For years I’ve been telling our long term missionary trainers that I’m only looking for one outcome: humility. If they’ve got that, they can learn whatever else they need on the field working with our national partners. If not, then they can’t even work with our national partners.

But lately I’ve noticed this closer to home. If people are open, they can be discipled. If they’re closed, they can’t be.

I’ve spent so much energy over the years fine tuning my message and how it’s delivered. You know, super convincing, just hinting, logical, prophetic, examples, analogies, read this book, listen to this podcast, watch this movie, come listen to this preacher, etc. Whether it’s me getting more articulate or connecting them with someone who is, I’ve been surprised how ineffective even the most well-matched, compelling message can be. And even more confused how a hundred different attempts somehow don’t make a difference.

It turns out that if people aren’t open, you can’t get anything in.

My wife and I have a similar problem with the local MCC thrift store. We scour their website for what kind of items they want. We clean up our small appliances or kids toys or whatever. We check their hours for when they’re accepting donations. Then we load them up and go to drop them off and….

Closed

How could they be closed?

Then we see this little sign that says they closed early today for whatever reason.

OK, they don’t understand how hard we prepared for this moment. We’ll just talk to someone and explain how they’re really going to like this stuff.

No one there

OK, no problem. We’ll just leave these things outside the gate…. Another sign:

Don’t leave things outside the gate

Closed is really hard to work with. We eventually run out of ideas and go home defeated. It’s happened to us more than once.

Ever show up at a restaurant to discover it’s not open? It doesn’t matter what you were looking forward to eating or how much money you were going to give them or whether you pound on the door or call the head office. It’s closed. End of discussion. Not going to happen.

When people are closed, it doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it. When people are open to being discipled, almost anything you say is helpful, because they receive it in faith and respond.

The whole thing is whether they are open or closed. So the whole goal is to help people open themselves up to Jesus.

The question then, is why are they closed? The answer, at the bottom of it, is usually fear. They’ve been hurt and are protecting themselves.

So what do we do? We all know that love is what casts out fear, so we love them. But will that work? We have to believe it will, because that’s how God works historically and that’s God has worked in each of our lives. We need to have faith.

And so that verse once again makes more sense to me:

The only thing that works is faith expressing itself through love. — Galatians 5:6