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.

This one says it

I’m not a big fan of poetry in general. In fact, I’m so much not a fan that when I read a book in which the author quotes some poetry, I’m most often apt to actually skip over it because of how much it feels to me a complete waste of my time to figure it out.
But every once in a while, someone actually says something deep and heartfelt in verse, that speaks words I want to say. Such is the case of the old worship hymn, “Come Thou Fount,” and this verse of it, that says things we usually wouldn’t dare share about ourselves, and yet they are all too true:

“Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be;
Let Your goodness, like a fetter, bind my wand’ring heart to Thee;
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it;
Seal it for Your courts above.”

A joke that makes a good point on atheism

An elementary school teacher explained to her class of young children that she was an “atheist.” She asked her class if they were atheists too. Not really knowing what “atheism” was but wanting to be like their teacher, their hands went flying into the air. There was, however, one exception. A girl named Lucy had not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asked her why she decided to be different. Lucy said, “Because I’m not an atheist.” The teacher then asked, “What are you?” Lucy said, “I’m a Christian.” She asked Lucy why she was a Christian. “Well, I was brought up knowing and loving Jesus. My mom is a Christian, and my dad is a Christian, so I am a Christian.” The teacher angrily said, “That’s no reason! What if your mom was a moron, and your dad was a moron? What would you be then?” Lucy paused, thought about it and said, “Then, I’d be an atheist.”

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.

Thoughts for Preachers to Ponder

A few meaningful quotes on proclaiming the gospel, from the writings of Christmas Evans, an early 19th century Welsh preacher:
“Reading, prayer, and temptation are necessary to strengthen, and to purify the talents of a minister…. Remember this, that you cannot commit some loved sin in private, and perform the work of the ministry in public, with facility and acceptance.”
“The gospel, as a glass, should be kept clean and clear in the pulpit, that the hearers may see the glory of Christ and be changed to the same image…. Preach the gospel of the grace of God intelligently, affectionately, and without shame…. Let the preacher influence himself; let him reach his own heart, if he would reach the hearts of others; if he would have others feel, he must feel himself.”
And finally, the best one:
“Life is the only cure for death, not the prescriptions of duty, not the threats of punishment and damnation, not the arts and refinements of education, but new, spiritual, Divine Life.”

Faithful & Righteous to Forgive – 1 John 1, pt 3

The conclusion of a three-part devotional from 1 John 1:

Verse 5 “Now this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him.”
The first part we need to know, is that God is perfect and holy. He has no sin (darkness) in Him. By contrast, we live in darkness and sin. This is what separates us from God and prevents us from having fellowship with Him.
Light and darkness cannot coexist. If it is light, it is not dark. If it is dark, it is not light. So we, in our darkness, cannot have fellowship with God, who is light.
This also prevents us from being able to go to heaven when we die.
That is our problem, and we have a choice to make. One option we have is to try to solve the problem of our sin by ourselves, but that doesn’t work, because:
Verse 6 “If we say, ‘We have fellowship with Him,’ and walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.”
Many people say, “I am a Christian. I was born a Christian. I am very religious. I go to church. I do good things more often than I do bad things. I’m just not bad enough to deserve hell. Hell is for pagans, and I am a Christian.” But they have never come to Jesus personally to trust in Him alone for salvation. They have never repented in their hearts and trusted the fact that He died in their place on the cross for their sins to get them to heaven. They have instead trusted in their own good works. So their sins have never been forgiven. The darkness has never been taken away. They still live in darkness and carry a lifetime of unforgiven sin around on their backs. They may tell others, and tell themselves, that because they are religious, they have fellowship with God. But God’s word says that if we do that, we are lying—to ourselves, to God, and to others. We are not practicing truth. The truth is, we don’t have fellowship with Him when we remain in darkness.
So that’s one option of what we can do, and we’ve seen that it can’t work. So what will work to solve our problem, and give us eternal life and a relationship with God?
Verse 7 “But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
We come into the light. Jesus is the light of the world. He came and lived a perfect life, never sinning, not even once. He is so holy and perfect and righteous, that when we come by faith into His presence, we are exposed for how sinful we are. We believe that He lived a perfect life in our place, and that He died on the cross in our place and rose again. Then we find forgiveness of all our sin, and He places His light within us then. No longer do we walk in darkness, not knowing how to live properly. Now we have a relationship with Him, and the blood He shed for us on the cross takes away our sin and gives us eternal life.

