“I’ll take it from here.” Not a good idea.
How do you seek change?
How can and will we be changed?
Do we even see clearly that we need changing or are we falsely satisfied with our dependence on church attendance, bible studies, and spiritual disciplines as we neglect the power of the gospel of Jesus?
It's like a newborn baby turning to mom and dad after delivery and saying, "Wow, thanks! Love you guys...I'll take it from here."
In For the Fame of God's Name, David Livingston writes an encouraging chapter titled, What is the Gospel?-revisited.
After covering the meanings of the word gospel in Greek as it appears in the New Testament, he gives a couple of strong exhortations to not only believe in the gospel for our salvation but for all of live transformation.
"...the gospel is regularly presented not only as truth to be received and believed, but the very power of God to transform (see 1 Corinthians 2; 1 Thess. 2:4).
Failure to see this point has huge and deleterious consequences. I shall mention only two. First, if the gospel becomes that by which we slip into the kingdom, but all the business of transformation turns on postgospel disciplines and strategies, then we shall constantly be directing the attention of people away from the gospel, away from the cross and resurrection. Soon the gospel will be something that we quietly assume is necessary for salvation, but not what we are excited about, not what we are preaching, not the power of God. What is really important are the spiritual disciplines. Of course, when we point this out to someone for whom techniques and disciplines are of paramount importance, there is likely to be instant indignation. Of course I believe in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, they say. And doubtless they do. Yet the question remains: What are they excited about? Where do they rest their confidence? On what does their hope of transformation depend?"
"....a rich grasp of what it means to "preach the gospel" ought to be definitive for establishing our strategy. We are constantly urged to develop mission strategies, vision documents, strategic plans, and the like. At a certain level, I am all for such encouragement, so long as the primary strategy of God, disclosed in Scripture, is preserved, such that what we are really doing is nothing more than carefully working out tactics in submissions to the grand strategy that God himself has laid down. That gospel strategy, laid out again and again, is the heraldic announcement of the gospel. It is gospeling..."
The surpassing power belongs to God
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
(2 Corinthians 4:7 ESV)
As Sherry and I sat around today with some new missionary friends I was reminded of the fact that God has entrusted his gospel in weak vessels. It's not that my friends were appearing weak, by no means...although they are....it's that I was reminded that as a jar of clay my view of the gospel and missions can be so weak. I can forget that Jesus is the great shepherd who will bring in his sheep.
"And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."John 10:16
But he does this using his people who are very weak in order to show us that the power belongs to God and not us. Jesus is our good shepherd who leads us in how we are to love on and share his good news with the world. We are to learn the culture and ask questions about how to best communicate the good news in that culture. We are to be learners of the Word and of the World. We are to learn the Word so we can best love the World with the gospel. We are to pray. We are to trust. We are to acknowledge our weakness and his strength.
As we seek to share Jesus with others we will clearly see that we are weak and need a shepherd who we can trust to lead. It's not always a tidy set of methods that best produce fruit, but it is the power of God through his gospel, his timing, his process, his power.
I was encouraged to not only believe in the power of the gospel to see souls saved, but to trust in the Lord of salvation to do it. Being results oriented can easily cause us to shuck evangelism down into tidy categories of what works and what does not. In doing this we can unfortunately depend on our clay-bilities instead of depending on the surpassing power that belongs to God.
Discipleship Collection
How does the Church Multiply? Part 1
Burn Us Up...Don't Miss the Implications of These Words
1982, Sugarhill Gang, Culture and the Gospel
Chic-fil-awesome Could and Should Go Global
(unofficial) What is the Gospel Study Guide
Doing Missions Why Dying to Self is Gain (Chicken Dance Fail?)
Radical by David Platt- A Book That Will Shake You, Unless You Have It All Together
The Dangers of Receiving Rewards Now
Counterfeit God's by Timothy Keller. Read This Book.
Gladly Overwhelmed by the Gospel
Grow: Reproducing Through Organic Discipleship
A Hike With My Daughter and 1 Thessalonians
When Methods Fail (Part 2) Forced Into the Waters!
Soccer, Coke in a Bag and Purpose
And Hey...Could You Pick Up Some Bread on Your Way Home?
Revolution Using a 12 Passenger Boat
The Great Work of the Gospel Series
In 2008 I read the book The Great work of the Gospel by John Ensor. Here are my "take-aways" from each chapter.
The Great Work of the Gospel-Introduction
The Great Work of the Gospel: 1
The Great Work of the Gospel: 2
The Great Work of the Gospel: 3
The Great Work of the Gospel: 4
The Great Work of the Gospel: 5
The Great Work of the Gospel: 6
The Great Work of the Gospel: 7
The Great Work of the Gospel: 8
The Great Work of the Gospel: 9
