EVANGELISM-NEGLECTED
Christians will – and should – continue
to feel bad for not sharing their faith. Christ is the most glorious Person in
the world. His salvation is infinitely valuable. Everyone in the world needs
it. Horrific consequences await those who do not believe on Jesus. By grace
alone we have seen Him, believed on Him, and now love Him. Therefore, not to
speak of Christ to unbelievers, and not to care about our city or the unreached
peoples of the world is so contradictory to Christ’s worth, people’s plight,
and our joy that it sends the quiet message to our souls day after day: This
Savior and this salvation do not mean to you what you say they do. To maintain
great joy in Christ in the face of that persistent message is impossible.
John Piper
The Darkness that Feeds on
Self-Absorption taken from When the Darkness Will Not Lift by John Piper, 2006,
Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 65.
Nothing
is more discouraging than evangelism. The mere mention of the word strikes fear
in most people. If it is my goal when speaking in a church to make all my
listeners uncomfortable and convicted, all I have to do is say, “evangelize!,” and the guilt quotient rises as fast as the heads drop.
Beads of sweat appear on the pastor’s brow. It is the great undone command, and
none of us like to be reminded of it.
Jim Elliff
A More Spontaneous and Genuine Evangelism, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
In response
to two excuses why people do not evangelize: A Christian who has heard biblical
preaching, participated in Bible studies, and has read the Scriptures and
Christian literature for any time at all should have at least enough
understanding of the basic message of Christianity to share it with someone
else. Surely if we have understood the gospel well enough ourselves to be
converted, we should know it well enough (even if as yet we know nothing else
about the faith) to tell someone else how to be converted… Do we really want to
say that we are too busy to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus Christ to
make disciples of unbelievers (Matthew 28:19-20)? Do we expect that at the
Judgment Jesus will excuse us from the single most important responsibility He
gave to us because we say, “I didn’t have time”?
Spiritual Disciplines for the
Christian Life, 1991, p. 106-107, Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved. For more
information please see the website www.BibicalSpirituality.org.
To call a man
evangelical who is not evangelistic is an utter contradiction.
G. Campbell Morgan
Aren’t the
most popular mission trips the ones that take us far from our own neighborhood?
Russia is easy; our own neighborhood is a constant challenge. Has anyone
consistently had the boldness and clarity of Jesus in testifying about the
gospel? Never. Has anyone consistently avoided the
fear of man in evangelism? Certainly not. There is a “foolishness” inherent in the message of the cross. The
clear proclamation of the gospel does not make us look good. It doesn’t make us
popular.
Edward T. Welch
When People are Big and God is Small, P&R
Publishing, 1997, p. 39- 40. Used by Permission.
I know that some are always studying the meaning of the fourth toe
of the right foot of some beast in prophecy and have never used either foot to
go and bring men to Christ. I do not know who the 666 is in Revelation but I
know the world is sick, sick, sick and the best way to speed the Lord's return
is to win more souls for Him.
Vance Havner
Have you no
wish for others to be saved? Then you are not saved yourself. Be sure of that.
C.H. Spurgeon
Sermons, 34.222.
Oh, my
friends, we are loaded down with countless Church activities, while the real
work of the Church, that of evangelizing the world and
winning the lost, is almost entirely neglected.
Oswald Smith
A foolish
physician he is, and a most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for
fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will
rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, then we will anger them, or hazard
our reputation with them.
Richard Baxter
We are called to love others. We share the gospel
became we love people. And we don’t share the gospel because we don’t love
people. Instead, we wrongly fear them. We don’t want to cause awkwardness. We
want their respect, and after all, we figure, if we try to share the gospel
with them, we’ll look foolish! And so we are quiet. We protect our pride at the
cost of their souls. In the name of not wanting to look weird, we are content
to be complicit in their being lost.
Mark
Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 27.
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.
K.P. Yohannan
Do you talk
to others about our depraved nature and our desperate need for salvation in
Jesus Christ? Do you say that you are no better than they are by nature; that
we are all, apart from grace, sinners with a terrible record, which is a legal
problem, as well as a bad heart, which is a moral problem? Do you talk to them
about the dreadful character of sin; that sin is something that stems back to
our tragic fall in Adam and affects every part of us, so dominating our mind,
heart, will, and conscience that we are slaves to it? Do you describe sin as
moral rebellion against God? Do you say that the wages of sin is death, now and
for all eternity?
Joel R. Beeke
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler,
Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 126.
Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry?Could a doctor sit in comfort
and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give
no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?
‘Not called!’
did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to
the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put
your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its
pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat
you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and
servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face – whose
mercy you have professed to obey – and tell Him whether you will join heart and
soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.