So the premise for this wee Advent/Christmas series is that all of us experience Cold Feet and struggle, to some degree, with the main calling on our lives – to tell people about Jesus – and yet we all have unbelievably beautiful feet.
I’m not talking about being an Evangelist in the sense of the five-fold ministry; I’m just meaning the starting point for every believer and follower of Christ: “Hey! Listen to what God has done for me! Please come and see what God has done!”.
To risk stupidity or sacrilege by quoting Ron Burgundy:
Hey everyone, come and see how good I look!
Come and See How Good I Look
Hey! Come and see How good Jesus is!
The Anchor Man analogy is funny but it strikes me that this is what our ‘evangelism’ should be like much more than fire and brimstone street preaching. Isn’t the day-to-day waking reality for us so breathtakingly amazing that we should be hollering and boldly telling people what God has done for us?
Awesome is in the Awkward
Evangelism is a word that gives us all the heebie-jeebies because we immediately think of AWKWARD – and awkward much of Evangelism often is. But first let’s forget tracts, door-to-door calling and open air meetings for a moment; instead think of simply telling a friend your story over a coffee or a beer. This is evangelism; this is beautifu!
But trying to avoid any ‘awkwardness’ isn’t realistic, is it? Communicating the Jesus-life of the gospel to friends or family or strangers who are ‘dead in their sins’ (Ephesians 2:1) is always going to involve ‘risk’ and will be opposed by the enemy. (We should never underestimate the power and significance of simply and gently sharing the life of Jesus that you know!).
Or what about offering to pray for the sick lady in a wheel chair or the homeless man on the streets? Isn’t the AWESOME in the awkward? Isn’t this what we’re called to?
But we still get cold feet, don’t we?
The one verse from Isaiah 52 that I want to hang around to help us for today’s post is the first part of verse 1:
Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments…
When Zion (the church) awakens to who she is in Christ, she boldly radiates stories of personal transformation that shatter the fear of man that keeps most of our feet full-on freezing. How does she awaken to bold courage? By faith. How does faith permeate? Through hearing. What? The Word of God. Romans 10:17,
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God
Digging down into what our beautifully faith-primed feet look like, (or what that even means), has to start with our awakening again, by faith, to the sheer magnitude of what God has done for us in saving us from hell and condemnation to a future hope that is stunning and secure forever!
Waking up, dressing ourselves with our ‘beautiful garments’ and again smelling the coffee of Isa.52:1(a) is the catalyst for our living with beautiful feet. These garments are garments of salvation (See Isaiah 61:10) including the Ephesians 6 helmet of salvation.
So the garments of our joy start at the top of our heads and finish at the souls of our feet.
Restore To Us
In Psalm 51:12, King David’s beautiful feet started with this prayer,
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
Before we can go to anyone with beautiful feet, either to friends in a coffee shop or strangers across cultures, we must be restored to the joy of our salvation: buzzing with all that God has done for us, all He is doing in us and all He has said He will accomplish in the church.
Feeling a little warmer?
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