The Fourth Wall - Day 11

Acts 15-Jerusalem Council

12 Everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
13 When they had finished, James stood and said, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself. 15 And this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted. As it is written:
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‘Afterward I will return
    and restore the fallen house of David.
I will rebuild its ruins
    and restore it,
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so that the rest of humanity might seek the Lord,
    including the Gentiles—
    all those I have called to be mine.
The Lord has spoken—

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    he who made these things known so long ago.”

19 “And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from eating food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating the meat of strangled animals, and from consuming blood. 21 For these laws of Moses have been preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”
“And so, my judgement is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. . .”

We should sit on this for a while and reflect on whether or not we make it difficult for people to come to Christ.

I was just doing a series in a church somewhere in the world, and when they did baptisms at the end of the series, they brought up the baptismal candidates and they read each one of the baptismal vows that are for the SDA Church and each candidate had to assent to each of the vows. Honestly, I had not heard the vows in many years, if at all. They are . . . interesting, to say the least.

There was another person who had a deep interest in being baptised from the series, but as the vows were read, he was confused as to what they were agreeing to. There is a great deal of insider (Adventist) language that made him concerned.

I thought of this text when I heard his concerns. As the church was relatively traditional, I wasn’t able to have the conversation with the young man, but I sure wanted to. I wanted to tell the church that it is not our job to make it difficult for someone to accept Christ and move into our fellowships, but it wasn’t the time or the place.

Have you ever made it hard for someone to become part of the fellowship of believers?
What can we do as a church to keep things easy?
What happens to the people who want to be part of what we are doing when we don’t allow them to become part of what God is doing? Do they stay around, try harder, or just fade away?