After the presidential election, I wrote several articles in response to the results. I consider the election of a president who believes in socialism to be a form of adversity. It is in our adversities that God is most easily seen. When He allows our circumstances to outstrip our human abilities, we are forced to turn to Him or sink down into despair.
These articles were written to help prepare us to properly respond to our present situation. The outline I followed was, pray, purification and preach. It is a time for prayer, it is necessary for the church to be purified in order to have a credible witness and it is time to preach the message God has left with us. The previous articles have dealt with the issues of prayer and purification. Now I would like to talk about our responsibility to preach the gospel and the word of God to the world.
First, when I say preach, it brings up images of a man at a pulpit preaching the word. This is certainly part of God’s program but not what I am proposing for most of us. By preaching, I mean simply communicating the truth of the bible in conversation. It is time to pray, it is time to exchange our old ways for the ways of God and it is time to become the aggressors in the marketplace of ideas. It is time to speak up. It is time to lose our fear of rejection, fear of being horse laughed and inject the message of Christ into the conversation. Our daily conversations, conversations with family, conversations with neighbors and even that which is reported by the media. Check out the courage of Tim Tebow. He is clearly not ashamed of Jesus and speaks His holy name every chance he is given on national TV.
In the following paragraphs I would like to suggest a course of action that will prepare us for the spiritual opportunities ahead. First, we need to pray for ourselves, second we need to prepare ourselves with pertinent information and finally, we need to persist in the work of presenting God’s perspective to those He sends our way. 2Cor 5:14-21 is our guide as we prepare ourselves to be bold witnesses for Christ.
14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Prayer for Ourselves
First, in 2009, let us commit to ask God to give us real opportunities to share His word. Pray that God would prepare the hearts of those we will encounter along the way of our daily lives. He already knows who we will see and be with every day. He knows their problems and the areas of their life that would best give us an opening to speak. Ask Him to highlight these areas in their lives before we meet them. Ask Him to send us people who are at that place of interest and need.
Pray also that He would give us boldness to speak as He would have us speak. This is what Paul requested for himself when asking others to pray for him.
Ephesians 6:19-20 and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Remember, he was in jail as he wrote those words. He didn’t ask to be released from prison. Instead he asked to be emboldened to use the opportunities he was given every day. Speaking for Christ requires that we lay aside our fears and allow the Spirit to replace fear with courage. Fear comes from believing we will lose something valuable if we speak. Some fear what others will think of them and how others will brand them within the community of people they travel (religious nut). Others feel inadequate to the task of speaking the word and fear making a mess of the witness. The point is that we have assigned too great a value on being accepted by others within our peer groups. We believe that being accepted by the world is an important part of being happy and content. To diminish the power of this idea we must first recognize that we have believed this lie. Second, call it the lie that it really is and third, tell yourself that you are not going to believe that lie ever again. Finally, look to the Holy Spirit for the truth. The truth is that our inclusion in Christ has provided all the acceptance we will ever need and that we do not need the acceptance of people to be happy. At this point, I visualize my position in Christ and hear Him telling me that He is pleased with my boldness to speak for Him
Whenever you feel afraid to speak up about Christ, go through this drill of throwing away your lies and embracing the truth. As you continue to practice this, the Spirit will change your heart and you will find that your fear will fade away and courage will take its place.
Finally, pray that God will produce love and compassion in you for the suffering of others. Ask Him to remind you of your great wealth of love in Christ and motivate you to share His love with everyone around you. It is this great love of God that motivates us to perform the ministry of reconciliation. Christ does not send us out to speak because we are afraid not to or even because He commanded us to speak. He was motivated by love in all that He did for us. The Spirit produces that same love in us as we walk with Him and this love grows in us as we grow spiritually.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Prepare Ourselves
Having prayed that God will prepare the hearers, that He will give us courage and love, we must prepare ourselves for the opportunities that will surely come. What should we say, when should we say it and what results should we look for having said it? Let us look at a few ideas about preparation for ministry.
First, the greatest issue facing the human race is where each of us will spend eternity. There is a heaven and there is a hell, so says the bible and especially so says Jesus. He spoke more about hell than any other person in the bible. The first issue to address with anyone in your life is, what does a person have to do to go to heaven when they die? What must a person do to be saved? The bible answers these questions for us.
Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
Paul explains that the power of God to save us comes through the gospel when anyone believes it. When any person believes the gospel, God uses His power to save them. The next question we must ask is, “what is the gospel”?
