Living Out the Gospel: Meaningful Connections in Evangelism

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This truth, that there can be no significant impact without meaningful contact, is a while since they made the film The Gospel blimp but it was a great story where uh some church decided in the South that they were going to evangelize their neighborhood, and a couple were really encouraged as I remember the story because they were having such difficulty witnessing to their friends. [00:01:27]

So we would rather many times send up one of these blimps and drop little gizmos from the heavens, and sign a check for it and he's our responsibilities rather than crawl across the hedge or walk up the driveway and make impact as a result of contact. It's very straightforward stuff is it not but there needs to be infiltration of our communities, identification with our communities, rather than isolation from our communities. [00:02:40]

Jesus says to his father I'm not going to pray that you take them out of the world that would be easy. I'm going to ask that you put them in the world that you leave them in the world contact to make impacts, but father I don't want them to be contaminated by the world so I ask that you protect them from the evil one. [00:04:01]

Here is the balance that we're called upon to attempt that is that we are to be not of the world in the sense that we're like Jesus neither we're like the Pharisees we're to be not of the world and that we were like Jesus holy not like the Pharisees stuffy, that we were like Jesus in the expression of reality not like the Pharisees in the expression of Dao routine. [00:04:39]

I want to ask you tonight do you really have non-Christian friends since you've been saved, or are we involved in a kind of rabbit hole approach to Christianity, where we run out of the rabbit hole of our Christian homes into the rabbit hole of offices that we've tried to make largely Christian into the rabbit hole of our Christian Recreation into the rabbit hole of our Christian education into the rabbit hole of our Christian fellowship and back into the rabbit hole of our houses. [00:05:24]

The great impact is not on a Sunday it's Monday through Saturday living where you are radically different radically involved that's the balance of John 17. However, it's so easy to get it out of kilter just like this, where radical involvement leads to when we get so involved and take on their lifestyle and take on their patterns and laugh at their jokes and identify ourselves to the point that we're no different in the sports club. [00:07:17]

Identification is not to be confused with assimilation, that is we identify with a world in its need and in the recognition of the trueness of our Humanity but we're not assimilated by the world in its sin. So here we're going to school here we're in University here we are in the sports team we're going on the bus and on the bus let's let's make it the rugby team in Britain and on the bus they sing these fiendish songs. [00:09:12]

And ultimately the evidence for the credibility of the Gospel in the eyes of our friends will be in the quality of Our Lives not in the quantity of our words. Indeed unless there is quality in our lives there is no reason for there to be any words at all oh says somebody then he was saying that words don't matter we're going to come to that another night but that's not tonight. [00:13:57]

People don't care how much we know until they know how much we care. I don't care if you did A Course in personal evangelism for 47 weeks and graduated with a high a, they'll give him a rip. I don't care how much we know until they know how much we care, and we have no right to go and tell them how much we know until God creates in our hearts and genuine care and concern for them. [00:15:17]

Although our ministry is spiritual we must be natural. You like that, I like it. Do you know the language your friends speak, just speak their language. The more I listen to people share their faith the more the hair stands up on the back of my neck, cliche written jargon from start to finish, phraseology that is the language of Zion, Angelic in its tones, but useless in its impacts. [00:15:56]

We have no rights to expect our buddies at school to learn our language so that they may meet our Jesus, we must learn their language, not dirty language, the parlance that touches, so that we may introduce them to our Christ. So yes it is a spiritual responsibility but it is natural, and if you want to know what key to play in, play in the key of be natural, be natural, not be flat, not be Sharp, be natural. [00:16:58]

God gifted and graced you to be able to do and speak and live in and where and when you should, so that you might become a bridge over which Christ may walk into the hearts of those who are our friends and Neighbors. Our approach then is to be stereophonic evangelism, the written word, the Bible, the lived word, Our Lives, and we'll probably have to have the channel of the lived word sounding a little louder at the beginning. [00:17:42]

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