We live in a world that is skeptical of the church and Christians.\u00a0 The opportunities to go and speak the Gospel to someone who is a complete stranger may not be completely gone, but they are rare.\u00a0 We are getting closer to one of the two “big” holidays in church life.\u00a0 Easter is a little over a month away from now.\u00a0 I have been blessed to be a pastor for nearly eight years and I have to be honest.\u00a0 It use to be that the church knew there would be three big attendance days, Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day.\u00a0 We use to live in a society that is was not only acceptable, but in many respects it was expected that your family would be in church on Christmas and Easter, and if you mom went to church, you went with her on Mother’s Day.\u00a0 However, that simply isn’t the case.\u00a0 To be honest, I have seen that Christmas and Easter while still larger attendance days than most, they are becoming closer to normal attendance days.\u00a0 Now it would be very easy, and in fact many times we as Christians do, to blame the world for getting so godless.\u00a0 But my question to all of us is this, have we earned the right to share the Gospel with people?\u00a0 I know that sounds odd, but hopefully it will make sense shortly.\u00a0 I attended a conference last week in which Dr. Alvin Reid, director of evangelism for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, preached and he made a profound statement.\u00a0 Dr. Reid said, “if the 1950’s ever come back, many of our churches will be ready.”\u00a0 I sat there and thought to myself “ouch!”\u00a0 What I believe he was getting at was not the style of our worship, our buildings, our dress code, etc.\u00a0 Rather, what I believe he was getting at was our method of “doing” church.\u00a0 Another pastor recently said that many churches today operate under the “old covenant system” found in the Old Testament.\u00a0 If you wanted to hear from God, if you wanted to see God move or do miraculous things, go to the Temple (the church of that day).\u00a0 It was a “come and see” mentality.\u00a0 However, Jesus said in the New Testament that the new covenant was in His blood, and that we were to “Go and tell” (Mt. 28).\u00a0 If we are honest, both of these men were right about most churches.\u00a0 We develop programs, we come up with big events, and we advertise “come to our church.”\u00a0 The problem is, as we have already stated is, people are naturally skeptical of the church.\u00a0 With so many televangelists out there saying “send me your money and God will bless you,” people don’t naturally know the difference between true Christianity and false teachings that abound.\u00a0 How can we change that?<\/p>\n
The apostle Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8, “But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children: So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.”\u00a0 I would like to point out a few things that may grant us the privilege of sharing the Gospel with the lost, skeptics of our world.\u00a0 First, Paul says we were gentle among you.”\u00a0 The Greek word indicates that they were kind and meek.\u00a0 Notice the illustration Paul uses in verse 7, “even as a nurse cherisheth her children.”\u00a0 The picture is that we are to be as kind as a mother is towards her children.\u00a0 That same love a mother has for her children, is to be the love we must demonstrate to the lost world.\u00a0 This had to be hard, because Paul was constantly the subject of hatred and persecution.\u00a0 Not the “I don’t like that, don’t say that” persecution like we see in America, but rather he endured beatings, imprisonments, and attempts to kill him persecution.\u00a0 Paul lived out Jesus’ teaching on not repaying evil for evil, but rather return good for evil.\u00a0 Our country is becoming more hostile toward Christianity for certain, but we must respond in love if we want them to hear our message.\u00a0 Secondly, for Paul and for us it must be about “sharing the Gospel.”\u00a0 Paul was not interested in getting into vain, pointless arguments as so many Christians want to do today.\u00a0 He wanted to make sure that he kept the Gospel his focus, because that was the only hope the people of his day, and the people of our day had.\u00a0 But notice it wasn’t just a come in share the Gospel and leave operation.\u00a0 They were “among you.”\u00a0 Today we call it friendship or relational evangelism.\u00a0 Simply put, Paul and the others lived around and were intentional about seeking out lost people.\u00a0 For many reasons that I will not discuss at this point, the day of door-to-door evangelism while not dead, has severely declined.\u00a0 Please hear me on this, it can and still does work, we have used it here at Westlake.\u00a0 But if we are going to reach a skeptical world, we are going to have to invest ourselves in them.\u00a0 We are going to have to be intentional about developing relationships with people who don’t know Jesus.\u00a0 We don’t approve or condone what they do anymore than we are to approve or condone the sin in our lives, but we are not to avoid them either.\u00a0 One of the greatest tragedies of the modern church is that we have a tendency to want to get into our “holy huddle” called church and compete to see whose light can shine the brightest among the other lights.”\u00a0 All the while, the darkness is spreading and people are dying and realizing that hell is a literal place.\u00a0 We must be intentional about building relationships for the sole purpose of sharing the Gospel.\u00a0 Finally, notice the motivation of Paul in verse 8, “because ye were dear unto us.”\u00a0 Why were Paul and his companions so successful in their evangelistic efforts?\u00a0 They were men of prayer, the relied on the power of God, and as we see in this verse, they genuinely cared about the people they were trying to reach.\u00a0 Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 13 that he could be the smartest and the best, but if he didn’t have love as his motivating factor, he was nothing.\u00a0 Warning, this question hurts!\u00a0 Could it be that the world is so skeptical of the church and Christians, because they see right through us?\u00a0 We profess to love them, but what they see if judgment and condemnation.\u00a0 Many churches use the mantra “we are a come just as you are church” when talking about how friendly and accepting we are and how you can dress.\u00a0 We say that, but could it be that the world hears that but then sees us say, “come just as you are, and we will change you to make you like us?”\u00a0 Ok, that one stung a little more didn’t it?\u00a0 We don’t need new programs to reach the lost, we need to be men and women of prayer, who depend on the power of God, and not only say that we love people, but genuinely show it.\u00a0 That is how we can earn the privilege of speaking the Gospel to someone.<\/p>\n
By His grace and through His strength may we live for Him<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We live in a world that is skeptical of the church and Christians.\u00a0 The opportunities to go and speak the Gospel to someone who is a complete stranger may not be completely gone, but they are rare.\u00a0 We are getting … Read More