“What exactly are we hoping to accomplish?”

I have found that to be a simple diagnostic question when considering different options of actions. Say, for example, someone has done something that has irritated you, and you’re wondering whether or not it’s worth it to bring it up to them. Asking that question can help you know the answer, but it can also help you know what direction to take that conversation.

It is also, I think, a helpful question for Christians to ask because of our tendency to get caught up in the small things, the little quibbles, the relatively insignificant battles. We can easily find ourselves spending an inordinate amount of time and energy on matters we shouldn’t really be involved in. So what’s the answer to that question? What are we hoping to accomplish?

The best answer is, of course, the Great Commission. What are trying to accomplish? We are trying to spread the gospel to every corner of the world.

Okay – so that’s good. It’s good that we know that. But perhaps we can take that down to an even more granular level; maybe we can take it down to something that is more specific, and still keeping the end in mind. This is one of the things we learn from Acts 4.

For context, remember that Jesus has been crucified, resurrected, and taken up into heaven. The Holy Spirit has fallen at Pentecost, and the church has been born. And not only born, but it is growing. Exponentially. In fact, the church is all the buzz in Jerusalem as more and more people are believing in Jesus. That’s Acts 1 and 2.

Then in Acts 3, Peter and John go and heal a man in the name of Jesus, and more gas is thrown on the fire. There is such a disturbance that by the time we get to Acts 4, Peter and John have been arrested if only to shut up their preaching for a little while, which in turn brings about a confrontation between Peter and John and the body of religious leaders known as the Sanhedrin. Then we get this:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say. So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked (Acts 4:13-16).

If I could take a few liberties with the last sentence of that verse, the religious leaders of the day, with all their power, prestige, and supposed wisdom, look to each other and say, “What are we going to do about these guys?”

Because we have to do something.

And that might be the answer to the question we began with. What are we trying to accomplish here? Here in our homes? In our workplaces? In our communities? Well, yes, we want as many people as possible to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, and yes, we want as many as possible to believe that message, but in the meantime, we want to force a response.

Now we should be careful here because in a society that seems increasingly bent on frustration, anger, litigation, and angst, we don’t need to be just another shouting voice in the midst of all the others. There are better ways to demand a response.

We demand a response when we are people of calm in the midst of anxiety.

We demand a response when we love those who hate.

We demand a response when we practice generosity.

We demand a response by our steadiness and faith in the midst of shifting values and morality.

When we do all these things, we demand a response. We leave people looking at us, essentially saying the same thing: “What are we supposed to do with these guys?”

We demand a response when we stand apart in the way we think, lead, behave, and respond. I love the way Greg Koukl describes this in reflecting on the fact that not every conversation about the gospel is going to lead to a conversion:

Now here is my own more modest goal. I want to put a stone in his shoe. All I want to do is give him something worth thinking about. I want him to hobble away on a nugget of truth that annoys him in a good way, something he can’t simply ignore because it continues to poke at him.

Whether the opportunity is a short one with a transient audience or a long one with a captive audience, my goal is the same—a stone in the shoe.

A stone in the shoe. A demand for response. This is similar to what Peter writes in his own epistle:

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us (1 Peter 2:12).

May it be so, that we live the kind of lives that time and time again require people to ask, “What am I to do with this person?”