Offering an Honest Invitation
Leighton Ford
The only proper reason to give an invitation is that God calls people to decision.
—Leighton Ford
Not a few of us have been turned off by public invitations that offended our theology, our integrity, our sensitivities.
Some "altar calls" I wish I hadn't heard, and I doubt they altered anyone. I recall a healing evangelist during my younger days who cajoled and threatened his audience until the number of people God had "revealed" to him came forward that night. But I also recall another man with the gift of healing who laid his hands gently but with authority on those who came to kneel at the altar of an Anglican church.
I remember an evangelist in the Wheaton College chapel whose finger swept the audience like an avenging angel; his invitation was so broad we felt we should come forward if we hadn't written our grandmother in the last week! He squeezed and pleaded as if Jesus were some kind of spiritual beggar rather than the royal Lord. But I have seen Billy Graham stand silently, arms folded, eyes closed, a spectator, as a multiracial throng of Africans, Europeans, and Asians surged forward in South Africa to stand together at the cross.
How do we give an honest invitation?
The real inviter
First, we must be honest before God. The only right we have to ask people to commit their lives for time and eternity is that God is calling them. The gospel message is both an announcement and a command: it tells what God has done and calls people to respond. "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled ...
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