Notes from a day of evangelism training I held in London.
‘Where there are no oxen, the crib is clean: but much increase [much pooh] is because of the work and the strength of the ox.' Proverbs 14:6 (My transliteration!)
The cleanest of buildings, the tidiest of offices, the most beautiful cathedrals, prove nothing at all. Clinically clean and ordered they might be, perfectly sanitized for all to admire and say how wonderful they all look. But what on earth is the point? And what on earth is their purpose, except for a few passers-by to say, “Oooh, that looks nice”!
What is their eternal value? Nothing, for they will all be burned up and remain forgotten for all eternity.
Give me a factory humming with noise and industry, in need of clearing up and sweeping out every day.
Give me a farmyard, where mucking out, strange noises, and tractors smoking as they churn up the soil across the fields, are everyday occurrences.
Give me a building site, where skips full of rubbish and men whistling and shouting, are the routine of the day. At least I can see and know that something is happening.
Things are being created and shipped around the world; the ground is being tilled, produce and livestock are constantly being taken to market; a house or hotel is going up; a skyscraper or hospital is being built for future generations.
Give me a church where the paintwork gets dirty and chipped, the carpets get worn and threadbare, the door hinges wear out and need replacing regularly; the toilets need a full time cleaner, and the evangelism team never seem to go home; where the winning of souls is a priority and practice. For here is a church that is going somewhere with God; a church that is impacting its community.
Here is a church that means real business and will gather to themselves a genuine harvest. Here is a church after God's own heart.
You are no farmer if you are not seriously and devotedly committed to ploughing, sowing, reaping, and harvest. You are no farmer if you do not prioritize buying seed and sowing it out far and wide.
You are no businessman if you are not truly interested and engaged in profit, expansion, increase, and marketing.
You are no physician if you have no clinic, wards, theatre, surgery, medicines, OR PATIENTS! (and we could add to that, pain, mess, blood, emergencies, and healings and recoveries).
You are no fisherman if you are not ready to jump into a boat (no matter how uncomfortable or unclean), launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a boat FULL of fresh fish. And maybe its all a bit slippery and smelly as well.
If you are not a soul-winner you are just a 'title-holder', whether that be 'church-goer', 'elder', 'worship-leader', 'pastor', bishop, apostle, or whatever other name you go by.
YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE:
The salt of the earth: Matthew 5:13
The light of the world: Isaiah 60:1
A city on a hill: Matthew5:14
Fishers of men: Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17
Healers of society: Luke 9:2
A voice in the wilderness: Mark 3:3
A song in the night: Job 35:10; Psalm 77:6
Hope in the raging sea: Psalm 78:7
A lifeboat to those in despair: 2 Corinthians 4:8
Joy in the valley of shadows: Isaiah 61:3
Cleaners on the streets of sin: Matthew 10:7; John 16:8
Doctors in the plague of darkness: Luke 5:31
Lifters of those who are fallen: Hebrew 12:12
Restorers of those gone wrong: Luke 5:19-20
Warriors in God's invading army: Ephesians: 6:10-18
Soldiers behind enemy lines: 2 Timothy 2: 3-2; 2 Corinthians 10:3-4
BUT we all too often sit in our cosy churches playing spiritual Ludo and theological Snakes and Ladders, going nowhere, having fun with religious church-goer’s games and inhouse programmes. We accomplish nothing, impress nobody, impact nowhere, and keep the devil laughing in his socks and gloating at our ineptness, stupidity, and ineffectiveness.
The devil is not worried in the slightest at our liturgies, prayers, hymns from ancient and even more ancient, nor our modern, trendy, designer choruses or the 'hill-of-songs' 'Christian' music industry.
“Keep doing what you are doing,” he says, “Please don't change. You are such a great help to me in keeping people away from God and on their way to hell. I couldn't have done better myself!”
I am come here with a purpose today.
I am here to change your thinking, to change your mind-set, to motivate you to come out of your ‘cul-de-sac’ that is going nowhere and achieves nothing for eternity.
I am here in God’s destiny to bring a change of heart, and a change of direction.
I am here to deliver a cause worth living for, - and worth dying for.
'For they overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives to the death.' Revelation 12:11
For God has called you, and is still calling you to go into all the world and preach and spread the gospel to every creature. You are under a divine commission, a heavenly command, a compulsion of the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus and give your life to the proclamation of the good news of Christ Jesus. And nowadays there are so many ways to spread the word through multimedia and literature, social media and texting.
Time is of the essence, for our time is running out fast.
You may not like what I have to say, or the different road that you may have to tread, but God wants you to come out of your dead-end street, your nice little manicured existence that may have deceived you into believing that what you have is the total purpose, the total sum of your reason for being here on earth.
It is a selfish ‘contentment’, a false deception, a trick of the devil that leaves you and your full potential up a dead-end alley.
And one day you and I will have to give a FULL account for our actions (and our inactions) and wasted lives before the throne of God.
We live in spiritually 'semi-detached' houses.
Semi-detached.... says it all: sharing a property with someone else.
Half committed to Jesus, half tied to our own wishes and comforts, we become inextinguishable from everyone else in the street. We say that we are on the Lord's side, but we also want the world and its distractions.
Oh, sure, you are a believer in Jesus and claim to love him, but the wall of your life-house is tied to this world’s plans, thinking, practises, and social architecture.
But you cannot have Christ and the world. And you cannot have Christ and your own stubborn will. And you cannot have Christ and choose to walk a path of your own making.
'
Change your direction.
We need to consider the direction in which our life is going.
We just love forward gears! But if the road we are travelling on is going nowhere, then we need a change of mind, and a change of heart.
