Incarnational Thinking
A lot of time and effort is expended by mission agencies to train their candidates on how to bridge the culture gap and live incarnationally in the country to which they are being sent. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary statesman of centuries past. was among the first to live and look like the people he sought to win to Christ in China. Incarnational thinking is modeled after Jesus Christ who took on flesh to become one of us; to look like us, to live like us. Sort of. In one area Christ was never like the people he chose to look and live like. He never sinned. In that he did not model us. So as I read this morning's passage in 1 Peter I took notice of the number of times Peter called his readers "strangers" while he was busily exhorting them not to be the same as the people around them, but to be different. He begins his letter: " To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. . . " –1 Pe...