Making Disciples, Pt. 1 by Ed Stetzer

This video link is mainly for my friends at the ABC group but I encourage you all to watch it. It is a two part video. Scroll down to find part Two. Ed Stetzer is going to help leaders see their errors in motivating the body of Christ in living a "missional life". Good stuff. It is worth it for you to invest ten minutes to watch this.


Thanks for watching, part two is below. The Lord bless you all.

Come - Reidhead

This is an INCREDIBLY moving clip. Please take the time to view it. What Mr. Reidhead Illustrates in this can change your life. Plus it is a wonderful story.

I want to take just a moment and teach on Expiation. “A moment on expi-whaty,” you may say. Read on, you may be learning a new thing and it may set you free.

If the Church in America could understand this one thing, then all of the “self help”, “self esteem”, “self actuating” books that make it to the “Best Seller” list could be burned and the redeemed could instead begin spending our money on the poor and the needy and the gospel.

Christ bought us, to set us free.

He's already FULLY paid the price of your deliverance from His punishment.

Let’s first define the word EXPIATION, or to expiate by looking at what it is NOT. There are many groups out there that are taught that they must expiate their own sins. That means, that in some way or another they believe that they are to pay and work and do and suffer et al for their own sins or God will punish them until He is satisfied with their sufferings.

First of all, this sort of action does not describe the God of the Bible. The idea of self expiation does not demonstrate Godly righteousness, it surely is not Godly love and it displays no mercy and absolutely no grace and these are all things that we love about God, His compassion towards undeserving man kind. The thought that we can pay for our own sins takes God’s standards and trashes them, it presumes that we are able to first number and account for our sins before we can begin to expiate for them. Poppycock! This would cause the human mind to go insane. Example, if everything that is not of faith is sin (Rm 14:23) then we can have no idea of how frequently we sin against Him.

Secondly, “auto expiation” means that God will accept our flawed, selfish, self soothing works as payment for our selfish, self satisfying sins. Remember, God resists the proud and gives His grace to the humble. We are humans; everything we do has a measure of pride and self satisfaction in it. I honestly believe that no living soul has ever done anything “good” without some measure of self gratification as part of their motives, no soul other than Christ Jesus. God will not accept sin as payment for sin; it just won’t satisfy His righteousness and justice.

Thirdly, it takes the “finished work of the cross” and throws it out. All of those scriptures that tell us that Jesus was offered once for sin, become noting if we must pay for our own sin. It would take   Jesus' final phrase on the cross , “it is finished” and dump it on the ground like it had no meaning. I won’t go into the Greek here because this is already longer that I had expected, but when He said finished, He meant it.

And finally, for this article anyway, self expiation means that Jesus’ death in your place was not enough. It is like saying He didn’t die hard enough. His Blood wasn’t pure enough. The Father didn’t pour out His fiery wrath and indignation on Him hard enough on the cross. That when God the Father made Jesus our sins, some of them leaked out His spear pierced side and there is more for us to pay for. Self expiation says that what Jesus did was not enough for God to be pleased and satisfied. Remember in the video, the man paid twice as much as any other auction at that place to buy this poor woman, and that is supposed to impress us. When, for us, God gave His one and only Son, God made Jesus’ soul an offering for our sins, the Creator of life was given as a payment for you, in comparison the doubled price for that slave woman is nothing.

Let’s now take a look at what Expiation is. This is the Webster’s definition: Expiation, The act of atoning for a crime; the act of making satisfaction for an offense, by which the guilt is done away, and the obligation of the offended person to punish the crime is canceled; atonement; satisfaction.

Did you get that? The obligation of the offended person to punish the crimes is cancelled!

Christ bought us, to set us free.

He's already FULLY paid the full price of your deliverance from His punishment.

We have offended God, we are sin against Him. He, in His long suffering and mercy overlooked the sins of the past, but at the fullness of time He sent His Beloved Son to be the Expiator of all our sins, to completely satisfy any obligation God has to punish us, so now He is gladly obliged to *save us. It is as if, that cup that Jesus prayed to be taken from Him, that when He was on the cross He rejected the sponge of gall and instead He drank down all that was in God’s cup of wrath. As if that cup were a mile wide and five miles deep, yet He drank it down until it was wiped clean and turned on its head.

He was offered up for our offenses and raised up for our justification.

Our guilt is done away with! The guilt of the past, the present and the future, all guilt is gone. And since Jesus is restored to the Father, we are justified, that is a righteous declaration from God about His redeemed people, just as if none of this happened, no sin, no death and no judgment. Sadly that is how many act even in the churches. They “claim” Christ but act like nothing happened. There is little or no fruit of love towards God in their lives. What could this mean?

