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There's the long standing joke about the believer who comes to faith who then drives all their former friends away because all the new believer does is talk about Jesus and their friends' need to repent and be saved.
I actually remember this being a comedy bit on the TV series
Wings. The female who ran the food counter wanted to clear space around her at one point, so she says something like this to the people sitting in front of her, "Hi, my name is whatever and this is my husband. We've just found The Lord and would like to share with you this joy." The people nearby all get up and run away.
Do you think jokes like that exist for no reason? Or that this transformation people go through happens by accident? Or that their response to it is a fluke? No.
The transformation is real. And a person is so changed that all they can do is walk that way.
The transformed person has such love in their hearts, the love The Lord gave them undeservedly, which extends out to everybody and everything to such a degree that they want to give them this amazing gift they've been given, so that they too can feel this way. They want all people to feel this way.
It's not by accident, nor without purpose, that people who follow closely after Jesus are (in general) hated in this world, ridiculed, living almost entirely alone, consistently at pain with regards to the ones around them. Jesus warned this would happen, and it's true.
I reach out to people because I love them and want them to be saved in eternity. I take comfort and peace in doing this. The pain comes because that "fisher of men" endeavor is rarely yielding.
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When I first came to faith, I asked one of the pastors I knew what it was like being a pastor -- thinking to myself it's a most noble profession. He said,
"If you can find peace doing anything else with your life, then do it." And for the first time I am truly beginning to understand what he meant. It is very, very, very hard to walk this path as it relates to your inner heart's calling. You have such love for people, and all they do is spit on everything you now feel more deeply about than you previously would've thought possible.