Once we have by faith received eternal life in heaven, we need to live our lives walking in the light. We can continue to have a close relationship with Him, by letting Him continually cleanse us of our sin. We will sin less than we did before He saved us, but we would be lying to say we never have sin. But if we are truthful and honest with God about our sin, He has a solution that keeps our relationship with Him, even when we fail Him:
Verses 8-9 “If we say, ‘We have no sin,’ we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

From this, we learn two things about Christ’s forgiveness of our sins. One, He is “faithful” to forgive us. That means you can trust Him to do it. He will keep His promise. If you have trusted Him as your Savior, you don’t have to worry that on Judgment Day you will come before Him and hear, “You know, I forgave you for a lot. And you kept sinning, and sometimes I felt like forgiving you, but there are these other sins that just offended Me so much that I decided not to forgive them. You’re going to have to go to hell after all.” No, Jesus will not do that to you. He is faithful to forgive us our sins. If you have come to Him and trusted Him alone as your Savior, you can rely on Him and know that you have eternal life, and that He will continue to cleanse you of all unrighteousness.
The second thing we learn is that He is “just” or “righteous” to forgive us our sins. That means simply that He is doing the right thing to forgive us when we confess, and that He is the one that has a right to do so. If you come to confess your sins to me, I have no right to forgive you and cleanse you. I am just a man. I have sinned myself. It would be not right, but blasphemous, for me to claim I can forgive your sin. If you go to a priest to confess your sins, he does not have the standing before God that allows him to cleanse you of your sins.
You must come to Jesus Himself, and confess your sinfulness to Him, and trust Him because He died in your place, to give you forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and a continual close relationship with God.

God: Get to know Me — 1 John 1, part 2

The next excerpt from the study of 1 John 1:
Verse 2 “that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us”
Christ is eternal, and He was with the Father from the very beginning. He became a man so that He could reach out to us on behalf of God the Father, revealing to us who God is, and so that He could be our advocate before God the Father, providing us salvation and eternal life.

Verses 3-4 “what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship along with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
This message John and the others had seen and heard was being declared to us. This is because God the Father wants to have fellowship with each of us. He wants to have a relationship with us through His Son Jesus Christ.
When we don’t have that relationship, God is just some distant, unknown being. Perhaps we believe He is there. Maybe we just hope He is there. Maybe we want to know Him, but we don’t. We pray and wonder if our prayers can be heard. We don’t know if God loves us and hears us. We want guidance from Him on what to do, but we don’t hear His voice. So we feel a spiritual aloneness.
But this is not what God wants. Jesus came, and this message is being proclaimed to us, so that we might have a relationship with God—knowing Him, living with Him, and sharing all of life with Him. He wants to give us eternal life in heaven. He wants to hear our prayers. And He also knows the joys of this life are made complete only in fellowship with Him and in telling others about Him.

Tune in tomorrow, as in the next paragraph of 1 John 1 we find out what the message is—what we need to believe and trust in so that we can have this relationship with God and receive eternal life.

Witnesses of the Resurrection Weren’t Discredited

Here’s an excerpt of a message on 1 John 1 that I brought a couple years ago:

  Verse 1 “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed, and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life—“
Sometimes people try to deny the truth of the Bible and the truth of Who Jesus is. They have a problem, though. The historical record of Christ, and the eyewitness testimony available from Christ’s contemporaries, make it hard for them to have any way to dispute the claims of Scripture.
Let me give you an example of why this is so. A man who lived in our building died yesterday, so right now, the common ritual of having his body lie there at the home for three days of viewing is going on. People are coming and seeing with their own eyes that he is dead.
Imagine I went out tomorrow morning and started telling people that this man has come back to life. And then I started to write a book claiming he has risen from the dead, as part of a plan in my mind to deceive people centuries into the future into believing this man had arisen.
Well, everyone around would denounce my message. They would go to the body and say, “Look. This man is dead. You can’t fool anyone.” The false record I was writing would be done away with, and I would be proven a fool and a liar. Not a single person would be crazy enough to believe my message or to stand with me in proclaiming it. And time would not improve my reputation or restore my credibility.
But here, John is able to write about Christ as undisputable fact. He can truthfully say, we saw Him bodily before His death. We watched Him die on the cross. We saw Him buried. Then He arose, and we saw Him, listened to Him, and touched Him.
John’s contemporaries couldn’t dispute this message. John didn’t die a discredited fool, nor did the hundreds of others who attested to having seen Christ crucified and resurrected.
As the study of 1 John 1 continues here daily, we will learn more about this all-important message that God wants us all to know and understand.

This is an emergency!

If you’re moved to act, particularly for the people of Asia, you can do something today to support the work of Gospel for Asia. Visit them at www.gfa.org