Gospel

---

Take a Closer Look
By Dan Blankenship



When my wife and I discovered we were going to have our second child, we tried to come up with names no one else was naming their children at the time. It was 1991, and names like Ashley, Kaitlyn, and Kelsey were being given to every other girl born, or so it seemed. We decided to name our daughter Kesli, pronounced kess-lee. How original we thought. We had heard the name Kelsey quite a bit, but we couldn’t even find the name Kesli in all of the “name books” we had purchased.

Well, we weren’t quite the geniuses we thought we were. As Kesli grew older and began to have more contact with the outside world, everyone ignored the spelling of our daughter’s name and called her Kelsey, even her own doctor! To this day, some of our closest friends get her name wrong every time they say it.

The problem is that people read too fast when they see Kesli’s name spelled out, and they also assume that they heard Kelsey when the name is pronounced out loud to them.

People do much the same thing when they hear the word Christianity. Those that have not taken the time to research the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a slow and purposeful manner are guilty of assuming they already understand what it’s all about. They may even be jumping to conclusions based on what they’ve seen or heard in the past.

As Christians, we must realize that such a group of people exist, and that they are not easily swayed to open their hearts and minds to the faith we’ve found so comforting. Their negative view of the Bible is usually based on false assumptions: the Bible contradicts itself; a loving God would never send people to Hell; and it is close-minded to believe there is only one path to salvation.

We must be patient with such hardened hearts, praying that God will intervene, showing them that He is the author of Compassion and that His Son offers a hope that cheats death.

Our faith is simultaneously complex and simple, all encompassing and exclusive, and forgiving and judgmental. We cannot expect the world to come rushing forth to join our club. But we can offer ample opportunities for the world to take a closer and slower look at our faith. Through missionary callings, food pantries, inner city works, and a host of other outreach efforts, our faith in action calls the masses to ask questions. If we can make the world ask why we do what we do, it will give us the opportunity to spread God’s Word like a wildfire across a dry plain.

Just like the people who refuse to see Kesli’s name as it really is, there will be people who will never examine what God’s word really says, but that must never slow us in our efforts to reach those that are just a pause away from hearing the whisper and roar of the Lamb and the Lion. We can give them reason to pause when we do our best to mimic the actions and teachings of Jesus as found in the Bible.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE