EVANGELISM – “GOOD NEWS PROCLAMATION”
I often wonder if modern-day “church members” have the slightest understanding of what “good news proclamation” is all about! It’s as if for them modern day evangelism is a myth apart from any meaning or relevance to their supposed “walk with Christ.”
Is identity with Christ a private matter that has no public relevance? Is oneness with the Lord and Savior void of inner activity with a “lost” and “dying” world around them? As long as “I” am saved and assured of an eternal relationship and heavenly home forever in the “family” of God, what difference does it make to those outside the family? Are they really my responsibility?
I am baffled by a group of believers that senses no obligation to “reach the lost” with saving grace. I am confused when “pastors” have no sense of urgency about community, state, national, or world evangelism. I am so disturbed when bodies of professing believers all across our nation have never implemented, supplemented, prayed for, activated, instituted, day by day, week by week, “touching our world with grace, mercy, and love.”
Are true New Testament church relationships to be void of impacting the world around them as long as they’re “faithful to one another”? Is a valid member of the Body of Christ excused from sharing the faith with unbelievers as long as he/she is faithful with his/her tithes and offerings to the local church of which he/she is a part? Is “salt” in one’s profession of faith to be preserved for one’s self or poured out where “salt” is truly needed?
“Good news” – but never told or shared with another? “Good news” – but never announced to a needy friend or family member? “Good news” – but mute to an empty, Godless, perishing world around one’s circle of influence? “Good news” – but void of any sense of personal responsibility to even those one loves the most? “Good news” – but blind to those who are blind themselves to the love, grace, and mercy of God? “Good news” – but content that the “lost” are on their own, “not MY responsibility”? “Good news” – but unaffected by one’s awareness that those without Christ will be eternally separated from the God of love because His love couldn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t flow through you?
“Evangelism – Good News Proclamation”! “Evangelism – Good News Reconciliation to Holy God”! “Evangelism – Good News Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Oneness with the God who made us, lost us, reconciled us to Himself by His own sacrifice”! “Evangelism – Good News participation in His Eternal Plan”! “Evangelism – Good News Discovery of who we are in Him through His shed blood”! “Evangelism – Good News Understanding that God loves us, wants us, and needs us to share with Him in His love for our world”!
Do you see yourself as an extension of His Life, as an expression of His love, and as the proof of His power, to touch the world around you and see God signing His name on others through you? Or is your opinion about yourself such that God sponsors a losing cause if He chooses to “save” the world around you through your witness? If you haven’t learned it yet, man, woman, boy or girl, if you were the only one who had ever lived up until now, what Jesus did 2000 years ago, He did it just for you! God wants you to be His “Master-piece”! God wants you, in and through Christ Jesus, to be His true “symphony of praise” and “thanksgiving” because of what He is able to do through a surrendered vessel in His hands!
I don’t know how you view Genesis, but I see it as “The Beginning of Unveiled Purposes” out of the very heart of God Himself. Abram and Sarai had been in “Haran”, the place of the dead – a charred, parched, burned up, barren, dry land. [That’s where the most of humanity is housed today in our modern day of human expectation!]
But in Genesis 12:2 the Lord said to Abram [just as He does personally to you in this very moment!], “I will make YOU a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing…Verse 3, …and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Verse 4, So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him…”
Has the Lord spoken to you? Of course He has! Our God is no respecter of persons! What He said to Abram He has said to you! Galatians 3:29 says, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” The promise? “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” But the question is, will you depart and do as the Lord has spoken to you?
I don’t know how you view the Book of Acts but I see it as the New Testament introduction to true discipleship! I call it: “The Master’s Mandate of Meaningful Ministry,” or “The Father’s Faith, Following, and Future,” or “The Final Chapter of a Disciple’s Calling”, or “The Family of Faith and Their Fulfilling Fight.”
But you? Me? Us? How can God Himself accomplish through us what He did through them? And Acts 1:8 tells us, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Please notice: It’s not our abilities but our availability to God’s Holy Spirit who anoints us and empowers us to be our Lord’s witnesses!
