Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Session 96: Witnessing to Other Faiths
We are finally at the last lesson of a four year trek through Fuel. This has been a great four years of learning for both the students and myself. I hope you can say the same . I know on my own I probably would not have studied some of the material we have covered. It is my prayer that each of us has gotten closer to God as a result of these studies. After learning all we have, we reach this final lesson on sharing our faith. We hear a lot of different excuses as to why we don't share our faith. But, I want to ask , why don't we and why don't our students? Let me know what you think.
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4 comments:
I know my reason or excuses for not witnessing all the time. It is uncomfortable. I am the only one or one of few Christians in the environment. I think maybe I could make someone else feel uncomfortable or damage our relationship. But that is what those are – just excuses. I have started telling myself –how uncomfortable was it for Stephen to be stoned for his faith. There were only 12 discipline and few believers in the Bible times but they still witnessed with their life of the line. How uncomfortable is Hell going to be? It is worth potentially damaging a friendship to witness to someone who is heading in the wrong direction. I feel the more I grow in my relationship with Christ the more blunt I have become in witnessing. I don’t mean – I’m mean but I try to get the point across. Today, one of the girls at work was telling me that she was recently visited by two of our church members but was saying she wasn’t sure if her teenager wanted to come. I told her that the decision should not be his that she was the parent. Please to continue to pray for this family they have visited our church and are planning to visit a couple of other churches too. They are a wonderful family and need a wonderful church family to encourage them.
Crystal
#1 We're indifferent and unconcerned. Our hearts are hardened. We aren't burdened for the lost.
#2 We've left our first love. When we were first saved, we wanted all of our friends and family saved. Our love for the Lord, and what He's done for us is why we felt that way. He still loves us, but our love is questionable.
#3 We're insensitive to peoples needs. We're self-centered.
#4 We have little faith. We don't believe 2 Peter 3-9. God is not willing that any should perish.
A young preacher asked the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon, "Why is it that every time you preach people get saved but when I preach no one gets saved." Mr. Spurgeon said, "You don't expect people to be saved every time you preach do you?" The young people replied, "Well, no I don't." The wise preacher said, "That's just why you don't see anyone receive the Lord Jesus." Do you expect God to work or can't He do mighty works because of your unbelief? We should be shocked to death if we share the gospel and no one gets saved! That is the faith that it takes to be an effective soul-winner. Our faith is in the "gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation" and the God who said, "I will draw all men unto me."
Crystal, I was in the exact positioned you spell out, over 2 years ago, for my entire Christian life. I was terrified that my friends and strangers would not like me, or think I was a religious nut. I am not claiming that I am now some fearless evangelist, but I am so far from where I was it is scary to me, and still way short of God's Glory. I attended evangelism training at Flemming baptist about 2 years ago and they addressed almost all the points that John enumerates. Now every day I get up I think about who and How I will try to share the Gospel with. I am not talking about sowing a seed " Hey would you like to come to church with me", or "Jesus can help you with that". I am talking about the Gospel. "Do you realize you have violated God's law and if judged in your present state you will be found guilty and go to hell?, but there is some glorious Good News! and this is it...." I hand out Gospel tracs every day and try to find a witness encounter, all because I finally got # 1, 2, & 3 of Johns post.
I don't write this to build myself up. I should be doing triple what I do; however, I do write it to encourage my Brothers & Sisters. Your immediate thought should be "if Paul is witnessing more than me, something is wrong". Aug 29th our church is hosting the same training I went to at Flemming Baptist. I will be disappointed if our entire youth is not there. If they could make it to a week of camp, they can make it to 4 hrs on a Sat. morning. There is a reason this lesson is the last. It is application! This training should be application at the end of every year of youth camp.
Stephen Bene' says, We don't witness for many different reasons but all of those reasons have the same author...Satan. Satan wants us to feel uncomfortable, unprepared, inadequate, and he wants us to be concerned about others feelings because he knows what could happen if we share our faith. He knows that there is power in the name of Jesus and that there is no other name by which someone can be saved.
A few weeks back I encouraged y'all to look at the YouTube video Penn gets a Bible (or something like that.) Penn Gillette, the taller talking half of Penn and Teller recently received a Bible from a fan. The fan was very respectful and told Penn to call if he had any questions about God or the Bible. Penn said he had alot of respect for this man because he was a Christian and he wasn't afraid to witness. Penn, an atheist, said that he has no respect for Christians who do NOT witness to the lost. Penn said, "How much must you hate me to believe that Hell is real and not tell me about it?" OUCH! He gets it! This atheist actually gets it! Evangelism isn't about us or for us...it's all about and for Jesus!
We have all the old saying, "Actions speak louder than words." No phrase could ever be more true of Christianity. You can say your a Christian all day long but as James 2 says, "Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith BY my works...For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." Faith and works go hand in glove. Works witout faith is empty and faith witout works is useless. We are not saved by our works but we are saved to do good works. As Paul wrote in Romans 2:10, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before hand, that we should walk in them."
Lastly, if you have not read the book of Acts lately I would encourage you to because it tells us about the struggles and triumphs of the early church. In Acts 3 we see Peter and John have healed a blind man who had been blind for 40 years and in Acts 4 they have been arrested for spreading the Gospel. They spoke with boldness before the priests and told them, "Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than Him? We cannot stop telling about the wonderful things we have seen and heard." I'm not there yet and I know few who are. What a shame that after 30+ years of being a Chirstian I still struggle with evangelizing. May God have mercy on us all!
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