Notice, I didn’t say that He is gladly obliged to love us, but to *save us. God never changes, if He created something in Love, He will continue to love His creation. He is not obliged to love us, He is perfection and He is love and He will always continue to love every person He has ever made, every one. Even those He rightly punishes for all of eternity in Hell. What a heart ache for God. Even though He has done all of this for mankind, most will reject Him. With all this considered, all He has done for them, there are still many who will never, in this life, bow their knee to Him, as He deserves, even though they will call themselves Christians and call Him Lord, Lord.

Are you deeply in love with Jesus because of what He has done for you? Is He the prevailing thought on your mind through out the day? The command is to love Him with all you have, and that should be easy considering what He has done for you. Recall what the freed slave woman did. How humiliating to bow down and grovel at the feet of this man, yet to her it was a great honor. She had been freed and saved. The debt that she owed was gone. She understood what her future was. she had been a slave before to another vile man who abused her so, and when he couldn’t stand to see her any longer because of the soul torturing guilt he had from what he had done to her, he did all he could do, get rid of her. She, sadly with experience was expecting to be in hell, again, yet when she was set free by the compassion and full payment of another she could only give herself in humbling gratitude. No pride. So many today have come to Jesus on their terms. They have come to Him to get a better life or to get over a difficult hill. Let me tell you and warn you friend, unless you come to Him as one who has been set free from a sure hell and come to Him agreeing to His unconditional surrender on your part, you are most likely holding your own eternity in your own hands. If that is the case, I hope you can feel it burning as you read this because what you are holding is a sure ticket to hell. Repent. Run from your pride. Flee from your self sufficiency! As long as you have it, you don’t have Christ.

Please, do not let modern preaching deceive you, Jesus didn't save you because He saw something special in you, He saved you out of deep, painful pity for you. He saved you in spite of everything “good” you have done; even your good works are a damning thing compared to His Perfections. Our best works are like filthy rags to Him. How would you respond if a sewage covered monster of a man were to see you with mud on your face and then came to you to do a good work and offer you a rotting rag of human blood and bile to clean your face. That is our good works before God, He will not accept them. The Devil has a hand full of lies, and they are good ones. Probably his most used deception is that he doesn’t exist, but second to this is that God will judge our good deeds and bad deeds and do accordingly. It is possibly the most preposterous thought for a person to think that God will weigh our good works against our bad and measure out our punishment or our reward according to the balance of a scale, yet many, even in the churches believe this way. This thought process has no grasp on reality, God’s righteousness or our depravity. This kind of thinking totally circumnavigates the Cross and Jesus died and rose again in vain.

When Jesus was on the cross, it is as if the Father crushed Him so powerfully, that one of the side effects of that explosive tumult of wrath was the destruction of your sins. You see, He did have you on His mind but this monumental event that all of eternity hangs upon was between the Father and the Son. It is not about you, It was and is about the Perfect standard of God being met by the Perfect Son of God in a Perfect manner. A demonstration that was and is so Perfect that it can even atone for a wretch like me.

Christ paid infinitely more for you and me and all who will come to Him than all of us are worth, combined…because of His worth. He didn't see a spark of goodness in you. You were filth compared to Him. He did all of this for His Glory, not yours.

Fall in love with this savior. See yourself as He does. Eternally needy and if redeemed, eternally blessed, forgiven, seated and saved. Know that you have been set free from sin, its punishment and its hold, and if you have truly repented towards God and put your trust in the Savior, Jesus, then know that…

Christ has bought you, to set you free.

With all of this, we should be ecstatic to be

Expended for His glory

Jason Getzin

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE - Carter Conlon

By the grace of God, may we be those who run into the conflict. In all honesty, there is so much conflict against the gospel and against biblical Christianity and against the biblical Jesus. Yet we, as His people so rarely run head on with the opposition as Jesus did. I ask, are we going with them? If any man loves the world or the things of the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Compare that with Jesus, who at all times beheld the Father, who always did the Father's will. Who when He was reviled, reviled not in return but committed Himself to Him who judges rightly and now compare that with yourself. Are we running from temptation and youthful lusts? Are we running into the battle as Jonathon and his armor bearer did or are we back in the camp with Saul, starving ourselves from the sweet honey and the victory that God has for us when we strive for the victors crown, play by the rules and overcome this world by faith? We, the redeemed have that which overcomes, it is our faith. We, the blood bought saints have the same power dwelling in us that rose Christ from the dead, God's Holy Spirit. We, the transformed have His word as a light to our paths and a lamp unto our feet. We, the Elect have the calling, the direct command from our Savior to Go. There is not a call to retreat. We are told to stand, we are told to go but God takes no pleasure in those who draw back, for those who draw back do not have faith and it is by our faith that we overcome. God is ready to make you an over comer. An over comer, who lives not in the fear of man but in the fear of the Lord. To openly confess Him when given the opportunity, for he who denies Jesus, the same will deny him before His Father. To live a life that is expended to the Glory of God, as our dear Savior did.

