Everyone. Everywhere. Everyday.

I once heard a pastor that I have a tremendous amount of respect for give a lecture on his thoughts concerning evangelism. If you read the title of this entry, then you already have the gist of what the pastor I speak of had to say that day.

Everyone. Everywhere. Everyday. This means that anyone you cross paths with, at any location, or at any moment, could be depending on you to share the Gospel with them.

I do a lot of teaching about how to talk to people about Christ. Not all people you share the Gospel with will require, or need, to hear words from you. In fact, some will be impacted much more if you just live it out authentically in front of them. There are, however, those that need to hear someone put into words their reasons and results from living a life with Christ. Because of this, we need to be willing to share the Gospel with everyone, everywhere, everyday.

Why do I go?

Why do I go? Why do I believe that a chief component of my relationship with God is reaching out to people who don't know Him? After all, if He is all knowing and all powerful, what does He need me for anyway?

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." - Matthew 28:19-20

The easy answer is, we go because He said "go". There was no part of that passage that is formed like a suggestion. No, it is a command. Go, go to the poor, the hurting, the destitute, the hungry, the sick, the confused. Go, go across the street, across the room, across the hall, across the world. Go. Make. Disciples.

If Christ is our Lord, and He said "go", do we really even have a choice? The question then isn't, why do I go, but rather, why wouldn't I?

T is for Turn

Being reconciled to God along His plan of salvation means that at some point one must make a change.  In other words, you must eventually turn away from the habitual failures of the past to embrace a forgiving future life endowed by the Father.  Unless this turning to God takes place, there is no salvation.  A commonly used word for this act of turning to God is “repent”.

I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish – Luke 13:3

To turn to God is to embrace the realization that you need His forgiveness, you recognize it is available; you know it is impossible apart from Him, and you are desiring a new life.  I find it incredibly humbling that something with such far reaching affects can be accomplished with such ease.  One need only do as described in Romans 10:9 to find salvation.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. – Romans 10:9

Turning means to walk away from sin, and selfishness, to embrace Christ alone.

I is for Impossible

Sin separates man from God.  You need only to go back and read the third chapter of Genesis for the sad account of Adam and Eve and their failures in the Garden.  As a result of their actions God forever removes them from his presence.  A condition we all face prior to salvation is our eternal separation from God.

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one” – Romans 3:10

It is impossible for God to allow sin into heaven.  God is loving and just, his judgment is against sin, and we are all sinners.  How then can a sinful person enter heaven, when God allows no sin?

Mercy triumphs over judgment. – James 2:13

Just as we are inclined to communicate the necessity of forgiveness and it’s availability; it is also of upmost importance that we realize access to God is impossible apart from God’s own means.

A is for Available

Just as the first talking point in the “plan of salvation” is forgiveness, or helping someone to realize their need for it, the second is the availability of forgiveness to any who come to God seeking it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

Most of us are incredibly familiar with this oft-quoted passage, but a key component of salvation that often goes overlooked is that it does require something on our part.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. – Matthew 7:21

Forgiveness is available for all, but it is not automatic.  It requires acknowledging our need for God, accepting the forgiveness that is available, and submitting to God’s will for our lives.

Love is a _____.

Love, such a short little word—but let’s face it, we have such a tremendously difficult time understanding it.  Doing some studying recently I went to the dictionary, as I am often prone to do, and discovered that my dictionary of choice had twenty-eight different definitions for love.  I found all of them to be sorely inadequate.  I want to spend the next few days looking at this wonderful little word.

Rather than just diving straight off into the grandiose theological implications inferred by the word love, let’s just think about a few examples of what our society considers love.  We have holidays based on loving things, relationships, family members, and hobbies.  There are huge corporations designed around the promise of connecting people to love.  In America we tailor our lifestyle, including routines, possessions, wardrobe, religion, and friends to the thing(s) we love.

Waylon Jennings summed it up pretty good, “I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.”

In the Beginning

I’m going to spend the next couple of days looking at thevery first verse in the Old Testament.

In the beginning Godcreated the heavens and the earth. - Genesis 1:1

The first four words speak volumes. God was there at that point our feeble finiteminds would call “the beginning”. However, God is beginning-less.

