Our Lord’s ministry raises some interesting questions: Did He “fail” in His witnessing? Did He fail when the rich young ruler walked away from Him, refusing to give God first place in his life? Did He fail because Judas Iscariot never received Him as his Messiah? Did He fail because a thief crucified with Him refused to acknowledge His lordship? Was He a failure because many in the throngs around Him didn’t trust in Him?
Our Lord answered these questions in His prayer to His heavenly Father at the end of His earthly ministry: “I brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you told me to” (John 17:4, emphasis added).
Despite rejection, or what we might call “failures,” our Lord Jesus Christ knew His mission was near completion. He had obeyed His Father’s commission. He had brought the message, and was about to complete it with His death and resurrection. While He grieved over those who had rejected Him, He had not failed. He had done “everything” God had given Him to do.
Our heavenly Father asks no more of us than this: that we obey His command to “go and preach the gospel to every creature.” His command is not to “convert everyone.” Jesus did not, and neither can we. But we can obey; we can spread the message to all who will listen and trust God for the results.
The ministry of Jesus Christ modeled for us a liberating truth about our witnessing efforts:
Success in witnessing is simply taking the initiative to share Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God.
Jesus never failed in His ministry. He accomplished all that His Father had commissioned Him to do. Likewise, we do not fail if we obey what God wants us to do, motivated by genuine love and compassion.
We fail in witnessing only if we disobey God’s command to share His love in the power of the Holy Spirit:
Failure in witnessing = failing to witness.
Had I not learned this truth, I would have been confused and discouraged if someone to whom I had witnessed rejected my message.
If Christ’s example is reliable, the task at hand is not to get results. That may or may not happen. The task to which God has called me is to obey Him and share Christ as effectively and lovingly as I know how.
What Christ Taught About Failure
For those who question whether we should even try, considering the chance that a number of listeners will say no, there is assurance for us in the Parable of the Sower. Here, Christ illustrated the varied effectiveness of His message:
A farmer was sowing grain in his fields. As he scattered the seed across the ground, some fell beside a path, and the birds came and ate it. And some fell on rocky soil where there was little depth of earth; the plants sprang up quickly enough in the shallow soil, but the hot sun soon scorched them and they withered and died, for they had so little root. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns choked out the tender blades. But some fell on good soil, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as he had planted (Matthew 13:3–8).
There are four types of listeners, Christ taught. And only one of the four will take the message (the seed) and put it to work in his life.
The good ground represents the heart of a man who listens to the message and understands it and goes out and brings thirty, sixty, or even a hundred others into the Kingdom (Matthew 13:23).
The other three listeners (types of soil) will squander the message or reject it outright. Jesus Christ Himself recognized that, and though His compassion drove Him to love and long for every human soul, He knew that man would exercise his God-given power of free choice both for and against Him. And man continues to do so today.
By Bill Bright
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