The joke goes of a man being interviewed for a job at 7-11. “Do you speak
any foreign languages?” he is asked. “Yes, English...” My mother used to tell
me “anything is easy if you know how to do it,” and I can add to that, anyone
who knows more than me sounds smarter. And some of the smartest people I know
agree with me. I hope you are among them. Yet you can be the smartest man in
the room, and be humbled when getting your car fixed. While at Mercedes Benz, I
had a customer Dr. Francis Crick, you may not know the name, but he is more
famous than Dr. Oz. He is the man who discovered DNA. Yet when he and his wife
would pick up their car, and he asked what I did, he would them wave me off,
“tell my wife, I don’t understand these car things.” And I’m thinking “Dude you
discovered DNA, your car needed brakes...” all they understood was a light came
on and they brought the car in. And how much it cost. Maybe I need to change
my philosophy on brains.
When I used to deal with Ivan Stewart of Off Road fame, The Ironman, he
once was underneath one of is trucks, and asked me to hand him a wrench. “What
size Ivan?” “I don’t care, I’m gonna use it for a hammer.” Or a fine tuning
adjustment device as my old friend Brett used to call it. It seems although we
all speak the same language, or do we, that the nomenclature, try to use that
word today, is different for each situation, and each group of people. I love
the old song “409,” but how many know what a 409 is? Or a dual quad,
posi-traction, 409? Yet anyone gear head readily knows. When I am around car
guys, we talk “what’ll she do?” “how many cubes?” We have our own language that
we speak, and to any outsider it may seem foreign, to us it isn’t. But picture
this if you can, in America the official language is English. But not to an
Englishman, who refers to us as Bloody Colonists, and our language is brutish,
not the Queen’s English. For example...
If your battery goes dead across the pond, you have a problem with your
accumulator. Which may be found under the bonnet, the hood, or in the boot, the
trunk. “My bloody accumulator is in the boot mate.” Now in English...
Spanners are wrenches, drophead coupes are convertibles, they get on the
binders, the brakes, and mum picks up her kids in a shooting brake, a station
wagon. And even a gallon is not the same, it is Imperial, or 5 quarts, US.
Petrol, not gas. Horns are Klaxons, spending a night in a saloon is a 4 door
sedan not a bar, which is a pub, which is different. You can use a spanner to
tighten your trunnion, a wrench to tighten your suspension, keep a mole wrench
handy, vice grips, while keeping an eye out for Artic lories on the roundabout,
semis in the intersection. So you may speak English, but do you really? All
this talking has made me have to go to the loo...men’s room.
So in each language, each job, each hobby, and each group of people there
is a language within itself. Maybe the interview at 7-11 was more difficult
than you think. But as Christians, we have terms and phrases that we use when
talking with each other, that may seem foreign to an outsider. And we need to
be careful when explaining things lest we confuse them, or get confused
ourselves. We talk of being lost and needing a savior, to make atonement for
our sins. We need to confess our sins, repent and be born again. All terms any
Christian should be familiar with, but in the world what do they mean? We talk
about faith and sharing the gospel, how we are saved grace and become holy, that
if we invite Jesus into our heart he shows mercy, and we are redeemed, and found
righteous before God. And how we need to be in the word, but not in the world.
Wait, I thought the gospel was simple? It is isn’t it? What’s under your
bonnet?
That is why the holy spirit changes hearts, and leads us to Jesus. We
argue, try to explain something infinite in finite terms and come up short. And
often make the person we are sharing with feel uncomfortable. We are not trying
to win an argument, or show how much we know, but see a soul saved by showing
who we know in love. That just might change your whole perspective...maybe what
we have here is a failure to communicate. But in all cases show love,
compassion, and let the fruit of the spirit be evident. People are not as
stupid as we hope they are, and when love is displayed to them, when the spirit
intervenes, suddenly the words make sense. We see a heart changed, a soul
saved, and the person become born again. When we rely on the spirit and not
lean on our own understanding, we see Jesus in action. The words come to life,
the mysteries of the Bible suddenly aren’t so mysterious, and we find out the
difference between lost and saved, just being sorry and repenting. We show the
gospel is good news, that Jesus loves us, and that grace is a gift, not another
test in life to fail. We are to be in the word, so the word can be in us, and
although we live in the world, we are separate. Words and terms that sound
foreign but that the spirit gives life to. We may not understand, but we know
something different is going on inside us that is supernatural. We begin to see
things through the eyes of God, instead of through our own eyes. We then begin
to forgive others as we have been forgiven, to show mercy and not revenge. We
don’t try to win any arguments, we show love instead. We don’t interrogate, we
listen and try to answer as the spirit gives us the words needed. You may think
you are smart, Nicodemus was, but yet it took the holy spirit to reveal to him
what being born again was. And how to be saved. And why Jesus is the savior
promised in scripture. And so God made the gospel simple so we can get it, free
so we can afford it. We messed up, we need to be reunited with God. Jesus is
the way. Ask any 5 year old in Sunday school, and they will tell you “Jesus
loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Now abut that foreign
language...
Maybe my mother was right, it is easy if you know. And I know Jesus, and
he knows me. In any crowd he can pick me out, and say hello to me. Under a
truck, he knows just the right spanner/wrench to fix the problem. He knows what
to look for under your bonnet, and may be being kept in your boot and you’re not
knowing it. Open up the boot to your heart and let him in. Spend a day in your
saloon with him. Open up to the spirit and see what he has to say to you. For
Jesus left us with one language we all can speak, and all can understand, love.
Speak some today, invite someone to join in, let the spirit guide you. For we
all were once lost, it took the spirit to reveal it to us and point us to
Jesus. All the time the what you were looking for was really as who. Don’t let
his language of love be foreign to you. For just like when your time came to
buy your 409, today is that day of salvation. Let me welcome you to the
family. That pinking noise just may be the spirit knocking...
Now if the Brits drive on the right side of the road, does that mean we
Colonists drive on the wrong?
love with compassion,
Mike
matthew25biker.blogspot.com