Remembering Who You Were

In his book, Preaching to a Post-Everything World, Zack Eswine asks a very good question. “Could I now reach who I once was?” He goes on to say this:

Each preacher is a human being who once was a child needing to grow up, whose stories are mixtures of tragedies and triumphs. Every preacher is a human being who has given wrong answers, prayed incorrectly, misquoted the Bible, day-dreamed, and longed for things that now embarrass or have hurt other people. And it was there as such a person in such environments that God came and found us. Anything good we ever preacher has been made possible by a prior testimony of God’s mercy…what if differences are made by remembering where we’d be without God and then ministering to others out of that knowledge? (Eswine, 11)

I believe Eswine’s words here apply to every believer and not just us preachers. When you’ve been a believer in Jesus for awhile it is all to easy (at least in our culture) to become insulated and forget what it was like to be lost. This impacts the way we share the gospel with people. Eswine is right to admonish us to never forget who we once were.

If you want to see a model of this look to John Newton. s a young man Newton was as vulgar and worldly as they came. But at one point in his life he had a frightful dream. After this he tried as hard as he could to become a better person. He felt the weight of his guilt but he never could seem to get a grip on certain sins. He finally gave up and became just as ungodly as he ever had been. In all of this Newton never had peace. Finally, after a frightful storm God got ahold of Newton’s hard and saved him. He finally found the peace he had so longed for.

That is a very quick summary of Newton’s conversion. The actual story has many more twists and turns, but for our purpose it is enough to give you an outline of Newton’s testimony. Now, in light of Newton’s testimony, consider how he preached Rest for the Weary. 

When Newton was tasked with preaching Matthew 11:28 he thought of two ways in which lost people are weary. First, the weariness of worldliness. Newton spoke as one who had felt this weariness in his own heart. Only a man who had felt the emptiness of the world could say something like this:

“Are you not often, at least sometimes, like children in the dark, afraid of being alone; unable to support the reflections which are forced upon you in a solitary hour, when you have nothing to amuse you? And while you seem so alert…after every kind of dissipation within your reach, is not a chief motive that impels you, a desire, if possible, of hiding yourselves from yourselves…”

Rather than throwing stones at the world and distancing himself from the emptiness, Newton went back to where he once was. He put himself in the place of the lost person and allowed himself to feel the weight and burden of this lostness again. He did this so he could appeal to them to come to Christ and find rest.

Newton had also experienced the heavy burden of trying to fulfill the law in his own flesh. As he expounds upon one who is “wearied with ineffectual strivings” you can sense that Newton has been here too. Again, he doesn’t castigate the foolish Pharisee, or the do-gooder who is trying to do it in his own flesh, he simply points out the emptiness of their efforts and exalts Christ as the Savior for the weary and heavy-laden.

We would do well to follow Newton’s example and Eswine’s admonishment. Yes, the gospel is powerful enough to convert people even when the messenger is a hapless donkey. But I’d rather be a faithful ambassador instead of one God just happened to use in spite of my lazy refusal to lovingly enter the emptiness of unbelievers.

At the end of the day Newton was able to do what he did because he had tasted what the world had to offer and he found it wanting. His life is a testimony of the his closing words, when considering the greatness of the Messiah, “Can the world outbid this gracious offer?”

No, it can’t. Let us remember this when we engage the world with the good news of the only One who can bear the weight of the world’s weariness.