'Do not be conformed to this world [to its ways and mind-set]: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.' Romans 12:2
'Cast away from you all your transgressions, by which you have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?' Ezekiel 18:31
Reversing means you have to turn your head away from continuing in the direction you are headed. Reversing is uncomfortable, especially if you have been sitting in that driving seat for years and years getting nowhere fast. Get out of the driver’s seat and sit in the passenger seat, and let God do the driving. He will take you to where he wants you to be!
Choose you this day who you will serve. Joshua 24:15
We sometimes talk of a 'dead-end road'. We refer to a plan, a hope, or a dream that comes to nothing. After all that we have done and everything we have tried, we find ourselves no further forward, and nowhere left to go.
What brought you to this place? How did you come to be here? The only way out is to reverse back up the road that brought you down into the valley of shadows.
The world is waiting for someone to forsake all and follow Jesus; to become a disciple that will be a fisher of men, and turn the world upside down.
Your thoughts are not God’s thoughts; neither are your ways God’s ways; neither is your reasoning God’s reasoning. (Isaiah 55:7-9)
Come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD. Let us have an earnest talk about this matter.
Jesus said, 'He that seeks to save and hold on to his little safe and comfortable life shall LOSE IT. But he that loses (gives up, surrenders, yields, throws away) his fleeting years for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel shall SAVE it. (Mark 8:35; Luke 17:33)
ONE LIFE ONLY
Better to redeem (buy out, buy back, take responsibility for) what is left of the time God has given you, walk away from all that holds you back, than to waste out the fleeting weeks and months that may be left to you.
You shall give an account! For we shall ALL stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ. (Romans 14:10; 2Corinthians 5:9-10; 2 Corinthians 2:14-17; 3:1-18; 4:1-18; 5:1-21)
It will not hurt in any way to take the time to read these verses.
Jonah found a ship going to Tarshish. (Jonah 1:1-3)
You can always find a ship of convenience, a ship of disobedience, a ship of alternatives when you choose to disobey God.
Jonah may have felt that he should be preaching in some nice tidy assembly, in a smart suit and polished shoes. But God sent him to a heathen city where he would get no praise, no acknowledgment, no rewards, and no comfortable chair with a television to watch football every Saturday and Lord’s Day afternoon.
And Jonah went down, down, down.
Sin and disobedience will take you DOWN to a boat of escape; DOWN into the hold of spiritual sleep and carnal appetites; DOWN into the depths of chastisement and darkness. The road of excuses goes down by three steps to trouble and emptiness.
We need to get sorted before some huge fish swallows us into a prison of darkness where we have no control over what happens next. Sadly for many us, that is the only time we wake up and come to our senses.
Now note:
'The harvest truly is great! There is nothing wrong with the harvest. It is ripe, ready, and waiting. It is God's harvest. It is out there, in the field right in front of you. Luke 10:2
BUT the labourers are few.'
Souls of men and women both young and old, are just waiting to be snatched from the jaws of hell. Multitudes of our young people await the teams of harvesters to come and tell them the good news that Jesus saves. Salvation, transformation, miracles and healings are being held back right now because there are so few that will obey Christ and go into his harvest field.
Maybe you think that it is not your 'calling', not your 'ministry', not your concern. You say that you are not experienced enough, not trained enough, not able to talk well enough - insufficient for the task.
Good! That means you are in exactly the right place for God to use you.
'Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as coming from ourselves; [We may indeed feel like failures, unworthy, weak, and incapable of achieving anything for God]. 2Corinthians 3:5
BUT our sufficiency is of God!
We have this treasure in weak, broken, ruined clay vessels, so that the excellency of the power will be seen to be only of God and his abundant mercy: not in any way of ourselves! 2Corinthians 4:7
It is CHRIST IN US that works the work. It is the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit that makes us effectual in what we do. It is the LOVE OF GOD shed abroad in our hearts that proves the reality of our faith and experience. It is the anointing and filling of the Holy Ghost that gives us power, authority, and the irrefutable evidence that God is with us.
Passion is a requirement.
We can have plans and ideas, projects and outreach programmes, but without divine compassion and the sacred flame of love (as Charles Wesley put it) we are just doing what we feel we ought to be doing out of a sense and what is expected of us.
Passion is something else. Passion for God's glory, passion for the exaltation of the name of Jesus, and passion for the salvation of the lost is God-given, and is evidence of the new nature that transformed us and translated us from the darkness into the light. If we have no such passion then we might well ask ourselves whether we are truly of the faith we claim to be part of. 2Corinthians 13:5
If your church or pastor will not respond or allow you to become an evangelist and go out into the harvest; if your church is unwilling to change or move with God into soul-winning: you have a higher authority. Jesus calls you, and his name is above every name, and his titles above all the grand names the churches or the ministers afford themselves. Do not be held back, and do not be constricted by others, or even by your own dubious history. The raging sea of this bewildering age is full of the cries of those sinking in the murky waters of sin and despair for somebody to come out with the lifeboat of salvation, reach out an arm of love, throw out a lifebuoy of hope into the raging waves, and pull them to safety.
But if you do not hear their cries, then you will never be motivated or moved to do anything of any worth to rescue even one lost soul. If you do not see the hidden treasure, the uncut diamonds, the prodigal sons, then you have yet to know the love of God that took Christ to the cross for fallen and sinful mankind.
'Let the dead bury the dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.' Luke 9:6
And as you go, preach, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely you have received, freely give it away!' Matthew 10:7-8
And if you still feel incapable, or less than able, Jesus said, "You shall receive POWER after that the Holy Spirit is fallen upon you."
