OFFERING CHRIST

Pashi was a student in our local college. He was from India, and when presented with the claims of Christ, Pashi’s devastating reply was: “I would like to believe in Christ. We of India would like to believe in Christ. But we have never seen a Christian who was like Christ.”

Come to think of it, neither have I.

We believers are all merely pilgrims in progress, encumbered with disagreeable genes, trying -- and in the process being found “trying indeed.” The very term Christlike is confusing. In what way are we to be like Him? In His ability to heal, to teach, to cast out demons? To face His accusers silently? I think the term has to do with Christ’s attitude toward His Father’s will.

“I delight to do Thy will” (Psalm 40:8, KJV).

Whatever the true meaning, I was feeling we Christians had let the Lord down. I decided to call our co-worker and friend, Dr. Akbar Haqq, a brilliant Christian who once was president of the Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies in New Delhi.

“How would you answer Pashi?” I asked him.

“I would tell him, ‘I’m not offering you Christians,'” Akbar answered decisively. ‘I am offering you Christ.'”

-- Ruth Bell Graham in Legacy of a Pack Rat

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