But then Peter carries us a step further when in I Peter 3:15 he wrote: “But sanctify [or set apart] the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear…”
Holy Spirit anointing, personal availability, a sensitivity of opportunity, intentional evangelism, a willingness to speak up, speak out, speak to, trusting our angels to lead us, led by the Holy Spirit! Isn’t that Acts 8:29 when the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.” And the Word says, “So Philip ran to him.” [Who have you been running to lately because the Holy Spirit prompted you?]
Philip obeyed, and Acts 8:35 tells us, Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him.
Acts 9 really unveils for us divine potential for any man. Look with me at Acts 9:10-20, “Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and to him the Lord said in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” So the Lord said to him, “Arise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he is praying. And in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him, so that he might receive his sight.”… Then Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.”…But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.” And Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”…Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once; and he arose and was baptized. So when he had received food, he was strengthened. Then Saul spent some time with the disciples at Damascus…Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues that He is the Son of God.”
And as a result of the act of obedience, what is to happen? In Acts 2:47 we read, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.” Are people “being saved” “daily” our true spiritual heartbeat?
“Evangelism – Good News Proclamation”!! I’m always amazed that some are so blind and deaf to the reality of amazing grace that God, YES, God Himself, can heal the lame, open blind eyes, blot out the blackness of a sinful heart, and make someone a new person – and they refuse to believe! The sad truth is: THEY DON”T WANT TO BE TURNED AWAY FROM THEIR SIN AND INIQUITY!
It was Peter who said in Acts 3:16-23, “And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, [“Good News Proclamation”!!] that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said to the fathers, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever He says to you. And it shall be that every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.” “Good news” – but they settle for sad news because they are so in love with their sin and their iniquity!
In verse 26 of Acts 3 Peter said, “To you, first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.” But that’s not ‘glad news’ but “sad news” when one loves his iniquities more than he loves the God of “Good News”!
I have no hesitation in saying to you that naked truth shared to a darkened heart and soul can cut one in pieces and turn him to saving grace and mercy! Listen to Acts 2:36-39!! “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Now when they heard this, THEY WERE CUT TO THE HEART, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Then Peter said to them, “Repent, [and because you truly repent], let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” You do understand that it was YOUR SIN that nailed Jesus to the Cross! And it’s your heart-felt repentance that births ‘remission of sins’, not water baptism! Water baptism is testimony of one’s death, burial, and resurrection in Christ to eternal life.
“Evangelism – Good News Proclamation!” Do you see repentant men receiving “the gift of the Holy Spirit”? Right before Jesus’ bodily ascension into Heaven Luke 24: 45-49 says: “And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses to these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”
God “opened their minds,” He “opened their hearts,” He “opened their eyes” to sense eternal things concerning world redemption, He “opened their very beings” to sense and receive the capacity of fullness in The Spirit realm – “endued with power from on high.”
“Evangelism – Good News Proclamation!” Do you see YOUR calling? 2 Corinthians 5:20 says, “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” Do you remember in Genesis 24:27 where the man said to Rebecca, “Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken God’s mercy and God’s truth toward my master. As for me, being in the way… the Lord led me..”
And as our Lord’s ambassador, His earthly, appointed, anointed, empowered representative, we are to be “in the way, led by our Lord,” discovering the divine opportunities of sharing our faith in Him with others! I love Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost For His Highest,” [p.236], speaking of “the intuitive jar” as the inner admonitions of the abiding Holy Spirit guiding us to those He is concerned about. If according to Romans 8:16 the Spirit “bears witness with our Spirit,” then, as true disciples, we must learn to whom the Holy Spirit leads us. Listen to Chambers:
“The Spirit of God witnesses to the Redemption of our Lord, He does not witness to anything else; He cannot witness to our reason. The simplicity that comes from our natural common-sense decisions is apt to be mistaken for the witness of the Spirit, but the Spirit witnesses only to His own nature, and to the work of Redemption, never to our reason. If we try to make Him witness to our reason, it is no wonder we are in darkness and perplexity. Fling it all overboard, trust in Him, and He will give the witness.”
In Ephesian 6 Paul tells us about putting on the whole armor of God even praying ‘always’ ‘in the Spirit’, and especially, verse 19, “for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, verse 20, FOR WHICH I AM AN AMBASSADOR IN CHAINS; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” Certainly it was literal for Paul – he was behind prison bars – but you and I are an ambassador “chained to Christ” – and all around us is a world of people in bondage to themselves and their sin who need to be set free.
