Jesus Christ Superstar and me - a match made in ...

I always find it funny when I hear folks say that such and such a person is not reachable by Christ.

Or that this other person surely has found a way to be beyond God's long arm.

Or that their child is the one person who has finally managed to find a way to elude the hounds of heaven.

I also find it amusing when I hear other folks prescribe exactly and precisely how a person has to come to know Christ. You know the drill, a person HAS TO be baptised in order to be saved ... a person HAS TO go through 3 or 4 steps (depending on who you are talking to) in order to be properly redeemed ... a person HAS TO pray a prayer with certain words and themes before becoming a Christian.

Balderdash!

None of that is true, in my humble opinion.

The Bible is so full of different methods and ways and approaches that folks have experienced in coming to Christ that I can only find one commonality ... the destination, Jesus Christ.

Take me, for example.

I was a teenage agnostic. And I did not subscribe to the theory that the Bible was true.

Until I heard Jesus Christ, Superstar, the irreverent rock opera.

Now, Jesus Christ, Superstar, was condemned and blasted by just about every church that existed at that time. They alleged that it was not accurate ... it was not respectful ... it was too far out ... it made fun of Christ ... and on and on and on. Churches around the nation reloaded and declared it to be of the devil. Churches around the nation authoritatively declared it to be a heretical blasphemy.

But God used it to bring me to himself.

Sobering, isn't it?

When I listened to it at the age of 18, a door in my heart opened that had never been opened. When I listened to it at the age of 18, a desert inside of me began a self-irrigation project. Christ began somehow to change me.

We never know who or what God will use to bring someone to Christ. We may say we know, but we really don't.

Try not to limit God, ok? Try not to prescribe his ways and methods for others since he will assuredly not adhere to your rules that you set for him.

• If God wants to knock someone off a donkey to facilitate their salvation, that is ok.
• If God wants to use a rooster to call the unrepentant to repentance, so be it.
• If God wants to use the terror of a roller-coaster ride in a theme park to draw a person into his kingdom, that's just peachy.
• If God wants to use a rock in your shoe to bring you to himself, then that's just perfect!
• If God wants to use the death of a loved one to brush your face against eternity, super!
• If he wants to use an old-fashioned altar call in a Southern Baptist church to throw his ropes around you, excellent!

Entire denominations are built around prescribing methods of salvation that must be adhered to in order to know that your ticket has been punched.

He will do what he will do and he will use who or what he chooses. GASP! What a novel concept! Some might even say that this is the definition of sovereignty. DOUBLE GASP!

Here's the take-away, gang ... let God be sovereign and you worry about what kind of follower of Jesus you are ... his sovereignty will choose the right approach to bring others into the kingdom.

Keep your ear attuned to him so that you might know how you can help, if, indeed, you can at all.

Who knows, he might even use a rock opera.