Evangelism update Nov. 3 2010

Evangelism update Nov. 3 2010

Thanks again for your prayers.
    The corn feed went well, the corn was great and the conversations were good but I possibly attempted to get too much done around the yard. I really wanted to have it ready and accommodating for our guests.  Or I could just say that I chickened out about sharing my testimony.  I’m not feeling condemned about it, just sharing the truth.  There was just too much going on in serving and visiting for me to prep myself.  I often overstep my abilities and God shows me just how much I need Him.  Remember when Korah in his rebellion said to Moses and Aaron “you take too much upon yourselves” Num. 16, this is probably true of me, I just want to get the gospel out to folks who don’t know Jesus and sometimes there are just too many things involved in it. I will chock it up as a learning experience.  On the bright side the yard is clean and organized and I got to work on some relationships with folks I don’t know too well yet.

Halloween night

    This went well but not without issues.  The family got around the table and filled ziplocks with festive colored paper, gospel tracks and candy to hand out to kids in Chelan.

                  Preparing gospel treat bags

Then on the way to hand out the bags on the street corner in Chelan, poor little Lillie our 5 month old began to throw up, repetativly.  The sweet little gal looked at us like “this is new, is this ok?” We stopped and got everything better and were under way again towards our goal.   Billie waited with Lillie in the car while the big girls and I went out to do the work.


My girls did a great job and all of the tracks were gone in just a short time.  This means that little kids on a sugar high are going to be demanding that mommy or daddy be reading this nice bright colored comic to them which is actually a gospel presentation.  I hope they will hear the truth, both child and adult alike.

Future Evangelism
At this point it looks like I will be at Brewster again for their last home game of the season.  I am kinda excited about this because of the good response to the gospel i had last Friday in Brewster and that there may be some young Christians who would like to join me and and as Paul wrote in Philemon 6, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ”.  The thought of young believers having a full understanding of every good thing that they have in Christ is just as exciting as sharing the Gospel.


Thanks again for your prayers.

    

Evangelism Update Nov. 5 2010

Evangelism Update Nov. 5 2010   The commentary that goes with this update is 
"Seek and sow, reap and break, till He comes"  it can be found here somwehere


I was tired and didn’t really want to leave the house tonight to evangelize, but since I had “advertised” that I was a gonna, I just had to go.  God of course changed my attitude as I went, kinda like the leapers who Jesus healed as they went.

Again, I was in Brewster as I was last Friday.  It is interesting how folks act the next time they see you after you have shared Jesus with them, almost like conviction is in their hearts.

I ran into lots of teens who remembered me, some waved and others said hi.   They are not at all bothered by the Jesus guy; they often want to talk more.  One young man who I apparently shared with last week began to point out other young men who needed a talking to because they were, as he said, “going down the wrong path”.  I asked him if he had gotten right with God yet, he replied that he hadn’t but he knew he needed to.

A very polite young man named Chase opened up after a little prying.  He was sure he was going to heaven but wasn’t sharing with me where his confidence was.  Of course he was attesting to being a good person so we talked about that for a while until he understood that he wasn’t good compared to Jesus and if Jesus is God’s standard of righteousness, he clearly was in trouble with God.  As we talked he shared that what he had learned had come from the LDS.  I really try not to attack any person’s group or religion; that just builds walls.  We must continue to reveal by the word of God Just how perfect Jesus is and how far we have all fallen short of His perfect example and that there is no amount of “good works” that could ever fix our predicament.  The trouble we have created for ourselves through our autonomy, sin and self will is infinitely depraved compared to Jesus, God’s perfect standard and example.   Often when someone claims to have done good works, I will teach them about Jesus and the way He lived His life; raising the dead, healing the sick, cleansing the leaper and feeding the multitudes by miraculous faith and then remind them that only Jesus has the testimony of God declaring Him to be His only Son.  Once they see that their good works are a vapor compared to Jesus, I often tell them that they will be judged by Jesus’ words (Jn 12:48), like the sermon on the mount and to love your enemies and to pray for those who persecute you, etc..  This usually prepares them to admit that they are in trouble with God and then we can plant some seeds, or possibly water the seed someone else has planted.  As for Chase, we can only pray that it all sink in past the “Other gospel” that has been taught him.
I also had a good long conversation with a great guy named Zach.  He may be saved already but needed some encouragement to leave the world behind.
Thank you all again for your prayers, God seems to be opening doors and I haven’t gotten beat up yet.                                                                             

Seek and sow, reap and break, till He comes

Hosea 10:12  Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you.