“Evangelism – Good News Proclamation!” But do you understand, do you realize, do you comprehend, that one can so shroud or cover his professing faith that no one around him has discovered his ‘devotion’ to Christ Jesus? Is faith in God to be hidden in dark shadows so no one appears responsible in sharing his ‘faith’? Is redemptive faith so strange to you that to share it with others would mark you as a “looney-tunie”?!?
In John 17:1-4 Jesus speaks: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.”
Do you see it, sense it, celebrate it, appropriate it? “I, number one common disciple, have finished the work you assigned me to carry out”! Jesus said on one occasion that He came into our world to “bear witness to the truth” – but you have a different purpose?
I love Acts 4:33, “And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all.” Do you long for great grace on all of your church family? Do you passionately long for great power on all of your church believers? If you’re not aware of it, I’ll tell you: Spiritual battles for the souls of men are lost or won on the “plains” of divine will, never in the pews of spiritual satisfaction void of eternal intent. “And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”
Is there a travailing spirit in you for the salvation of lost souls around you? Or is there a cloud of illusion covering your mind, heart, and spirit, creating within you an aching abyss of absence of the love of the Lord Jesus for lost souls for whom He died? Are we gripped by a worldly independent oneness or have we, because we are now “in Christ,” become spiritually governed by His sacrificial spirit in laying down His life to touch others with His grace through us? Peter wrote in I Peter 4:13 that we should “rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” Is there gladness in your heart because, governed by the Spirit of Christ within you, lives are touched for Christ and you are eternally blessed?
Oh, I know there is a “war”! Revelation 17:14 tells us: “These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are CALLED, CHOSEN, and FAITHFUL.” But far too often the “war” is an inward war concerning will: Will I witness or will I not witness? In I Corinthians 9:16 Paul wrote: “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!”
I don’t know how you look upon Paul’s letter to the Galatians, but I call it “The Gospel of Faith, Freedom, Fullness, and Fruit.” In Galatians 1:15-16a, Paul said, “But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me…” Biblical fruit is a life you touch in God’s faith, giving freedom, fullness, and the very fruit of the Indwelling Christ! Do people around you glorify God because of the redemptive faith they witness and hear from you?
I would ask you: Does the love of Christ compel or constrain you to touch others with His love, grace, and mercy? Are you a “poured out drink offering”? Have you willingly, day by day, gone to the altar as a willing sacrifice for Jesus?
In Matthew 10:27 hear Jesus!! “Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on housetops.”
Let me close with words again from Oswald Chambers: [“My Utmost For His Highest,” p.33], “You shall be My witnesses.” How many of us are willing to spend every ounce of nervous energy, of mental, moral, and spiritual energy we have for Jesus Christ? That is the meaning of a “witness” in God’s sense of the word. It takes time, be patient with yourself. God has left us on earth – what for? To be saved and sanctified? No, to be at it for Him. Am I willing to be broken bread and poured out wine for Him? To be spoiled for this age, for this life, to be spoiled from every standpoint but one – saving as I can disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ. My life as a worker is the way I say “thank you” to God for His unspeakable salvation. Remember it is quite possible for any one of us to be flung out as reprobate silver – “…lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
Are you a spiritual sluggard or a strong saint sharing the Way of salvation? Is it self-realization for you or self-abandonment to the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God for your life and walk and witness as a disciple of Christ? Do you live your church life in the spirit of self-vindication or yielded to the Lord of your life in full surrender or as Moffatt interpreted James 1:4, “Let your endurance be a finished product, so that you may be finished and complete, with never a defect.”
Are we ‘victims’ or witnesses? Are we aimless disciples or ambassadors of Christ? Are we silent ‘sinning’ believers or sounding-off singers of saving faith? Are we ‘self-controlled’ or Spirit-prodded?
Are we to adapt to fleshly nations and peoples or announce the remedy to misguided leadership and followship? Are we deaf to the heart-cries of the aimless or alert to the voice of the Holy Spirit to reach out and touch our lost and dying world?
Has God ‘reasoned’ with you about your walk or REVEALED YOUR HOLY CALLING AS A BIBLICAL EVANGELIST?
It was Benjamin Franklin who once said: “If passion drives you let reason hold the reins.” Is it ‘reason’ or revelation that holds the reins for your walk and witness?