Category: The Gospel

Are tracts worth it?

“Had you asked me when I graduated from seminary how many you met who came to Christ through a tract, I would have said none. Since then, I’ve met so many people who came to Christ through reading a tract I hand them out at every opportunity. I try to never be without one.” –Evangelist Larry Moyer of EvanTell, from his blog

How I Met God

When I was in 1st grade, I used to like watching cartoons after school. One day I saw one with a highly accident-prone cat who got himself into the strangest mishaps by chasing a clever mouse, who kept himself just out of reach. Each time the cat was taunted into chasing the mouse, he was led into dangerous territory and violently killed, at least temporarily. When he died, two elevators appeared side by side. One went up to heaven with an angel, the other down with the devil to the fiery dungeon. As the cat arrived at the elevators, he was informed that since he’d been bad in mistreating the mouse, the DOWN elevator was the one for him. He pleaded for another chance to go back and try again to be good enough for heaven, and his request was granted.
I’d been taught the truth in church and at home by my parents, so I said to my mom, who was watching with me, “That’s not right, is it? You can’t be good enough to get to heaven, right?” That night my parents fully explained to me how Jesus had come to die on the cross to pay the full price for what I owed God. A few days or so later, I trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and He forgave all my sins so that I could go to heaven when I die. Since then, I’ve found that God loves me more than I can understand. He has been a wise Guide, a reliable Source of strength, and a faithful Provider of unlimited comfort in every situation I’ve ever faced.
Jesus will do the same for you!
All you have to do is admit to Him that you have done bad things that anger God and that you can’t earn heaven. Then you ask for His forgiveness because of your belief that His death on the cross was for you. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” the Bible says. (1 John 1:9)
We can’t rely on ourselves or on trying to be “good enough” to get to heaven. We must just put our faith in Him that He was punished in our place so the bad things we’ve done will be erased by God.
If you do that, believing that Jesus rose again from the dead, you can be absolutely sure that Jesus will take you, just as you are, and take away the bad things you’ve done that anger God and save you from God’s anger when you die. The Bible in Romans 5:9 gives you that guarantee: “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!”
Will you let Jesus save you now?
Will you accept Jesus’ free gift of eternal life and reward in heaven?
Heaven is a place I want you to go to with me! It’s a place where you’ll never be lonely again. You’ll never be angry again. You’ll never be bored again. You’ll never be hurting or feel left out again.
And you can get your ticket there from Jesus right now, because God will hear you pray asking Him to save you. “For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved,” says Romans 10:13.
Here’s what you need to say to the Lord in prayer right now to be saved (the prayer itself doesn’t make you right with God, but believing in your heart what the prayer below says DOES):
“God, I admit I have done bad things that you didn’t want me to do, and I understand that Your word in the Bible says because of this, I don’t deserve to go to heaven when I die. Nothing I could ever do or give could erase my sins and get me to heaven. But Your word promises that if I believe Jesus died to be punished instead of me for what I’ve done wrong, and rose from the dead, I will become Your child and be loved by You forever. I ask You now to forgive what I’ve done because of the innocent blood Jesus shed on the cross. Please save me by erasing the bad things I’ve done from Your record of my life. Right now, I accept Jesus as my own personal Saviour. Thank You for Your guarantee that because I am now Your child, I will live in heaven with You forever!”