The second week in a row evangelizing in the same place, it can feel awkward.  People hear what you are saying; they listen in and wonder why you would do this.  They talk about you when you leave but more than that, I believe the Holy Spirit talks to them and that is why they stare.  Do you remember the stories of the prophets of old?  They would walk into a town and the people would get a little uneasy, saying “here comes the prophet of God” or “here comes that one who troubles Israel”.  Now I am not comparing myself to a prophet and the message that we bring is not one of judgment and destruction of our city and the warning of captivity but one of God’s amazing grace.   I also want to say that I am not boasting.  Please don’t think that, I want to encourage and even convict some into sharing their faith more and that is why I write to you tonight.
           The evangelist of today, he is, in a very literal sense an Elijah, attempting to turn the hearts of the people to God.  He is also a Jeremiah or Isaiah, warning that if those whom the message is for do not turn to God, that they will stay in bondage and that destruction does await them.   We are very much an Ezekiel, prophesying to dry bones, to dead men and hoping by faith that God will breathe His Breath into them and open their hearts and make them alive!
           I use the testimony of tonight’s evangelism encounters to illustrate what I believe God desires of His Church.   Young men, not yet believing in Jesus but recognizing that their friends need to hear the gospel too, pointing out the most wayward of the crew, they themselves personally experiencing the conviction of the Holy Spirit, restraining them from their sins at least for a time.  From a distance, others seeing the “evangelist” who spent time with them the week prior and wanting to learn more about God from him.
           Paul said that one sows and another waters but God brings the increase.     What if you began to water what I had sown, I believe God to be faithful to bring in the increase of a saved soul.
           What if we began to plow and plow and break up the fallow ground of people’s hearts?  What if God’s Bride were to continually sow in righteousness?  Exposing people’s sin and comparing it to Jesus’ perfection.  Teaching people about the perfect righteousness of God, dispelling the myth that if a sinner asks for forgiveness, God must just forgive.  Did that confuse you? 1 john 1:9 is for the Saint, not the sinner, God is just, He doesn’t just forgive, there must be a full payment for the penalty, there must be a full atonement for the sins that have been committed against Him and there must be faith in the one who paid the penalty.
     Reap in mercy, Jude says “And on some have compassion, making a distinction;
but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by
the flesh.”   Clothed in the righteousness of Christ, with great hearts of mercy, sow in
truth and wait for God to reap in His harvest.  Laboring, loving and languishing for the
gospel.  If you want to have a heart of mercy, share the gospel.  God prepares your heart
and makes it yearn for even strangers to come to Him.  True mercy towards man was
born out of the gospel.   Sow in Righteousness and Reap in Mercy.

     Break up fallow ground.  This is the hard work of the gospel preacher.  This is where we must trust the Spirit and swallow our pride.   Yielding God’s commands and probing deep into a person’s heart and exposing to them the rebellious dark sins that they love but that God hates, exposing the sins that are producing wrath for the day of wrath and righteous judgment against them from God.   Why do you think that the moral law, the Ten Commandments has been removed from so many places?  Why do you think that the most popular verse in America is “judge not lest you be judged?”  It is because men love darkness and love to keep their sins deeply hidden in their heart.  But that is not the call from the Bible, we are to use the Law, lawfully, to open every eye and to shut every mouth, to leave every person speechless in their guilt before God.  If we continue to allow antinomianism to be the standard operation of all people a very grievous result will multiply worse than it is today, it will be a destructive, damning loss of love towards God.

Mat 24:12  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.


At such a vital time in our nation, we need one thing more and more and that is a love towards God.  Our politicians can’t bring it, unless that is; they begin to preach the gospel.   Yes you can legislate morality; you just can’t get people to obey it.   But if we teach them about God and His love through Christ Jesus and His impossible standard of righteousness and we trust that the Holy Spirit is drawing them to the Son.  Then morality will become a God given desire.  We must break up the fallow ground.

If we are doing this, we will be seeking the Lord.  This can’t be done without first seeking God, waiting on Him and at least attempting to abide in Him.

           Again, what if the Bride of Christ did this; sow and reap and break up and seek until He came.  He will come, five virgins will have oil in their lamps and five will not, but all of them were caught off guard.
     If you and I, and the Christian next door and the one down the street were to all continue on in this.  If we all were to live by this decree…. For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died;
and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. 2Co 5:14-15
I cannot profess to say I know what God’s plan is for this country, but if His spotless Bride were to; sow and reap and break up and seek until He came I am willing to trust in His ability to accomplish what He promises.  I truly trust that He will rain down righteousness on us.

