When Blind Arrogance Trumps All But Our Prayer

God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him. For such a man I have no message.
Without a smidgen of self-aggrandizement or arrogance I submit the following to you: I’m an engineer by trade who almost became a medical doctor (this, of course, all before God called me to my pulpit). I’m a sensitive person who aches whenever I perceive pain in others. I am tortured by the fact that so many people persist (may I suggest insist?) in hurting themselves through self-destructive behavior. The pinnacle of these emotions occurs within me when someone I love, personally, is driving at very high speeds towards their own eternal death. The engineer in me wants to “fix” them and the medical doctor in me wants to “heal” them. I want to hoist them up the way I do vehicles on my car lift in my garage and tighten a few loose bolts. I want to dissect their souls and perform a little surgery to root out the disease. But I can’t do any of this, for it is not my job.

This feeling of helplessness is exacerbated when I know a person has heard the Gospel truth, particularly from my own mouth. There’s no greater jolt to the human ego than the good news about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There’s also no other necessary fix or operation available to those of us heaven bent on saving souls. The Gospel is sufficient. The control I thought I might have was never mine; it was only an errant notion borne of earnest desire in accord with God’s, “Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). I’m not strong enough to overcome blind arrogance. At some point in my tenure as an evangelist, I must concede, lest I be injured.

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
There is relief from this sense of futility after all. Thank God. I can’t say that my heart doesn’t still ache terribly, but at least I can sleep at night, knowing that God is manifest integrity, void of plans to send anyone to the Lake of Fire without just cause. Still, my heart breaks, especially for those whom I love. This isn’t a novel concept, for even Paul intimated similar despair.

I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
As is often the case, the closer we are to another person, the more difficult it can be to evangelize them. It seems we’d have an unobstructed inroad, which is sometimes the case, but we quickly realize that the hardest people to evangelize are often the ones closest to us! Jesus can relate to this, personally.

For not even [Jesus’] brothers were believing in Him.
[Jesus] came to His hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.
Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in Him until after His resurrection. Interestingly, we don’t see Jesus spending all of His time on evangelizing His immediate family. Rather, He went out to others, leaving His brothers and His townsfolk with the Gospel truth about Himself. We must do the same. There are times when enough is enough and any more pressure contributes to hardness of heart.

So what are we supposed to do when those we love reject the Gospel? We seek divine perspective, for that is always the purest pathway to deliverance. Divine perspective relies solely on divine Truth. For starters, Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Luke 11:23a). All unregenerate people are reprobates, “enemies” of God (Romans 5:10). This may be a difficult pill to swallow, as it means that some of our loved ones are indeed “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18). What shall we do, then, when we are relegated as discarded spectators, having spent our reserves on presenting the Gospel to our loved ones, only to be rejected, left with this righteous conclusion about their opposition to God? There is one last duty left to our charge.

You have heard that it was said, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Pray. When all else fails, pray. When someone spits venom in your face, pray. When someone backhandedly disregards your precious heart, pray. When your love is trampled under foot, pray. When your spirit is crushed and the only thing left standing is your anger, pray. Pray for more opportunity to pray for those you love. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). God will handle the rest.

Love in Christ,

Ed Collins