The scenarios are many. A person needs someone to help them move to another house and their options are thin. You are asked to help. How to you respond? An appeal is made to help people whom you have never met in another country as they undergo persecution. You are asked to fast and pray. How do you respond? Some children have been abandoned and have no place to stay. You are asked to keep them for a period of time. How do you respond? Some friends are in serious distress. They ask you to come to their aid and give them some counsel. How do you respond? You read a passage of Scripture about telling the good news. You sense the nudge of the Spirit that you should share the good news with your coworkers who don’t know Christ. How do you respond? You hear of others who have a deep and meaningful time with the Lord every morning and feel that you need to better discipline your time to allow that to be your pattern as well. How do you respond?
I just laid out several scenarios. None of them are far fetched. In fact, most of them have been experienced by most of us. I could have extended that paragraph for several pages. The question is not, “Do we have challenges?” It is, “What do we do with challenges?” The reason I call them challenges instead of opportunities is because they all challenge something- our time, effort, comfort, routine, commitments. Of course there is opportunity in each one. But, the reason they arise from time to time is that there is a need that is not being met. Others have been offered the challenge and have likely said, “No!”
I believe everyone faces challenges. Many choose to minimize them, ignore them, postpone them or alter them. Anyone who is a follower of Christ, faces challenges daily. The big difference between the Christian and the non-Christian in the area of responding to challenges is this: accountability. Non-Christians see themselves as accountable primarily to themselves for decisions affecting their discretion of time, effort and money. As a result, I can determine whether or not I am interested in taking the challenge or whether or not the challenge affords any benefit to me. That is how people respond to appeals for money, compassion, time and involvement. If I am captain of my life, I must decide what interests me, moves me, stirs me or helps me and make the decision based primarily upon my own feelings of guilt, joy, desire or personal benefit. Christians, however, see themselves as accountable to God. As a result, the challenges are going to be many and I must decide whether or not I am responding from personal benefit, pure desire, guilt or joy or as a person who has been given a command for response, a leading to follow, a right-vs-wrong decision to make or a pattern that must be carried out.
Challenges will come. Likely several will come today. I hope and pray that we will not arbitrarily respond to each one of them on the basis of how we feel or the time we have to spare or the energy we want to invest. I hope and pray that we respond as Jesus would respond. I pray that we ask whether this is right or not. I pray that we would want to know whether or not the Holy Spirit would want us to do this. I pray that we would act on the basis of the compassion, justice and love that is part of our Christ-instilled dna.