Evangelism...NOT an Option

I recently have been thinking about how blind we tend to be to the reality of the lost around us; how we go about our everyday routines with littler or no thought at all of the fact that the many faces we encounter throughout the day don't know the saving power of grace. Even more than that we fail to open our eyes to the reality that there is a world around us as well, conditions in countries that we cannot even fathom, and lost souls throughout all the ends of the earth! K.P. Yohannan said, "Believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story. " What I think many of us don't take seriously, is that God's great comission is a COMMAND not an option.

What does it mean to fulfill the great commission? What does it mean when Paul talks about walking worthy of our calling? Why did God leave us here after He redeemed us anyways? Why has God not returned yet? The answer to all of these is simple yet often overlooked, let us look at Matthew 28:18-20 "Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." God is exhibiting patience, my Pastor has said before that he is "long fused" so to speak so that the all those whom He has called will come to repentance and faith. You see, God has a perfect and divine plan of redemption for throughout all the ages in which He will call those whom He forknew (Romans 8:29 says, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.") will come to repentance and faith and once the last person comes we are going home!! My pastor often says, "lets get our job done and then go home!" and isn't that the truth! We are aliens on this earth, simply passing through and fulfilling the command to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and make disciples and then we are going home!

Back to the lack of our passion for the great commission and our utter failure to fulfill that...God didn't give us a choice or an option in the matter yet we treat it exactly like that, we think that as long as we are "good" Christians in all the other areas we are doing okay, I mean after all I don't have the gift of evangelism, I'll just pray for those who do...or maybe I'll just share with the people who are easy to talk to? Whatever our excuse we have to stop, we need to stop making excuses! We need to gain a greater understanding of the power of the Gospel, the power of salvation and the reality of what is to come come judgment day when the wrath of God is spewed forth on unredeemed mankind. Our compassion for the lost should compel us to spread the good news wherever we go, whether it be in our own backyard, to our family, to our neighbors, to our co-workers, our friends, our teachers, our kids, the lady at the store, to the person we sit next to on an airplane or in some foreign country: God gives us countless opportunities and open doors all the time, the problem is we either fail to see them or selfishly ignore them. We need to be passionate about the Truth we possess and that passion should in turn motivate us to sharing with everyone around us. IF you are dwelling on the Truth of Scripture (the Word daily) you are going to grow in your passion to share the Truth of Jesus Christ.

In Luke 10 Jesus Himself explains to us that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few and that is the truth; the truth is that there is a world full of lost people from here to China and there are but a handful of passionate followers of Jesus Christ who have counted the cost and left it all to follow Jesus Christ (Luke 14)...the time has come for us to stop ignoring reality and get on with our purposeful task, the command of our Lord Jesus Christ and evangelize to all. I urge you brothers and sisters, fulfill the command the Lord gave and see the joy in the harvest!!