Reply To Conversion and Love

Conversion and Love
I loved this article. It was from the Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotion for today. I thought it was very true, and I was hoping to get some other opinions and further insights from everyone else. :)
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"Good Word from a Former Muslim
by John Fischer

I received an e-mail from Maryam, a converted Muslim, who related a remarkable story about how last December, she had four Muslim families come over to her house and wish her a Merry Christmas. The reason for this, she related, was that, as a gesture of friendship and respect, she had visited them on their important Muslim holy days, even after her conversion to Christianity. So impressed were they by what she had done, that they returned the gesture on her next Christmas as a Christian.

This was not her original approach. “For a time I tried to convert every Muslim I came across,” she wrote. But then she was studying the story in John 4 about Jesus and a Samaritan woman, and noticed how he treated her, coming from another culture. He respected her — He didn’t judge her — and He taught her something about God based on her own understanding of her culture and her religion. And even though he revealed to her that he knew all about her past sins, he did not reject her or condemn her, but spoke to her as to one whom he highly valued. That’s when Maryam realized that converting people was not as important a part of her job as showing them God’s love. So she is learning to love her Muslim friends — even engage in long discussions about God and His mercy with them, without having to convert them or correct every wrong thing they say.

Maryam has already learned something as a new convert to Christianity that I am still learning as one who grew up believing — that you don’t have to make everyone relinquish everything they already believe in order to embrace Christ. Our mission is not to prove everyone wrong, but to share the love of Christ with everyone we meet through the reality of our own relationship with God. We are on a mission, not to shoot everybody down, or to straighten everybody out, but to simply love people and point them toward the truth.

“You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship,” Jesus told the woman at the well, “while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way” (John 4:22-23).

Jesus completes the picture; he doesn’t erase what was there. We can point anyone to Christ, confident that if they are truly seeking God, they will find Him in Jesus, regardless of where they might have been looking so far."
Link: Purpose Driven Life Web Site
Tauna, Tuesday, 4-5-05 9:38 AM
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