Joh 12:32  And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself."
                                                                                                                   Jesus

Men, women, all of those who are called by the name of Christ:

Be expended to His glory

Jason

Where is the Bride?

We so need a move of God’s Holy Spirit.  If you are sharing the gospel with people, you know what I mean, such incredible indifference to the gospel.  So many people have such hardness to the love that God displayed for us in the Cross and a frighteningly high view of their own self righteousness and good works.  In desperation I also cry out as the psalmist, “ Will You not revive us again, That Your people may rejoice in You? Psalm 85:6

      I so long for God to send another great awakening to this country, to revive His Church and send Her out into the lives of wayward sinners, to point them to that hill where our dear Savior died.  To paint for them, in full view Golgotha and the cross and the Perfect Son of Glory, the only One in whom the Father was well pleased, point for them to Jesus who has borne the iniquity of us all and after becoming our sins and paying it all in my place, this Jesus raised from the dead.  This means we are not alone in this work dear church, Christ is with us as we go…but where is the Church?
           The Church of Jesus Christ, His spotless and chaste virgin, where is she?  This Bride that has been created from a people who were not a people was created to be His eternal companion and prize.  She is spotless and blameless before Him.  He cannot and will not take His blazing eyes off of her; He esteems her as perfectly precious and beautiful.  Made up of every tongue and tribe and people and nation, she is seated with Him in the Heavenlies and worshipping before the throne as His wonderful trophy of His amazing grace.  I believe we can safely say from the scriptures that the Church is the most dazzling and fantastic of all the institutions that God has created, clothed in His righteousness and as pure as the driven snow.  But where is she?  She was not created by Him to be cloistered away, not yet anyway, that time will come.  But this blood bought beauty was created In Him to be more than a thing to be adored and loved by the God who birthed her; she has been given a commission.  We were, in our own flesh and self, so unsavory, so unworthy, so unattractive, yet for His glory He came down, He paid the price, He shed His blood, He reached down into the mire, He dug deep, past the vileness, the bile the excrement that was my life, and He reached down and found me.  Now He has made me part of this Bride and for this time here on earth He has given us the great commission.
           I write this because of what I see in the news; this world is so very evil.  I rarely take the paper but when I do I am appalled by what I read, this world is so heartless and selfish, and doing such evil, it must just break the heart of our God.  I also write this because of what I see when I go and talk with everyday people on the street.  There are just so many winds of doctrine, so many schisms and isms, so much deceit and so many lies that the enemy has crafted to deceive a person from the truth.  Not only that but the hurt, the anger the pain that people have in them from this world and much of it from some form of religion that takes people for what it can get and spits them out when they have no more time or money to give to their “church” to earn their way to “heaven”.  There is so much hurt and pain and deception.  But here sits the perfect bride of Christ….didn’t He purchase us that we may proclaim the praises of Him who brought us out of darkness and into His marvelous light?  Aren’t we to persuade people and to plead with people to be reconciled to Him?  Take a moment and read second Corinthians 5, verses 10-21 and listen to the tone that Paul cries out in this passage of scripture.
    You see, in one place, Heaven, sits the Bride and in another place sits all of the illness that plagues all of humanity, this world.  What if this Bride were to see that this white gown she wears cannot be tarnished by the mire or the corruption that used to spot and defile her, what if she realized that the Love of Jesus is upon her and in her and that she, the very Bride of Christ,  has the cure for all of the world’s woes and she is called to dive deep into the heart of it and find those who are gasping for life?  The men of the world have tried all of their cures and tactics, all of their politics, potions and plans, but the world will be fuller tomorrow than it is today with sorrows and sinners who are still in need of the cure. Social justice will just re distribute the wealth but there will still be sad, hurting needy people going to bed tonight without hope, without love, without salvation, without Jesus.  Yet the Bride has the cure.  We have the cure!  Christian, let me ask you, when was the last time you wanted to do harm to another?  How about letting money rule your life?  Has Jesus tamed that cruel task master for you?  How many young girls have you solicited?  None!  That is because you are now the Bride of Christ; He has abolished not only sin and death but the vile passions of this world that destroy people.  Abolished, gone, done away with are the wicked passions of the flesh, oh they may still haunt you but to act out on them is a thing of a past life, you have been made free in Jesus.  What about the drug dealer or the pimp?  How about the violent dad who drinks a bit too much and beats his kids?  Oh sure he hates it but still, he does it.  Do you think that the gospel might change their lives?  Well who is gonna tell them?  It will have to be the Bride, you see we have the cure.  What would you think of a pharmaceutical company who had a cure that with just one taste of the serum, millions could be healed but “big pharma” kept it back from those who are ill?  We have the cure, we must begin to live as Christ did, not religious but living a life of dying.  We are the Bride, we are the administers of God’s cure for this world.
But first, I believe we must all be personally revived.  Brought to a place in humility that the only words that can describe why we want to do this are, “the love of Christ constrains me”.  We need to be filled with love and with power to go to the lepers of this world so that Christ might make them clean, to forsake our own comforts, to turn away from our pharisaical tendencies and gladly be the least.  How badly do we want this?  How badly does God want it?  Are we willing to change how we live?  Are we willing to change how we look at people groups, like gays or gangs, like republicans or democrats or any other group out there that has the breath of life in them that needs to know Jesus? The enemy has encamped around us, he has encircled the walls, he has set up his barricades, deep trenches are dug and that serpent of old stands at the door of so many with a battering ram ready to smash their every hope and joy and make them think they are too bad to be saved, and we have the cure.
     Pray of a move of God, humble yourselves, wait on the Lord, purify your heart and your minds, abide in Jesus and you will bear much fruit.  Go, for Jesus sake, go.

