There is no single answer for all of us, but perhaps I can help you serve the Lord better by asking decent questions.
I have often said we make a mistake by trying to differentiate between what we presume to be fellow believers and those who are not Christians. It’s not that there is no difference, but that we apply that marker in improper fashion and at the wrong time. While we might hold forth some limited expectation for a differing response, don’t count on it. In this particularly we cannot know when someone is hurting or in what way they hurt, and how they respond to it. So the real question is not what we expect from others — holy cynicism is never caught off guard. We have ample discussion on this blog of the radical difference between what Scripture requires of His people against the common social mythology of our day. The proper question is what we know God expects of us as individual servants.
The job of sacrificial compassion is pretty much the same regardless. People need to experience God’s love at all times. We cannot blindly ape what we see in Scripture; we are no longer in a Pre-Western New Testament world. While the West is dying, it’s still thrashing and holding billions of minds in chains. We have to create a kind of living-loving witness that overwhelms the human intellect and touches the heart and save questions of epistemology and social mythology for later.
In any given context, there weren’t be too awful many likely to notice, much less respond. We have no way of knowing whom God has awakened that sense of searching and calling, nor how He does it. But the bigger question is whether we are certain we are ready for use on our part. He uses us because we are available, not particularly worthy in ourselves. Still, the key to all of this is reflecting His glory where people can see it.
Would it be possible by the sensory projection of our hearts on the moral plane? Can we radiate holiness on a separate channel imperceptible to the intellect? Or is is simply our loving aplomb and calm acceptance of things over which we have no control? It can’t be simple Western “niceness” because that means nothing. It’s more than simple charisma as we think of it in our society. It has to be something mere humanity cannot manufacture. How can we radiate His glory in that unmistakable way that touches those few ready to be touched?
Somehow we have got to get this rich treasure out to other believers.
