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Exploring the Nudge of the Spirit in Your Everyday Life

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Nudge post

Through his teaching, speaking and writing, Len Sweet serves as both a church historian and futurist. In his book Nudge, he presents readers with a practical and approachable way to incorporate God into one's everyday life. Len's extensive bio, list of books and other information can be found at his website www.leonardsweet.com.

Why did you write Nudge?

Let me answer that question with a story. A man was so worried he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown that he decided to see a psychiatrist. “What’s your problem?” the psychiatrist asked. “Actually, I’ve got two problems,” the man replied. “My first problem is that I don’t think I’m human any more; I’m starting to think I’m a soft drink vending machine, and I can dispense six different kinds of soda for a dollar each: orange, grape, lime, cherry, birch beer, and Coke.”

The doctor pondered the man’s calm demeanor for a while, then decided on a course of action. He got out four quarters, and said to the man: “Open your mouth... I’ll have a birch beer, please.”

Whereupon the man answered: “That’s my second problem: I’m out of order.”

I wrote Nudge to address the two primary problems of the church. One, we don’t think we’re the bride of Christ anymore—we’re in the meet-my-needs business, or the program business, or the feel-good business, or the franchise business, or the social justice business, or the judgment business. I could go on and on. Second, we’re out of order. As hard as we try, we can’t meet people’s needs enough, or program well enough, or feel good enough, or spread justice enough, to reproduce ourselves. And the worst crisis any species of organism can have is a reproduction crisis. Evangelism is about nudgments, not judgments.

How do you distinguish between the Good News and the Great News?

The “good news” is that even though “we hold these truths in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7), even though we’re all cracked pots, the cracks are where the light shines most brightly through God’s justifying grace.

The “great news” is that those cracks can be healed and gold-filigreed through God’s sanctifying grace.

Nudge is an unusual book in that it explores evangelism in all three arenas of God’s grace: prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace.

Why do you define evangelism as a nudge?

I initially titled the book Pay Attention: Every Bush is Burning. Evangelism is nothing but paying attention to what God is already doing in someone’s life, and nudging that along. Every person is a burning bush of divine activity. I want to help people see and share in the shining. Sometimes nudge turns to shove, but most of the time we are simply to nudge what Jesus is already up to. For too long evangelism has been disconnected from discipleship, but evangelism IS discipleship. What yokes evangelism to discipleship is the art of attention, attending to life and attending to God.

How do you know if you're being nudged by God and not just listening to your own ego?

A divine nudge always lifts up Christ, not ourselves.

One of my favorite Sunday School stories is of the child who comes home from the first day of Sunday School. His parents are curious about how things went, and begin by asking him what the teacher’s name was.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember her name.”

“Well, do you remember anything about her?”

“I think she is Jesus’ grandmother.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because all she did was hold up His picture and brag on him.”

Nudge evangelism is a lifting up Christ and bragging on Him. It’s more about telling his story

than telling our story. It’s more about “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” that “Shut up, everyone, for this servant is speaking.”

Any advice on how we can clear out the white noise that surrounds our lives, so we can hear the quiet voice of God?

I give lots of tips in the book, but one thing we can do is simple: listen more, talk less. What if we were to learn to hear each other rather than scream at each other? How can we hear God speak if we’ve never even learned to listen to each other? What if we resolved only to hear into speech? In other words, I have no right to speak to anyone, much less argue with them, until I first listen to them intently, and can state their case to their satisfaction.

One of my doctoral students had a Sunday School teacher who gave her as a high school graduation present a homemade plaque that read: "The greatest good you can do for others is NOT to reveal yourself to them, but to reveal themselves to them."

What are the major reasons we fail to see Jesus at work in our daily lives?

One reason is that we’re oblivious to the obvious. I love the story from the 1970s about the man in West Berlin who worked in the eastern sector of that divided city. He would ride his bicycle to work each day and carry a bag of sand. Each day the surveillance officer at the checkpoint, suspicious of smuggling, would inspect the worker and the bag of sand, but never found anything. After months of this daily routine, the exasperated guard finally bargained with the worker, saying he would let him smuggle whatever he had in the sand if he would only tell him what it was.

To the guard’s chagrin, the West Berliner confessed that he had been smuggling bicycles.

Most often Jesus is up to something right under our noses, and we can’t see it. I love the Wendell Berry reminder that turning of water into wine is, after all, a very small miracle compared to the greater but forgotten miracle in which dirt (with water and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

How can we refine our senses so we can experience Jesus?

How can we nudge at work and other secular settings?

To nudge is give voice, lend face, to love. It is based on a simple premise: leave an impression on everyone you meet, but make it a Jesus impression, a Jesus dent. Instead we try to “impress” everyone with ourselves and to leave a “good impression” of ourselves.

What is a “Jesus impression”?

According to our medieval ancestors, there were three marks of Jesus’ presence: beauty, truth and goodness. So a Jesus impression is beauty, truth, or goodness. It can be as simple as a smile, as profound as a prayer, as complex as a meal, as subtle as a story, as venturous as a witness, as ambitious as a call to choose life or death. But when you leave an impression, you leave a dent. You “impress” someone. Too many Christians are leaving an impression of hate and condemnation, not of love and salvation. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, he said, but to save the world. A Jesus nudge leaves a Jesus impression that reminds people that God is up to something big in their life that brings beauty, truth, and goodness.

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