is an obsession with politics. Serving the idol of politics will cause you to see people who disagree with you as opponents to be “owned” or “destroyed” in arguments instead of people to be loved and witnessed to.
Or maybe it’s an addiction to pornography or sex. Serving the idol of sexual lust will lead you to live your life in the darkness instead of living in and bearing witness to the light of Jesus of Christ.
Or maybe it’s the idol of self, which permeates our social-media saturated culture. Serving the idol of self will lead us to exalt ourselves more and more and Christ less and less.
Or maybe it’s the idol of outrage and anger. Serving the idol of outrage and anger will lead us to complain and cry offense at the brokenness of this world instead of calling people to “take heart; [Christ] has overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Or maybe it’s the idol of fear. For example, many Christians have no assurance of their faith and live fearful of losing their salvation, forgetting that what Christ obtained for them at the cross – forgiveness and freedom from sin, reconciliation with the Father, life everlasting – is really, truly theirs when they believe. If we’re not sure it’s really ours, we’re not going to tell someone else that it can really be there’s.
But maybe it’s something different for you. So what today is serving to divide and dilute your witness as a Christian? What are you allowing to share the stage of your life with Jesus?
The Clue To All The Windings Of Our Lives
Charles Spurgeon, preaching on John 1:29 about John the Baptist, said, “If we are like John, true witnesses to Jesus, we shall find in Jesus the conscious purpose of our being, and his glory will be the clue to all the windings of our lives. For this purpose were we born, and for this end have we come into the world, that we may bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Search and look, my brothers, whether it has been so with you.”
Is this true of you? Have you found your purpose for being in your witness to Christ? Have you understood that proclaiming the glory of Christ is the great clue to the purpose of your life, even through all its twists and turns?
Let us not miss this clue by dividing our witness with lesser things.
A Thrill of Hope 