Be expended to His glory
Jason

"Be Expended to His Glory", The Story Behind the Phrase

"Fulfill your ministry" A long awaited commentary on what God is doing in me.

What could that possibly mean?  I mean I know I am called to teach and pastor ‘cause that is what I am doing now but when a long time, respected buddy and pastor calls you up out of the blue and says to you  “Fulfill your ministry”, what does that mean.

As men we all have a biblical list of God’s will for our lives and possibly some time I will expound to the point of conviction and hopefully contrition on each of these points but for now let me just list them:

• We are first disciples, so ministering unto the Lord
• Be the husband my wife needs, so minister to or serve my wife.
• Train my kids, all day long, rising, sitting, along the way etc.
• In the work place, even if your boss is a slave driver; be the best employee ever for you do not work for man but for God.
• Gospel Ministry….whatever that may be, either building up the saints or preaching the gospel to the lost, through words backed up with a self rejecting, others serving lifestyle.

These are the basic, biblical, God given ministries that all men are called to, but what about knowing what God has specifically made each of us for?  After all, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.  Bezaleel was specifically gifted by God to build the Tabernacle, and God has gifted each one of us.  Plus I had been crying out for years for God to use me for His glory and to provide me with a ministry to be a steward over.  Once men are fulfilling the four top ministries, shouldn’t we be striving to fulfill the fifth?  Once we have transformed our minds with His word shouldn’t it be natural for God’s good perfect and pleasing will to be manifested to us.  I believe that is what the bible tells us.  “Fulfill your ministry”?  What exactly is that? For each of us it is different and it is specially appointed to you by God and you are spiritually equipped by God’s Spirit to fulfill it.  Here is mine.

After I hung up the phone where I had been lovingly exhorted to “fulfill my ministry” It took about as much time for me to remember what my “ministry” is as it takes for an overly hungry 9 year old to say his lunch time prayers before he devours his bologna and chip sandwich.  Something I knew but was not living out fully.  And it was eating me up.

To be expended to His glory

My Ministry…I was hiding out in the basement meditating on a bible passage and there in my mind was a faint imagination or a vision, what ever it was I saw an action in my minds eye.  I am not claiming “God said to me” and definitely not claiming to have special revelation nor that I am hyper spiritual, I am just conveying what events have brought me to the place I am in now.  (Please don’t label me an heretic until you hear what I believe and teach, maybe you are the apostate one ;)

This is what I “saw”.  Nothing profound or exciting, it was just a pen, writing.     

Now, at this point in my walk I was keeping a prayer list of the folks I had shared the gospel with.  I was praying to be broken and used of God.  I was a youth pastor and doing the work of an evangelist.  It was a time of growth for me, and God helped to give me direction in my ministry.

           What did this mean?  With all that was going on in my life and the things of Christ that I was desiring after I had a pretty good idea that it was about the gospel.  After pondering what I saw I came up with a single line definition and goal, it goes like this;

To Be Expended to His Glory.

When an artist picks up a pen to draw, he never is concerned for the pen.  He doesn’t begin his drawing reluctantly worried that he will run out of ink and that the pen will be tired after pouring out what it had inside to be useful to the artist.  A writer doesn’t hold in his thoughts, keeping them from paper for fear of the pen’s feelings about being expended in the production of a great story. 

