Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Gospel and Sharing the Gospel

Here is the best (and most unsettling) explanation I have ever heard about what is at the heart of sharing your faith:

"And this may be the root of your problem with evangelism: you don’t understand the gospel—for yourself or anyone else! There are many Christians who have never fully grasped how lost in sin they really were, and how low God stooped to save them.
A person who has not heard God’s words of compassion for himself as a lost person can not communicate them to others. If, in your own mind, you have limited your need for the gospel, you will hardly identify with sinners in obvious need of saving grace. You feel removed from them, as you feel removed from the full impact of the gospel. The distance you feel from both the message and those who need to hear it soon disengages you altogether from the enterprise of evangelism.
Apart from a soul hunger for Christ there is no cure for the lukewarmness that forever crouches at the door or the self-satisfied Christian. A daily awareness that we must never stray from Calvary ourselves is the most important element in a God-honoring evangelism. As I experience the gospel as a message of a righteous God’s total forgiveness, and Christ as the magnetic, personal center of my life, evangelizing with a gospel of forgiveness is a natural and inevitable outgrowth. It breaks down my blinding pride; it reminds me of what our God of love has done for me… Having been humbled ourselves by our own present need, we approach the lost person with a new welcoming attitude… We will not be trying to do something alien to us. Personal witness will issue from our delight in God and appreciation of His grace in Jesus Christ. We will be able to receive strangers as friends…" (Jack Miller, Powerful Evangelism for the Powerless, 44, 45)

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