(Guest post by: Pastor Gerald Steele)
Thank you, Lilly, for inviting me to share a few thoughts on your blog. I’m honored! I love the emphasis on “The Few” and your call for others like yourself to live a life of “reckless abandon for the Lord.”
Your call for THE FEW to remain faithful to God in the midst of cultural relativism is necessary and applaudable. In my lifetime, I have witnessed like never before the erosion of Biblical authority. Biblical absolutes are considered obsolete.
Unfortunately, many who claim to be born again followers of Jesus Christ have allowed the world to squeeze them into its mould (See J.B. Phillips paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2).
Christians here in the West have adopted practices that are identical to their non-Christian counterparts. They lie, cheat, cuss, have sex before marriage, drink, exhibit addictive behaviors, divorce etc., but show up at church on Sunday morning like all is well with their souls.
Something is blatantly wrong. There are obviously some major disconnects!
If I understand my Bible correctly, we are saved FROM our SINS and not IN them. That doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally stumble and fall, but rather that when we do, we get up quickly and move forward in our walk with Jesus. We don’t embrace sinful behaviors, we do our best to avoid them and the Holy Spirit is our Helper.
The current recruiting slogan for the United States Marine Corps is: The Few. The Proud. To be a Marine, you have to learn self-discipline, submission to authority, commitment, endurance, loyalty and integrity.
The Bible also calls us to similar character traits. For example, David in Psalm 15:1-2 gives us a useful question and a clear response when he writes, “Who may worship in your sanctuary, LORD? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill? Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth from sincere hearts.”
Pastor Scott Harris puts these two verses in the form of three short preaching points. True worshippers who have access into the presence of God: WALK in integrity, WORK acts of righteousness, and speak truthful WORDS.
In other words, what ushers us into the presence of a HOLY GOD is a HOLY HEART.
However, God invites the FEW to “hitch their holiness to the harvest.” Genuine followers of Jesus are missional in their thinking.
They know that God never invited us to a “holy huddle,” but rather to make disciples, who will make disciples. God’s objective for us as Christ followers has always been to “bring many children into glory.” Hebrews 2:10. NLT
For the past nearly fourteen years, I have had the joyous privilege of working with an unreached people group in northern Mozambique in East Africa. God has blessed this ministry. Today there are nearly 60,000 disciples that have been made and 1,500 churches that have been planted.
As I have worked with these first-generation disciples, I have been amazed at their ability to embrace and obey the Bible, break from sin, commit to serious prayer, and their total commitment to winning the lost and discipling new Christians.
This is not something radical in light of the New Testament. Jesus chose a FEW. The FEW reached the MASSES. As a result, the Kingdom of God grew! Do it again Lord!
The Few 
I really like this post! It definitely calls me to not be a normal humdrum Christian who acts like all is well with my soul. I’m so proud to be CALLED one of the few, but sometimes I have to ask myself ‘Am I ACTING like one of the few?’ If I answer honestly I often find myself not being a wonderful Christian like I sometimes claim to be. This post has most definitely challenged me to look at the way I serve Christ and the way I speak to non-believers in a new way, and to always be looking for different ways to speak to the un-saved masses and to disciple them so they can disciple others. Lets be the FEW who break the vicious cycle that is passed down through the generations of showing up to church on Sunday, giving our tithes, listening to the sermon, and telling ourselves we have done our good deed for the week and saying ‘I’m good.’ Let’s start living like these people are either going to Heaven or Hell and like we can help in being the deciding factor.
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This is really good. There are only few that choose to make the right choices. That actually take this stuff seriously. God blesses us in many ways. So we should respect him. He says things in the Bible that we shouldn’t do and so we try and work around all that. We shouldn’t do this but we think we can bend things and it be ok. That God is ok with it. He forgives us for everything but it doesn’t mean things are ok. Everyone struggles with this!
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