EvangelismCoach

Sovereignty of God

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Did John Calvin have a heart for evangelism?

I found the following article that I think might help answer the question

Did John Calvin have a heart for evangelism and mission?

Dealing with predestination in the Institutes, Calvin does not directly address evangelism specifically, but neither does he describe it as unnecessary.

He does, in fact, write several times about the gospel being preached to the masses, resulting in the salvation of the elect and the hardening of the non-elect (III.23.10; II.5.10).

In other words, Calvin did not limit the preaching of the gospel to those considered to be elect. He explains his views more fully in his treatise on predestination:

Since we do not know who belongs to the number of the predestined and who does not, it befits us so to feel as to wish that all be saved. So it will come about that, whoever we come across, we shall study to make him a sharer of peace . . . even severe rebuke will be administered like medicine, lest they should perish or cause others to perish. But it will be for God to make it effective in those whom He foreknew and predestined.[6]

Calvin clearly encouraged Christians to be involved in evangelism!

“It befits us” to desire all people to be saved.

The result of this proper desire should make us try to lead everyone “we come across” to faith in Christ, for that is the only way they could share in peace.

This is not to be a half-hearted effort. Christians are to use “even severe rebuke” if necessary to prevent others from ignoring the gospel and perishing. Christians must make the effort to evangelize everyone knowing that only God can save.

Read the rest of the article here: John Calvin on Evangelism and Missions

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Your 50% in the work of Evangelism

Steven Furtick blogs about not putting unnecessary burdens on ourselves while sharing the gospel.

He calls it “Your 50%”.

Essentially, Furtick calls us to remember that

  • We are called to bear witness to our faith.
  • God is responsible for calling people to respond in faith.

The proclamation of the gospel message through word and deed is our part.

The changing of the heart towards repentance is God’s part.

I’ve heard some teaching in the past that puts the whole burden on us:

  • If you don’t share, and they die in hell, it’s your fault.
  • If you don’t communicate the gospel exactly right, they are not converted.
  • If you don’t share the gospel from the right starting point, they are not converted.

Those might be extreme examples, but people carry that guilt.  In my conferences, I run into a lot of them.

We need to remember

Furtick concludes with

It’s good to feel the weight of people’s souls.

It’s motivating to your 50%.

But it’s bad to carry around the weight of their will.

That’s coveting their 50%.

And it will load a weight of guilt upon you that you were never meant to bear. Jesus wants to bear their guilt. If they don’t believe, they will bear it.

For your own sake, don’t take something that’s not yours to carry.

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30 Days of Prayer Day 8: Spiritual Blindness

This entry is part 8 of 23 in the series 30 Days of Prayer

Praying for spiritual BlindnessBefore we came to know Christ, we were sinners.

Before we started following Jesus, we were spiritually dead, and spiritually blind.

If we have been a Christian for a long time, perhaps we have forgotten how our spiritual eyes couldn’t see in the dark, how impossible it was to see

  • the value of God’s truth,
  • the preciousness of Jesus,
  • the price of our salvation
  • the outrageous love of God for us.

Jesus is the Pearl of Great Price

Perhaps we can’t recall the process of evangelism that removed our spiritual blinders enough to take the leap of faith and begin to follow Jesus.

How has Jesus changed your life?

  • Personal forgiveness for a troubled past.
  • Healing of your personal brokenness.
  • Completeness.
  • Gratitude for physical healing.
  • Tremendous experience of God’s love.
  • Finding a purpose for your life in God’s plan.
  • Avoiding hell.
  • The personal joy you get from regular spending time in prayer or worship.
  • Obedience. Jesus said so, so I need to share my faith.

In your journey to faith, your spiritual blindness was removed by the Holy Spirit, allowing God to speak into your life.

As people around you spoke into your life, as strangers spoke the right word to your heart, the influence of your church community and messages brought clarity, your spiritual blindness was removed.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believed!

Amazing Grace

In today’s prayer, thank God for His work in your life to bring you to that place of seeing, understanding, and believing.

Ask God to excite your heart with memories of your conversion process (or awakening process) that first drew you to following Jesus.