Have you ever tried to wrap your mind around eternity? C.S. Lewis described it in Mere Christianity using a brilliantanalogy dealing with ink on paper. Mortal life is the ink; time is the paper; and God is the one holdingthe pen and paper. Eternity is a weightythought that when contemplated heavily can actually lead to doubt in somemeasure because we really cannot fully grasp it. It is so beyond our capacity to understand.

I once asked a room full of people to define eternity for m eand started getting words like; forever, never ending, and endless, but eternity is more than time, and God is eternal.

That all sounds great in my head or as I read and reread it back to myself, but what kind of implication does it have for me today? If God must come before the “beginning”, He will most certainly endure beyond the “end”. I find great comfort in the notion that in spite of all my failed attempts to comprehend—He still is.

In essence, we can’t really grasp Him with our minds, luckily we can seek Him with our hearts. Knowing that God was before beginning gives me a steadfast faith in His unyielding sovereignty and that can only be a good thing.

If I were to write my own story, it wouldn’t start with “in the beginning Nathan,” that would be preposterously presumptuous; but God did because He was, is, and will be. “In the beginning God” might be some of the most comforting words we could ever hear.

Too Much To Lose

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of attending a lecture on Christian leadership given by one of my heroes. The schedule had intentionally called for a long session to allow for question and answer feedback and I was attentively listening, absorbing, and writing throughout.  Then somewhere near the end something happened.

Someone in the crowd asked something akin to, “How do you handle a situation that might place you alone with a woman who is not your wife?”  I was pretty certain how the speaker would respond.  It is common practice among ministers not to be alone with another woman, but then the lecturer elaborated on a personal story.

One cold day he was driving in the rain and came across a woman walking in the downpour without an umbrella.  Immediately his heart was provoked into offering this sodden pedestrian a place in his warm, dry vehicle; but he did not.  The reasoning he gave I still remember word for word, “I could not afford to put myself in that situation.”  While I am an avid practitioner of not allowing myself to be compromised through unnecessary situations, this was something altogether different. 

What I see in this scenario is a conflict of differing natures: not the rain versus the driver or the woman.  I’m talking about the desire of the driver to assist the pedestrian as prompted by God versus his hesitance as a result of what someone might think about him by having a strange woman in his car.

It boils down to this.  He would not pick her up because he had too much to lose.  Job, reputation, whatever you want to call it… the potential opinions of men trumped his willingness to do the right thing.

James wrote that when we know the right thing to do and we don’t do it we have sinned.  (James 4:17) Protecting the opinions of men will never be the right thing to do when compared to showing the love of God.

Even when doing the right thing means that you must lose everything you have, be it relationships, reputation, or riches, it is what we are called to do.  We won’t always succeed, but we must always try.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. Matthew 16:25

Go

Smokey is a timid terrified little thing.  I’ve never seen a feline better personify the old idiom “scaredy-cat”.  She likes to hide under the dining room table and pretty much only comes out to eat or visit the litter box.  On the rarest of occasions she will leave her little hiding spot to seek attention from Jamie or myself.  

Last night after arriving home from doing some teaching on Christian leadership I was heating some leftovers in the microwave.  Smokey started to meow.  Instead of pulling out a kitchen chair and picking her up, for the first time in the two years we’ve had her, I pulled out a chair and crawled under the table to give her attention.  She loved it.  I went where she felt safe and met one of her primary feline needs, attention.  For the next several minutes she was a happy little purr machine.

Most of my experience with non-Christians over the years has shown me that they are much the same. On the rarest of occasions they will seek out our worship centers, but mostly what goes on within the walls of our meeting places remains a source of intimidation, confusion, or ridiculousness to the non-believer.  I have spent a lot of time during my career studying various aspects of “church growth” principles and things of that nature; but the more I read, lecture, and learn the greater I understand that we are missing the point on a grand scale.

As believers we’ve grown incredibly comfortable within the walls of our meeting places (too comfortable I’d say) and we want desperately to draw the lost into those same meeting places so that they might find the same kind of spiritual comfort that we have come to enjoy.  This is completely backwards.

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.”

Matthew 28: 18-20

He said GO, and go we must if we are to ever reach out to the hurting and lost souls He loves so much.  We must be willing to leave behind the way we’ve always done it and look for new ways to connect with the disconnected.  Let’s go.