Feels a little strange not to have a Bible study on Thursday night. The overwhelming student consensus being in favor of a switch to Saturday night, we decided to go for it and tried our best to let everyone know. No one showed up at the house tonight, so that’s a good thing. Hopefully tomorrow, St. and I can go and finalize the details on the new place (they called today with a lower offer) so we can tell the students on Saturday where to meet the following week.
My wife got a call today from Jn., a girl who’s come to a couple of Bible studies and is feeling really convicted. She told my wife that she’s read some “stories about Jesus” and that she feels like God is really far away from her. Jn. also said, “I don’t really know any Christians, so I don’t know who to ask. Sometimes at the Bible study, I don’t know understand what your husband is saying.” So my wife, assuming it was the language barrier, apologized and said someday we’ll have Chinese services. But Jn. interrupted her, “It’s not that – I understand the English. I just don’t understand what it all means.” She called specifically to ask for some time to talk to me or my wife personally some time: “I know you both are really busy on Bible study nights, but I really need to talk to someone about my questions.” Here’s a pretty good example of conviction, or at least it seems like it from here. There’s an acknowledging of sin, separation from God, feelings of guilt, desire for answers, and inner struggle.
Au contraire. Today I had lunch with a frequent attender, Fr. I’ve written about him before. Super nice guy. Paid for my lunch, what can I say? (I find myself in more and more ‘have-to-eat-Chinese-food’ situations and strangely find myself hating it less everytime – now that’s scary!) He invited a friend from his province and her boyfriend, an avid basketball-player/video-gamer. Fr. proudly calls me his Bible teacher. He shows me around his campus. He compliments my Chinese. He makes me feel like I have a real Chinese friend. His interest in the Bible is also extremely questionable.
Fortunately, right now in language school, I’ve got plenty of time. Anyone who’ll walk around with me right now and listen to my horrible Chinese is worth all the time I can give him. But if the devil knows that there’s really some people around who are genuinely convicted by the Holy Spirit and ready to commit their lives to Christ, what better plan could he devise than to tie the harvest-laborer into a hundred time-consuming relationships, programs, and ambitions that keep him from the person who really needs his attention?
I mentioned this earlier, but finding leaders necessitates putting large numbers of people in a crisis and letting the few rise to the top. It follows then that the more the genuine interest and genuine conviction that exists in the group, the harder the devil work to produce filter-proof fakers. People that we’ll think are interested, convicted, and worth scads of time. This has proven true – it seems there are some genuinely interested people – but there are also dozens that will come to any event we throw… just to dilute the pool. May God give us wisdom to spend our time with the people whose hearts are desperately craving a real relationship with their Father! If we never learn to put people into real crises, we’ll find ourselves extremely busy with dozens of good friends, good programs, and good ideas. We’ll feel good because of how hard we work, but we’ll wonder why there aren’t more discipled leaders.
The Gospel in China 
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