“Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gace us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ; certain that God is appealing through us, we plead on Christ’s behalf, “be reconciled to God.” He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
~II Corinthians 5:18-21
Evangelism is growing weaker and weaker in America
Ponder this with me for a moment. If you are stuck in a burning house and you are unable to get out, or maybe you are sleeping and don’t know that you are in danger, then someone comes to rescue you out of that house then I am sure you would agree that you could never just walk by someone else in a burning house and not remember the fear and anguish, the torture and damage, or even the problems that still remain from the time you were in that situation. Am I right?
The reason no one wants to share the gospel is because they do not understand it fully themselves. That is why this passage is here. It says in verse 19 he reconciled us to Himself forgiving our trespasses, THEN he gave us the message of reconciliation to give to others. Our problem is we get this process backwards. We like to get Christians to share the gospel before they really know what it means or how it changes us. What I am not saying is that we are all unsaved and need to get saved first before we evangelize. What I am saying is that we need to understand the immensely awesome salvation we have been given, and then through that we will not have to force ourselves to share the good news. Instead we will not be able to walk by people in “burning houses” of sin, death, pain, condemnation, and a live without God without being absolutely compelled to share the amazing person of Jesus!
The solution? Now i can't say anything like "do X, Y, and Z and now you are an evangelist" but I can give a counter to what I have observed as the largest hinderance to evagelism and hopefully it will help you. What I would say for you is to wrestle with what the gospel means to you, sit down and find out just how bad the “burning house” of a life without God actually was, and better than that find out how incredible and great the true life you gain and freedom from slavery to sin you gain by being reconciled to God!!! You want help studying this? There is a great book called “A Gospel Primer For Christians” by Milton Vincent you can get it for about ten bucks at http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1885904673/
It could be the best 10 dollars you spend in a long time. But regardless of how you do it, study God’s word and believe what you read. Find out why the Gospel is so amazing and what God has done for you! And I can promise you that your evangelism will become a lifestyle not a duty!
Living in Him
~Hammy