Here is how I express it in print form.  And this is my “logo”

I had been working construction and used a pencil every day, all day and even though I may be marking out lines to cut in concrete and my pencil had to be sharpened every few inches because of the rough surface I was scribing on, I would just get out my knife and wittle a new edge.  The pencil was designed for this purpose.  I never hesitated thinking I was wasting graphite.  I rarely, if ever contemplated the world’s reserves of pencil lead.  I used the pencil for the job at hand and the pencil, if sharp, aided the work I did by drawing a true and straight line and scribing a correct measurement.  With about fourty years of pencil use, I can’t recall a once that my pencil complained or attempted to receive a compliment for how well it drew, not once.

     In a nut shell this is what I saw in the eye of my mind.  God wanting to use me to set forth the line of His perfection, to measure out His righteous standard before men and to do so without worrying about running out of lead.  I was to offer myself to God as an instrument to write the gospel before men, to be expended for His awesome glory.  I wept.

     So wonderful a thought that the One who needs nothing is asking for one who is in need of everything, “come to Me, abide in Me, in Me you will bear much fruit.  I will be your God and I will do more than you could ever ask or imagine.”  Why, o why would the Great King recruit me into His awesome service? to be a front line soldier and ambassador of His Eternal Grace and Glory.  I know I am not worthy and most of the time I am not faithful.  I am so weak and often weary, wearied not from bearing my cross but foolishly bearing my own burdens.  I am an untrained and uneducated man; I am neither eloquent nor smooth.  I talk too fast; I loose my train of thought.  I can’t focus to study for more that fifteen minutes at a time.  To this world I am an unimportant failure, and that may be the very reason that God has chosen for me to be a mouth piece for Him; so that He may receive all, all, I mean all the glory…I weep again.

     What about you friend?  Do you know Jesus?  Are you in love with Him and His Grace?  Do you marvel at the incredible exchange that happened there on the cross of Calvary, there in you the day you repented and placed your faith in the Eternal Lord of Glory?  Do you know why he did this unmatchable act of mercy?  Love, yes love, but I believe there is so much more.  You see, the very second that God saved you, He made you an ambassador of the Kingdom to which you now belong.  He transformed you from a minister of the flesh to a royal priest unto Him, His own special people and He has a ministry for you that He ordained before the foundation of the world.  Yup, just for you.  This is a really big thing with God.  Jesus told us about the unfaithful servant who took his one talent and buried it and at the return of the master that unprofitable servant is “cast into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  I have personally feared hearing those words.  Jesus has given me so much and I am so unfaithful and feel so very unprofitable to Him, yet He is so good to me.  How about you?  I personally don’t think God is looking for another tele-evangelist, there are too many of those already.  He isn’t looking for powerful people to preach, not the eloquent, He is looking for folks like Peter, just a simple fisherman who followed Jesus, and Jesus made him into an apostle and a fisher of men.  He is looking for men and women who when they share are scared to near death, just as Paul came and preached with fear and much trembling.  He is looking for people who are meek, and lowly, folks that are humble and broken, these are the ones that God can use to turn lives around, to turn your neighborhood around, your town and even this nation around to Jesus.  All through folks who first love God, love their families, love the Body of Christ and then go, in the same manner as Jesus and love the lost and share with them the wonderful things that God has done for man.  He wants to use you, you who are just lowly vessels of His grace, we who are trophies of what He has accomplished there on Calvary in defeating sin and owning it in His own body while still remaining perfect and untarnished from it.  He wants to use the lowly so that He gets all of the credit that He so rightly deserves, now Go.  Go out to the highways and the byways, bring in the broken and rejected, bring in the wealthy and proud.  Bring in all who are willing to bow the knee to the Lord and in bringing in the elect, you will be accomplishing the greater reason that God calls and equips the weak and willing, you will be bringing the Savior of our souls, the glory He deserves….now go.  Go!

Go for the King and “Be Expended to His Glory.”

Jason

I actually made a blog

This is so cool!  I have so much to say and this is a way that I can imagine that others care about what I say!  It has been a while since my last "Evangelism Update" email.  I have been busy.  I hate that excuse because it is the one we all use to not do the excellent things but instead to do the necessary things.  Remember that the excellent is always waiting for you to step into it.  It is as if the wardrobe stands waiting, dusty and alone in a room that you know well yet visit seldom.  You know that if you open the doors and step inside you may find Narnia and again you may just find coats.  Perhaps that is the reason we fail to stop all of the necessary and do the excellent, we fear we won't find Him there.  Let us all be expended in our tasks, redeeming time that we may find ourselves with intention waiting on Him in the quiet place, in the secret place of the Most High God and abiding under the shadow of the Almighty.