“Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” (Mark 16:15)
I receive a lot of comments about my column and am grateful to the Lord that it ministers as much as it does. It goes to show you that God can do great things through us if we’ll just move over and let him take control.
The vast majority of the feedback I receive is favorable. For example, the column that I wrote about my wife last week drew more comments than any column I’ve written over the past year. It certainly struck a chord with the women who read my column. Ironically, I had hoped it would reach their husbands.
There are also occasions when I receive some negative reactions to various issues with which I deal. The column that I wrote on Halloween this year wasn’t very popular with a reader when it appeared in the newspaper in my hometown of Rocky Mount, NC. And the column I wrote a couple of years ago about the couple who spent $4,800 on a set of tires for their Cadillac angered a Spalding County reader.
Two weeks ago I wrote a column about soul sleep. Well that one not only upset one of my readers, but one who is a relative of mine. In fact, he wrote me and said in part, “Don’t get me wrong, Mike. I’m not angry about the column and I don’t dislike you in any way, but when I see sound biblical doctrine being twisted and deceptively presented such as it was in your column, I do tend to get upset.”
Ouch!
I decided that it wasn’t worth the time to argue the matter with him. My column did not “twist” and “deceptively” present anything that is contrary to biblical doctrine. In fact, I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to write about soul sleep, an issue in which I have actually very little interest.
Interestingly, I normally do not even see this particular relative over the Thanksgiving holidays and certainly didn’t expect him to react as harshly as he did. The more I think about it, the more I realized why God led me to write that column.
Well what have I learned from all of this? The one thing that is almost always consistent among the negative feedback I get is that it normally concerns issues that really don’t matter very much from an eternal perspective. My relative’s differences with me are largely over church doctrine, not biblical doctrine. He spent an inordinate amount of time preparing a letter to me in defense of what he believes. When I wrote him back, I told him, “I don’t believe in soul sleep and you do…Neither point of view will keep us out of heaven.”
I’ve realized that all of us spend a lot of time defending how we worship or what our particular denominations believe. I know Peter said, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15) But I don’t think God is as concerned as we are about the labels we wear. After all, Jesus told us that we should devote our attention to things of eternal value.
We should look for the things that unite us as Christians rather than dwell on those issues that do nothing but divide us. From now on, I plan to take my own advice. I am going to invest my energy in those things that will build His kingdom, unite believers, and help others to come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that’s the Gospel Truth.
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