Dear Friends, I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. (Philemon 1:4–7 ESV)I recently came across this passage afresh in Philemon. The message that Paul and Timothy have for the church is right at the heart of my desire for Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama - that is that our love for the Lord Jesus and His saints and a heart for sharing our faith would be the very DNA of who we are as a body. More succinctly, I'm praying that God will increase in us an evangelistic zeal as we grow as a body.Automatically when we hear or see the word evangelism many scary and negative thoughts come into our minds. I think that is because we have a flawed understanding of what evangelism is and what our role in it is to be. Some of those flawed ideas are things like believing that we must have super-duper Bible knowledge in order to effectively share the gospel. This is not true. Jesus did not win souls to Him by winning a Bible knowledge quiz. Jesus moved into the lives of the people and He blessed them – He met them where they were and shared the good news with them. He got down and dirty with people – “people were His mission.”We need to do the same. We are called to move in and bless people as a sure-fire way to share the gospel. This is what Jesus did – it’s called incarnation ministry or incarnational living. We need to be in people’s lives and love them and bless them. We can do this by starting to ask ourselves some basic questions like: Where do I live, work and play? Who are the lost that God has allowed me to associate with that I can begin to share the Gospel with in a relational way?So how do we share the gospel with our friends in such a way that it makes sense in their everyday lives? How do we begin to live in such a way that we start to think about evangelism and start living evangelistically? Mark Dever, in his worked called The Gospel and Personal Evangelism, suggests some things we can begin to do.
- Pray – We need to pray for opportunities to bless someone, opportunities to share the Gospel. We don’t evangelize because often we try to do everything by our own will-power and we leave God out of it. If you have a heart for your lost, un-churched friends, then pray and be amazed at the opportunities that God will give you.
- Plan – We need to make plans to actively share the Gospel. We plan for so many other things in life, why not evangelism?
- Accept – Often we think the job of evangelism is for preachers and super-religious. We must accept that God has given us, as Christians, the amazing responsibility to share His Gospel, His good news. Evangelism is a call for all of God's people.
- Understand – Understand that evangelism may not be the thing that you are the most gifted at, but that does not absolve you from the responsibility to share the good news. Pray that God will help you grow in this area.
- Be Faithful – Sometimes we are more concerned about what people think and how they will respond more than we are God’s glory. The simple task that God gives all Christians is to be faithful. Let us be loyal, trustworthy, and thoughtful about proclaiming His good news.
- Risk – We also need to be willing to take more risks when it comes to evangelism. We need to be more willing to put ourselves out there for the sake of the Gospel. Maybe this risk is as simple as giving someone a Bible or asking them if they have a Bible.
- Prepare – A football coach would never go into a game without a game plan. In the same way we need to take time to prepare and have a game plan for effectively sharing the gospel. We often times don’t evangelize because we feel unprepared or ill-equipped. Perhaps start by memorizing 2 Corinthians 5:21 and use it is as tool to share God's Word with someone.
- Look – Probably the biggest problem with the lack of evangelism is apathy – we are apathetic about the lost. Let’s pray for eyes to see – eyes to actually see opportunities to share the Gospel and to notice the opportunities that God gives us.
- Love – Jesus said that there is one thing equal to loving God and that is loving your neighbor. We are called to share the Gospel because we are called to love people. We need to put our pride, our time and ourselves aside so that we may love people.
- Fear – We evangelize out of a reverent fear of God – to fear Him is to love Him. Dever states, “We are not regarding Him or His will as the final and ultimate rule of our actions,” when we are not fearing Him. Let us pray for a great love and fear of God that will empower us to share the Gospel.
- Stop – When it comes to evangelism, we should stop dismissing the importance of it based on the sovereignty of God. God calls people to spread His good news. We may not understand completely how God’s sovereignty and human responsibility go together but they do go together. We, the Church, are responsible for spreading the good news.
- Consider – We must consider the Gospel for ourselves. Evangelism will flow from your heart and life out of an overflow of the inexpressible joy of how much the Gospel means to you. This means we must make the most of every opportunity to grow in the Gospel for ourselves.
Here is the challenge before us. Evangelism is very much on my heart and I want it to be on your heart as well. How can we begin to effectively reach folks for Christ in the Huntsville, Alabama community?So that we may be better prepared, this Fall we will begin to offer some evangelism training workshops. These workshops will not be simply knowledge based and no, we will not be walking door-to-door to share with people. But we will look at some ways to equip us to do the work that God calls us to do and gain confidence in sharing the Gospel with people in our neighborhood, friends at the gym, co-workers, classmates, everywhere we go! I hope that you will consider joining me as we grow together in this journey.By His grace and to His praise, your friend,
Wilson
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Worship Notes: May 15, 2016