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
Paul tells us that the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This gospel was foretold in the OT scriptures and was fulfilled in His earthly ministry. It is by believing that Christ died to resolve the sin issue, was buried and raised from the dead to resolve the death issue that we are saved. Whenever a person believes in the work of Christ as the only means of salvation, God gives them the free gift of eternal life which can never be lost or rescinded. There are some in the church who preach a gospel that doesn’t include the resurrection and don’t believe it to be a necessary part of the gospel. If you hold this position I am not seeking to offend or argue, but to simply encourage you to read the sermons in the book of Acts. All of the first sermons given by the apostles in the book of Acts emphasize the resurrection and none of them preach Christ without it. After wrestling with this issue myself, I simply decided to include the resurrection in all of my gospel presentations to make sure I had covered all of my bases. I don’t see how including it could possibly hurt anyone and not including it could be disastrous. I like playing it safe when dealing with God’s word.
Second, we live in a land with many confused and hurting people. Whenever a people turn away from God, they begin a journey into degeneracy. This journey takes them either into legalism (moral degeneracy) or debauchery (immoral degeneracy). Turning away from God causes us to operate on human will, human ability and our human trends take us to extremes. The people of the US are deep into degeneracy and have either become religiously evil which causes them to be self righteous and condemning or immorally evil which causes them to over indulge in pleasure seeking. Both of these extremes destroy relationships and cause families to come apart. As a result, we are into multi-generational divorce situations. Many of our children are now being raised in one-parent homes by parents who were raised in one-parent homes, with grand parents who were raised in one-parent homes. Divorce has become normalized and homes without dads have become an accepted way of life. It is not difficult to see why so many people feel empty and long for a better life. Millions in America today have been love deprived and have not been given strong but loving male role models. The one-parent home has become the norm and living in deep soul pain has become the norm. The gospel and the love of God are as relevant today as ever, maybe more so.
As you pray for your hearers, pray that God will boil their pain to the surface and make them achingly aware of the need in their lives. Aching hearts look for answers. Aching hearts that have tried everything else sometimes are willing to hear the truth. What do we say to hurting people that might bring them to the Lord?
For those who were abandoned, we might offer the promise of Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
For those who are starved for love we might offer the love of God, 1 John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
For the many who grew up fatherless, our spiritual adoption has great meaning: Romans 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
Finally, there is seldom a need to rehearse answers to specific questions. Simply prepare yourself by learning and obeying God’s word and He will give you the right words when you need them. One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to bring the right words to us to say to meet the need of the moment, as in Matthew 10:19: But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say.
Learning to hear and follow the voice of the Spirit is the spiritual skill needed to operate this way.
We have discussed prayer for our hearers and ourselves. We have briefly discussed preparing ourselves to meet the needs of those that God sends our way. In closing I want to encourage us all to persist in or readiness and never give up on a person or the process.
Persist
A critical spiritual skill in the Christian life is the skill of enduring and not quitting when times are tough. Endurance (Grk hupomeno) literally means to remain under the weight and practically means to keep trusting God’s promises even when the situation looks hopeless. Persistence is the first virtue produced by the Spirit as we grow through adversity (Rom 5:3-5; Jam 1:2-4). We first learn to “keep believing” God when He stretches our faith by making us wait for deliverance under different types of adversity. When He finally delivers us either from the adversity or through it, we learn that He makes us wait but never abandons us. We learn to wait on Him while the storm swirls around us. It is this acquired strength of faith built in us by the Spirit that is necessary to make it through the more difficult stages of growth unto maturity. It is this same endurance that never gives up on people and continues to express God’s love and truth to them even when they reject us. I witnessed to one man for over 10 years before he finally accepted the gospel of Christ and allowed the Lord to save him. During that 10 years he consistently rejected the idea that he had done anything that warranted the work of the cross. He believed that because he was a good person that God would compare his good deeds with his bad deeds and allow him into heaven based on his good deeds. I didn’t give up on him and simply continued to offer him the truth until God opened his heart to see it. Paul discussed the enduring nature of love in 1 Corinthians 13:7 (love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Our love for those who need Christ motivates us to bear up under their rejection, keep believing in who/what they can be, keep hoping that they will believe the truth and endures until the very end.
As we begin 2009 under the fear of a failing economy, many people in America will be looking for answers and solutions. As we pray that God will use adversity to open the hearts of many, we must be preparing ourselves to speak up with spiritual solutions and faithfully endure whatever God allows by continuing to show God’s love and speak God’s truth.
Heavenly Father, I ask you to give our new leaders the wisdom they need to make decisions that are compatible with your will. I ask you to bring circumstantial pressure on the people of the U.S. and open their hearts to hear the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I also ask you to give the church the love, courage and wisdom to demonstrate your love and boldly speak your message of reconciliation. May what we say and do edify others and glorify you.
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