The scriptures frequently speak to us about not following our sinful passions. Many spiritual teachers preach about fleeing from the Devil, and renewing our minds. Bible scholars will dig deep in their biblical studies to understand God's will in order to avoid temptation and please the Lord. Faithful lifelong Christians will devote themselves in worship, prayer, and Christian service. And there is nothing wrong with this characteristic. Fervor without knowledge is foolishness; no one is benefited by passionate ignorance.
So why is it then that the church isn't evangelizing people?
At first glance I think it's because most of us are struggling to remain in Christ in our own right. Struggling to live holy while living in these times, and trying to remain faithful up against the challenges of day to day attacks on righteousness. There's a lot on our minds. Too much. Hard to transform that mind consistently. And so we spend a lot of time and effort, teaching and preaching about how to cope as a person of faith. We're focused an awful lot on our own "walk". And because we know our own faults and weaknesses, we cannot imagine focusing our faith walk on reaching out to others around us. How dare we talk to someone else about their need to know Christ when we're casting wretched shadows of sins of our own all over the place?
So maybe our passion to control our passions is causing us to passively pass on passing out the means of grace. In order to share our faith effectively, we're going to need to share our weakness, our vulnerability, and our doubts. Let me tell you this...telling your story, with all its ugly details, is the BEST kind of evangelism.
It's true, Christ's church is supposed to have a holy passion for Jesus. Holiness is a part of Christ's work in us through the Holy Spirit. And the greatest commandment is to love God with ALL our being (Matthew 22:37-38). That's the walk we're walking, but the talk we're talking is also empowered by The Holy Spirit and that mission (commission) is to go and teach the good news.
As we share the news of Jesus unashamedly with others (Romans 1:16) and obey the command to make disciples among all nations (Matthew 28:18-20), we see God at work. Christ is building His church (Matthew 16:18), and it's exciting to be a part of something much bigger than ourselves. And we all are employed in Christ as his evangelists. We are ALL his priests and church builders. Living as conduits of God's love, we cannot help but grow in our passion for Him.
And so there it is folks.
There's that secret to growing in faith, holiness, righteousness and love with God.
It's in the sharing of the good news.
Isn't it interesting that in the scriptures, most instances of passionate sold out for Jesus moments of evangelism are often being led by folks who are freshly printed, recently born again Christians?
The Holy Spirit in that new Christian is typically filled up and not yet weighed down. They haven't been in the church long enough to get comfortable, or worse, marginalized. They're excited for God's kingdom and haven't yet spent enough time in the church courts to discover disillusionment. And so they're effective, encouraging, giving, and helping others to find The Way. They're doing the work Christ commanded, sharing the good news freely, unadorned, and unadulterated.
Check this out:
Take a look at the so called New Testament scriptures. And notice. From the four apostolic gospels and through the end of the book of Acts, everything is focused upon sharing the good news about Christ and his kingdom. It's all about evangelism and growing in Christ. Following that, most everything else in the Epistles is about remaining the faithful, and holy church, living and walking in Christ Jesus.
This is not to suggest that we're done doing evangelism and merely focused on being cured by the great physician over and over again. It should mean to us, that is to say, we should realize that we are to be heavenly minded AND be of some worldly good. We're not done with the book of Acts. We're to be an Acts 6 church. We're supposed to be serving the church AND evangelizing when the situation calls us to it. No matter who we are, how we serve, and what gifts we do or don't have, we're to follow Stephen's example. Even when they speak falsehoods against us, tell them to go to hell, and speak the truth and the good news in Christ. Don't save it on the off chance that you might get a friend to join you in worship at the church some Sunday.
Jesus can come back at anytime. What are you waiting for?
Get your Jesus freak on.