Posts tagged as:

gospel

The Motivation for Evangelism

by Jessica on August 24, 2010

“A student asked Pastor Adrian Rogers for advice on how to lead a church in evangelism. Rogers said,

Your zeal is never any greater than your conviction. You can cheer others with your enthusiasm or their loyalty to the church or put them on a guilt trip for a while, but the only thing that will have a lasting effect is their love in the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not even a love for souls that sends people out; it’s the love of Jesus that sends people out.

The highest level of motivation for sharing our faith is love.

We need not be “guilted” into sharing our faith. We need not be tricked or forced into telling others of Christ. We need a heart transplant. We need to develop a deeper love for God first and then choose to love people, even the unlovely, because Christ first loved us.”

- William McRaney Jr., The Art of Personal Evangelism (200-201)

Evangelism is something I struggle with. It’s not my strong point and usually my attempts leave me feeling like an evangelistic failure.

The other week I was remembering a missions trip I took to Ethiopia in 2007. It was the last day in our first village, a huge crowd gathered as we were beginning to leave. It came to the point that some of our translators and disciplermakers were beginning to fear for our safety urging us to quickly load in the vans and leave.

As we got in the vans were surrounded by people and, to be honest, I was nervous as our drivers were making their way through the crowd to the little dirt road. These weren’t the most sturdy vehicles and people weren’t exactly clearly the way.

Thankfully, we made it out safely.

As we made our way down the dusty road in the middle of a desert in Oromia people began running alongside of the van begging to be let in. Why? They wanted to hear about Jesus. It was almost comical in a way…one would jump in, profess faith, be prayed for then jump out and as they jumped out {of a moving vehicle} another would jump in. We started calling it drive-by salvation. It happened three times that day.

These people were chasing after a moving vehicle and jumping inside. We had a story to tell…one of hope and they were desperate to hear it.

People are dying all over the world and yet we wait–I wait–to tell them, to bring them hope. We craft sermons and programs and prepare our testimony and wait…and they’re just desperate for a little hope, a little light.

I wonder what is it that keeps us waiting? The perfect circumstances? A mission trip? When we know all the right answers? When we *finally* have our act together?

Or is it that our love for God is smaller than we’d like to admit? Are we motivated more by guilt and obligation than love?

Have I ever been so desperate for the Living Hope that is Jesus that I’d run alongside a moving car until they let me in? I don’t know. I think more often than naught my faith is comfortable and complacent. What about you?

What motivates you to share the Gospel?

Tagged as: evangelism, gospel, Living Intentionally, missions

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Something More…

by Jessica on March 8, 2010

in Real Life

Recently, I was meeting with some ladies from church and we were sharing our testimonies. After a while I got to thinking about mine. One thing I almost always say is how I looked around at the Christians I knew and (most) of their lives didn’t match up to what I read in the Bible. Not that they weren’t good people, loving and following after God. But there was something missing.

There was little life change. Joy was lacking. Passion was empty. It was as if I saw people who had common beliefs and enjoyed spending time together, but it seemed the Gospel did little to really change their lives in the day-to-day. If Jesus’s claims are real there has to be–must be–gospel change.

At that point in my life (between 18 and 19), I was coming to the point where I realized I was living my life more as a moral person than a Christ follower. Yes, I’ll admit it I was the goody-goody. I didn’t drink, smoke, or go around kissing boys. But as I looked at my life I knew being moral and just believing God is and did what he said wasn’t enough–even the demons believe that!

I had a decision to make: Was I just going to be a moral person or was I going to delve into this Jesus I had committed my life to?

There had to be more to being a Christian than what I saw. If Jesus is and was who he said he was there’s got to be something more. There was a lack of “This is the Gospel and it has radically changed my life. It’s not only saved me from hell, but it saves me every day.”

Why are many Christians “ineffective and unproductive”? [...] they are nearsighted and blind, having forgotten that they have been cleansed from their past sins (2 Peter 1:9). They are blind to the power and hope of the gospel for today. [...]

People need to see that the gospel belongs in their workplace, their kitchen, their school, their bedroom, their backyard, and their van. They need to see the way the gospel makes a connection between what they are doing and what God is doing. They need to understand that their life stories are being lived out within God’s larger story so that they can learn to live each day with a gospel mentality.

Paul Tripp, How People Change (3-4)

As I’ve grown in my walk with the Lord one thing I am continually realizing in greater depth is just how deep the Gospel is–the good news that Jesus paid the penalty for my sins and rose from the dead. It’s more than “fire insurance,” as some say. It’s living, breathing, real life. It should be wrapped around our every breath and action. It is saving grace, moment by moment. Every struggle, every fear, every frustration, every tear, every insecurity are all met in the Cross. It is the power of life.

And yet so often we regulate it to Sunday morning, quiet times, and tragedy. We need it every day. Hour by hour, minute by minute. If there is one thing I could tell the church it would be to appropriate the Gospel into your life…in every need. Because apart from Christ we fail and we’ll fall…hard.

What’s one thing in your relationship with Christ that changed and gave you a new perspective?

Tagged as: gospel, Gospel mentality, quotes, Real Life

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Sin & the Gospel

by Jessica on February 10, 2010

in growth

One thing God has been teaching me lately is that I make life hard for myself. Not my husband, not my children, not even my circumstances. I do.

It’d be easy to blame my foul mood or frustrations on the fact that my kid hasn’t taken a nap three days in a row, won’t let me cook dinner without holding him, or screams like a banshee when something won’t do what he wants it to. Or I could say it’s my husband’s fault for not knowing exactly what I want, leaving the shower curtain open, and his wet towel on the bed. (By the way, this is hypothetical. Joe has gotten so much better about wet towels since we’ve been married…among other things.)

Sure these things may spin me into a downward spiral of “my life is so horrible,” but only because I let it. Only because I choose how to respond. Instead of looking at things objectively and reacting in grace and mercy all too often I turn the other way. I willfully choose to sin and then push the blame on someone else. I’m ignoring one central thing:

God is the gospel and God is good.

Things are never as bad as they seem with the right perspective. Jesus is in heaven, still sovereign, and still in control. Whatever comes my way he has either brought about or allowed–even when Joey’s been yelling like a banshee all morning and I’m about to pull my hair out and yell right back at him. God is still in control even in that moment.

And I have a choice.

Am I going to choose to walk in sin or the gospel? Am I going to choose to forgive those who offend me and accost the peaceful plans I had for the day? Am I going to rely on the grace of God to see me through? Or take matters into my own hands and see how it goes?

It’s not quite so pretty my way.

You see, the Good News has set me free from the penalty of death, but not only that it has set me free from the power of sin. Sin no longer has mastery over me. I have been given a new life and by that new life through the power of the Holy Spirit in me I can be free to live peaceably amidst the chaos.

God is still in control and His goodness permeates all He does…even in the midst of sanctifying me.