Turn from your self-righteousness to Christ alone

You were not saved by the good work of “turning from your sins,” so don’t lay that burden at the feet of lost people to whom you are preaching Christ. If you are saved, it was by God’s grace alone which you received by faith alone in Christ alone. Faith in Him and His finished work on your behalf is the only way you could have received Him, and if you trusted your works and your efforts to “turn from sin,” you failed to receive Him and therefore do not have Him.
“Straighten up and get your life right and clean, and then come to God to receive His favor” is how a muslim pleases Allah. It’s how an unconverted Jew pleases his rabbi. It’s how a Buddhist seeks to come to peace with the universe. But it is not how a child of the true and living God becomes pleasing to Him.
Tonight’s Bible study will look at Galatians 2, and at how when under pressure, even those like Peter and Barnabas who have a record of standing for the pure gospel message can be frightened into compromising the purity of that message to be pleasing to legalists and “false brethren” who seek to bring men, not to Christ, but into bondage to themselves.
In evangelical churches today, it looks like this: A pastor preaching the gospel for years grows weary of the fact that some profess faith in Christ but show no outward signs of change. His weariness, combined with the critics of his teaching, who say “Your converts aren’t saved because they live like the world,” make him try to alter the message. He starts to preach Christ plus repentance, defining repentance as changed behavior, being good instead of bad now. This pastor is trying to bring about the external result of good works by means of human effort, no longer trusting the Spirit of God to bring about those changes of behavior He works out in all who put their faith in Christ.
But you can’t perfect the people of your congregation through demanding that they turn from their sins, which is something no unregenerated man could ever dream of doing.
Even though we preach and don’t always like what we see in people’s response, we still have to keep the message the same. That Christ alone can save, and that man is irreparably corrupt in heart and nature apart from a new birth that comes about only by faith and never by actions or a determination of the human will.
Repentance unto salvation involves not making oneself good to earn God’s favor, but admitting to one’s hopeless state as a sinner in need of mercy, and coming to the throne of grace to receive such by asking for it in faith in the One who lived a perfect life in our place and died a sacrificial death in our place on the cross. When someone has done this, faith and repentance are present, and Christ is acknowledged by this repentant one as his only hope as Savior and Lord.
Lord-willing, a recording of the study will be posted on this blog afterward, and you’re invited to listen to it online, if you’re not in Cluj and able to attend the discussion in person.

Preaching to those in chains

We’ve returned from the men’s penitentiary in Aiud, after holding meetings for two sets of prisoners there today. Ajay did Christian worship music about a relationship with the Lord and seeking His presence, and the men were very happy he was there and listening to him with smiles. Between songs, at each meeting I preached a gospel message, one from Luke 23 for the first group and one from John 4 for the second group. All of the men were at the very least respectful and listening to the word being proclaimed, and some had a very favorable response to the invitation to trust Christ as their Savior. An ongoing open door for ministry remains open for our church there, and Liviu will continue to minister there at least once per week, as he did in the past and has been doing again for the past month, while I will also go on occasions when my schedule allows to teach God’s word there. Several also signed up for a mail correspondence course in basic Bible study.
Another possible door may be opening for outreach to a maximum security facility elsewhere.
Please pray for God’s blessing, guidance, and provision for our church’s work to make disciples of Christ among those in prison.

Not another gospel

Tonight at the home fellowship we had a full room to begin our new book study of Galatians. The first passage of the book was taught and discussed and the recording of the message is available for your listening here.

Can you really be sure?

Can you really be sure that God is there and that you have found salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life in Christ? Or do you just have to go through your life hoping such things are true but not really knowing? Today’s message at the church from the book of 1 John looks at these questions. The message is in English and Romanian. You can listen to the audio recording here.
The message was being preached at 37 years to the hour from the time I was born; and it is the message I consider it my life’s purpose to proclaim. I hope you will listen to it and take God’s word to heart.

The Gospel in your hands

Here’s a brief seed-planting presentation of the gospel that I think I will be using in conversations with people in the future when I only have a few minutes to illustrate for them the meaning of God’s message for them from the Bible.

For what will I stand?

There are many things in this world a man could take a stand and fight for: a political party, a philosophy, his own rights and the rights of others to be free. The list goes on, and even contains wicked things, such as those who fight for false belief systems: atheism, islam, vaticanism and the teachings of various cults. Still others stand and fight for public acceptance of sin itself–homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and other immoralities. While others expend their energies fighting against those sins.
Every man who makes a difference, good or bad, in the world, is a man who takes a strong stand for something. And I’ve been asking myself lately how to choose my battles wisely so to be standing for what is really worthy of the fight.
My conclusion is this. I won’t fight for myself, for my rights, for my political philosophy, or for other temporal things anymore. When a battle rises up against me personally, I will, by the grace of God, let Him take up the fight in my place. I’ve learned that as long as I refuse to fight in my own defense, He does not refuse to do so; and He never knows defeat.
But what will I stand for?
“I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.”
That gospel and the word of God. That is what my energies will be spent fighting for; and false teachings that lead people away from salvation, even if they do so by leading them to religion, will be what I stand against. I’m withdrawing from now on from the political battles of this life that do not affect the spiritual battle.
But for the gospel, I do contend, and will contend to the very end–even if that end be hastened by my contention.
Then my life will have been worth living.