The 20 Year Conversion...

First a little bit of history: In the 1800's, the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody was giving a two week series at the end of which he planned to give an opportunity for salvation.  Problem is, he never got to preach the second week to most people because a huge fire broke out all over Chicago.  As a result, Moody said he would never wait, he would always give people a chance to convert in the moment.  Tons of evangelists and pastors followed his example.  At the time, that probably wasn't a big deal, but now our society has gotten tired of this rush to make converts.  

Recently, I've been rethinking the whole way we see people convert to Christianity, and it has a lot to do with these two passages: 

"Then Jacob made a vow saying, "If God will be with me and will guard me on this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I return to my father's house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God.'" -Genesis 28:20-22.

"So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, 'Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and put on fresh clothes.  Then let us get up and go to Beth-el, so that  I can build there an altar to God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I went.'" -Genesis 35:2-3.

Jacob Prays for Protection (Dore Bible Illustrations)

Here we basically see the conversion of Jacob, a.k.a Israel.  This is a big deal for the whole Bible.  For one thing, Jacob is a patriarch of the Jewish faith; secondly, he was the grandson of Abraham, and the progenitor of the nation of Israel (not to mention its namesake).  His conversion was before the Law (not introduced till Exodus 20) and therefore his covenant with God was based on faith just as was Abraham's covenant.  

Furthermore, he was converted to the faith because God Himself guided him and brought him to belief; Jacob was a skeptic that learned to trust a God he initially did not have close relationship with.  It's noteworthy that this wasn't about a preacher or evangelist giving an invitation or having Jacob pray "the sinner's prayer."  Nevertheless, it was still a very real decision on Jacob's part to follow God, and as a result, he had his family put away their foreign gods (this basically meant that the whole family converted too!).  

But here's the kicker for me: between these two passages (Genesis 28 and 35), twenty WHOLE YEARS go by in Jacob's life.  God was in no hurry to convert this man, regardless of how important he was for God's plan for the redemption of the world.  

So here's the application I get from this: 

1. We do not have to be in a hurry to see conversions.
2. God pursues people and sees them through to conversion.
3. Just because someone doesn't go to church or fit our agenda for coming to Christ, doesn't mean that God isn't working on them or pursuing them.  
4. Our responsibility is to (A.) love them, (B.) go the distance with them, (C.) entrust them to God, (D.) point them back to God.  

I think that if we learned to practice such things, we would see a greater transformation in society than we are from our current efforts that are (to be quite honest) irritating to most of the population.