Often I have to look at this and remind myself and why I am on this earth!!! This is my purpose!
Personal Evangelism
Image via WikipediaPersonal and Relational Evangelism should be the foundation the Christian life. In today's social world we are all users of Facebook and other social media outlets. Twitter continues to rise and is used by thousands of Christians to communicate with each other. We are so captivated by reading what others are doing, so captivated by letting others know what we are doing and even just as soon as it happens. Yet when it comes to face to face communications we lack the desire to give as many updates as we do via the cell or laptop and why is that?
Now considering there are so many people that love Facebook and other social media outlets yet have a horrible face to face ability to interact with one another, is it that we really do not want those relationships or is it that we do and we just have no idea how to do it face to face? I say the latter!
Consider the Garen of Eden. We were created to communicate! Created to have a personal relationship with each other and with God. When Adam and Even sinned what happened? We ran and hid from God. We hid ourselves from each other and only communicated from behind a bush!
Today, God walks around and ask us where we are and we hide behind ourselves or behind our computers and say, "here i am God!"
This week we will focus on some key elements that both hinder us from having those personal, face to face relationship with people, and those elements that will enable us to get past those things that hinder us!
Stay tuned...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A Facebook Posting that Sticks
A few days ago I had the opportunity to copy a post from a friends page. on Facebook. I think it pretty much speaks to itself about what is meant from it. My main point to this post is simply to convey to everything that we need to pray people! Pray and I mean pray! Here it is:
Will God Win?
God set out to prepare Elijah to be a great man of faith and prayer. To do this, He set up and obstacle course of tests. To this point in I Kings, Elijah had passed everyone, and God has met Elijah’s every need. When Elijah feared for his life, God showed him where to hide. When there was no food, God sent ravens to feed him.
When the wadi dried up, God sent Elijah to a widow in Sidon. When Elijah discovered that this poor woman had no food left to share, God provided flour and oil every day to feed them all. At this point God designed another crisis. It was the greatest test Elijah had faced thus far.
If you are at the end of the rope and you can’t see anything left to help you then you must depend on God. When you think that there is nothing left to feed you physically, emotionally or spiritually then you must understand that God operates in the extra-ordinary and not the ordinary. You may have been put at the end for a reason, at the point where you see no help or resolution. For it is as that point where you decide if God will be allowed to win or lose in your life!
God has food for you every day! You must pray! Pray and ask God to feed you. Prayer is the feet to God’s will. It sets God’s desire and power into action. I challenge you to turn off the radio, turn off the TV and computer and spend 30 minutes a day in prayer! Watch what God can do for you if you only take time to tell Him your need! It is not that He doesn’t already know your need, He does! The point is that God wants to hear you ask!
Never Take The Loop Road
“Show me your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.” Psalm 25:4
Never take the Loop Road because it will take you off the road that easier, simpler and smoother to travel on and eventually lead you back to the same destination anyway!
Near my house is a road named “Loop Road.” To be traveling on the main road and to suddenly find yourself on the loop road is as simple as a slight “Y” in the road. You almost do not have to slow down at all to even get on the Loop Road from the original road. Within a few hundred yards it curves and then begins to parallel the original road for some distance. It is not as smooth as the original road. Its curves are much more difficult to negotiate, and its hill much steeper, but eventually it brings you back out to the original road where you are faced with a decision. Do you turn left and go back in the direction you came or do you turn right and go in the same direction that you would have gone anyway had you not gotten on the Loop Road to begin with.
God has a path for you. He has a destination for you and a purpose for your life! He has never intended you to bare off on any loop roads, yet we all do from time to time. Sometimes we do not even realize that we have bared off on that road until we suddenly realize the road under us isn’t as smooth as it was before or we can’t navigate the curves as easy as we once could. We look over through the forest and see others traveling on some other road and suddenly realize something has gone horribly wrong and we are on different roads, yet traveling in the same direction.
Church Growth Could Be the Same
I cannot help but get jealous of the church in the book of Acts. At the end of chapter 2 the church seemed to be awe of everything that had happened recently and seemed to careless about anything left in their life except Jesus.
Notice what Chapter 2 verses 42-47 says, or doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that after work every day they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship. It doesn’t say they were all together and even though everyone was different they just overlooked it and fellowshipped.
It does say that they were all together and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship. It does say that they were all together and had everything in common.
Church growth and evangelism could be same today as it was 2,000 years ago. We could still see everyone excited and spreading God’s wonderful redemption message! Today we fail to COMMIT to God. God is simply something we fit into our life but not anymore important than having to pay bills or having to go visit family members or having to go to work.
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"The devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching..."Acts 2:42 |
I can tell you this…if you want to see Acts chapter 2 again in this modern world then it doesn’t start with prayer rebuking the devil to stay away from sinners, it doesn’t start great messages in the church or wonderful anointed worship services. It starts with you, the Christian. You commit to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. You simply bring into perspective the fact that there is nothing more important than the message of the Cross.
God’s glory is real, God’s power is real and we need to commit to the understanding that there is nothing more important than serving him and fellowshipping with people that we have things in common with!
Read Chapter 2 and commit to prayer. Ask God to bring back the event, feeling and movement of Acts chapter 2. The is more to come on this topic!
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