We Never Outgrow The Need To Share The Gospel - Remember
Mark 4:21
And Jesus said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?"
We don't just need to preach it, and teach it, we need to have it as a part of our every day. We need to remember it. We need it written upon our hearts and minds. If we don't find our daily strength in it, we're in danger of having it become a distant memory for us, and completely lost to new generations.
Imagine you're filming (recording) a special event in your life. You've visited a special place and wanted to capture the things you've seen and done there. And later on you got on with your life.
Your recording is stashed away now. It's decades later. You've forgotten about it. The technology has changed so you don't even think about looking at it anyway. You've captured a moment in your special times and now it's not even an afterthought. You got on with your life and soon enough you're gone.
Just a generation later your grandchild, who loves exploring, finds your recording stored away in the attic, put there by his parents who know nothing about the recording.
The curious young grandchild asks the parents to help play the recording. Together they figure out how to make the device work again and they watch the recording. There they find short glimpses into places unknown, faces of unknown people, doing things that no one can say. Where was this? When was this? Why did they record this?
There's no way to answer the curious grandchild's questions because no one knows. It wasn't talked about. It wasn't lived.
It was special for a time, but in time the special faded. And now it's lost. Unknown people forgotten, you can see them but they're nobody. Unknown places probably still standing, but they're no where to be found. It all mattered for a moment, and then it didn't. It's not even a memory.
What if that recording was your gospel experience, the moment of your salvation. What if it was, in my case, what I call my "sudden conversion". And what if I left it afterwards to eventually become this distant non-memory. No one could speak about it because I didn't. No one could say what my moment was like because I coldly recorded it and moved on. I didn't live it. It didn't live in me. It became a framed baptism certificate that got stored in a box in the attic. It became a first communion card slipped between report cards and immunization cards. It became an old family bible in the cupboard that hasn't seen the light of day for generations.
Where is the light? Where has it gone? What happened to that gospel light? No one knows because no one shared it. Why didn't the light shine brightly enough so that someone somewhere could know it? What prevented the light? What part of that story wasn't light enough to sustain it?
Luke 11:36
"If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”
Jesus said that, "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." They will not hide their light in Christ. In fact so much light will be in them that it will glow bright for many to see and know and remember. The faith that started out so brightly and fresh is completed by the fruit of its work in that life of faith. It's alive and it moves throughout the entire lifetime. It doesn't get put away where it will become a mystery. And many can see that a person is, in the light of the gospel shared among many, justified by works and not by faith alone.
"For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." (James 2:26)
Without the sharing it's dead. It's a non-memory. A faded recording left to rot in the attic. And a grandchild that learns nothing new from it. It's just dead. It's just a token of a life light that has long ago been forgotten.
Thank God that the Lord remembers...
Like 23:42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
Food for thought:
The word remember means to bring to mind again, to retain it, but it can also be thought of as assembling together again parts of a whole that have been separated. Like reattaching a limb that had been severed.