We have been so marginalized. The vibrant colors of truth and right and wrong have been so blurred to make everything grey. I personally believe that is one of the lessons we are to learn from Revelation 6. The rider of the white horse is wearing a perishable crown and he comes with a bow and no arrow. He is not coming to make war as we have known it for the last six thousand years of history. This character is not Christ; Jesus will come with a royal diadem, a crown that will not perish in Chapter 19. No this fellow is the peace treaty bringer and he is like the Fabian Socialist. He comes to make war by evolution and not revolution. The bible tells us, “he went out conquering and to conquer.” The Greek word for conquer is “nikao”, like Nike. The word means to subdue. I have an older brother; I know what it feels like to be subdued. Unable to do what you want to do, held back, restrained, but remember he has no arrow. Look it up in your Websters, to subdue can be to remove the spiritual vivacity from someone. I believe this rider and the spirit that is behind him, namely the spirit of Antichrist that John introduces us to is subduing faithful men of God and keeping them from being the valiant men that they desire to be.

It is no wonder that the end times church is described as “Luke warm” and they are vomited out of Jesus’ mouth. They are lukewarm. They are grey. They are subdued by a force that brings them out of the fruit filled realm where Jesus dwells. These one time disciples are drawn away from simply abiding in Him. And this mysterious force that draws them away is none other than love, but it is no longer a love for Christ that exceeds all of their fleshly desires, it is that they have become lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God. They will allow themselves to be marginalized and compromised because they will forsake the first and greatest commandment. Then they will not go and they will not fight. After all, why should they risk their flesh which they love more than they love Jesus?

It ought not to be so brethren. Wake up! Contend for the faith! Be zealous and repent. Let your laughter be turned to sorrow and weep for the somber, selfish state that has over come you. Wash your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double minded, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. He is our life, He can revive us, He is all that we need.

Now, be broken to pieces and gird up your loins, be broken to pieces and gird up your loins. Do something radical to change your state. Be on fire for Jesus. Not a mad man but a man who is mad at mediocrity. Cry out to Him, "here I am LORD, send me". Abide in Jesus and labor to have His words abide in you. Walk with Him by faith. Put to death the deeds of the flesh and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill it’s lust. Take every thought captive and turn those thoughts to the pure thoughts of Jesus and what He has accomplished for you on Calvary.

Go…..find a place to meet with Jesus, open His word, cry out to Him and I guarantee, He will do the rest.

Be expended to His glory

Jason

Go - Pullinger

Jackie Pullinger starts this video by saying "The prinicpal of the gospel is this, The gospel always brings life to the receiver and death to the giver....if the gospel brought death to Jesus Christ why would we think that that in preaching the gospel it would be any less in us"

Powerful words and a true principal. How has God changed you by the gospel? Has He brought you life? What are you doing with it?

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.

Evangelism update Oct. 22, 2010

Evangelism at the Pateros football game
We always hope to have listeners to the gospel who are intent, who are focused on the words and are listening as if their heart had ears.  Well that was not the case tonight, but the gospel did go out.  
The hardness of heart that I have been encountering has led me to pen another personal commentary entitled   

Where is the Bride? you can read it if you wish at…   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CneMOzrIMqW4_lHdra4mLxekZJxG-i_fbiJAu-4UvoU/edit#

Please pray for Pedro, a very nice 25 year old that was up from Wenatchee to watch the Homecoming game at his alma mater.  If anyone deserves to be called a saint it was this guy but his hope for heaven wasn’t fully in Jesus but in his own goodness.
I also attempted to share with a group of twenty something young men who were my best buds until I mentioned Jesus.  This sort of thing breaks my heart.   When young folks blame the deaths of their friends and all of the worlds troubles on Jesus, I wish they knew what He has done for them.  I tried to gently avoid religion and bring it to Jesus but in their intoxicated state they knew better than I did.
Another conversation that ended with “ I know where this is going and I don’t want to talk about it” was with a very fine gentleman named Joe, he was raised in a legalistic Jehovah’s witness home and he used the word hate a couple of times about that experience.  I told him Jesus wasn’t into religion either and to not let the content of this conversation go to waste, that God isn’t about being rule keepers but instead He has waiting for you a wonderful gift of grace.  He dismissed me politely.
One other conversation I had was cut short because of a cell phone and other things the fella had to do.  This guy was as clean cut and spiky haired as I am so I thought we would have a match but he never let his guard down.  Interesting though, in a nut shell, he claimed all of the Christian things we are all supposed to say but he claimed to be a very good person and wasn’t claiming his righteousness came from Jesus and the cross and faith in Him.  I hope, some day I get to meet the pastors who are teaching being a good person and works based salvation and not teaching Christ crucified but doing so under the full on umbrella of Christianity.

Most of them got a gospel track, so when they are ready possibly they will read.

Blessings and good night

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.