My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king;

my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer. (Psalm 45:1)

Today’s Prayer:

I thank You God for the influences in my life that helped me become aware of my own need for You.

I thank You that, by Your Holy Spirit, You removed the spiritual blindness that existed in my heart.

I thank You that You made Your offer of grace so irresistible, that I had to respond.

You did not wait for me to draw near to You

But You clothed Yourself with frail humanity

You did not wait for me to cry out to You

But You let me hear Your voice calling me

And I’m Forever Grateful to You

I’m Forever Grateful for The Cross

I’m Forever Grateful to You

That You came to seek and save the lost

Juanita Buyan, Forever Grateful

(Readers: Click thru to see the video)

Today’s Action

  • Is there a hymn fragment or a worship song that has deeply moved you in your walk with Christ? Write it out. Try to write out why that touches your soul.
  • Make a list of people of influence who spoke into your life during the process of removing the spiritual blindness.
  • Thank God for their personal influence in your life, one by one, by name

Continue

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Image Credit: Elbragon

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Experiencing a Christian Conversion

Last night, I watched a deeply powerful film.

faithlikepotatoesFaith Like Potatoes

The story is based on the book of the same name about a real-life South African farmer named Angus Buchan.  Buchan accepted Jesus at a moment of crisis and began experiencing miracles, ranging from sudden rain putting out a wildfire to reviving a woman struck by lightning.

(Note: There is a death scene of a child that might be too graphic for some people.)

The Conversion Story

His character is developed from the beginning as the self-made man, broken by anger, rage, failure, and fear.

In one scene, he’s drowning his sorrows in alcohol that he vomits on an acquaintance.  In another, he assaults and punches a driver who cuts him off.

A friend invites his wife to breakfast at a church.

He doesn’t want to go and is angered over the issue of wearing a tie, but he goes at her insistence.

He goes to the breakfast, where a stranger invites him to church on Sunday.

For reasons not explained in the film, he attends church the next day, hears the testimony of someone’s life change by following Jesus, and the pastor gives a simple invitation to surrender one’s life to Jesus.

During that testimony and invitation, flashbacks from Buchan’s childhood are shown, where a missionary is telling the young Buchan about the Lord.

Those seeds of faith from his childhood, the present circumstances in his life, and the working of the Holy Spirit come together in a moment where Buchan responds to the invitation and offers his life to the Lord.

Here is a trailer:

Feed Readers, see the video trailer: Trailer from Faith Like Potatoes

Conversion in the film Flywheel

I saw a similar film last year, Flywheel (see my review) where the central character undergoes a conversion experience that was deeply powerful as well.

The story line reveals the struggles of the main character and all the circumstances that the Holy Spirit uses to bring this man to the place of surrendering his life to Jesus Christ.

The main character is a liar, a cheat, and morally bankrupt.  His marriage is falling apart, bills are stacking up, bank threatening to foreclose, and his own son doesn’t want to be like him.

One night, flipping through the TV channels, he hears a preacher who says the right words that speak deep to his heart.

“You are in this mess because of the decisions you made.”

On top of all other circumstances, this one line hits the man deep in the heart.  He turns off the TV, kneels on the floor, and invites Christ into his life with his own prayer.

The uniqueness of the mystery of Christian Conversion

Different seeds, different circumstances, different personalities, different portrayals of the experience of Christian conversion.

I think of my own conversion experience.

Different seeds planted early in life, different circumstances, situation, and so on.

The Holy Spirit, as the author of the story of my life, wove together the different elements to bring me to a place where I decided to follow Jesus.

In my case, I wanted to know God.

In my search and discovery, I learned that to know God, I needed to start following Jesus.

My conversion experience was driven by a thirst to know who God is.

I started following Jesus so that I could start to know God.

Different story, different need, different life situation.

Neither character, nor myself prayed a “repeat after me” prayer formula.

Their conversion was real, though the action of their responses was entirely different.

  • One character stood up and walked forward.
  • One character kneels and prays on his own, in his own words.
  • I remember saying, “I’m going to follow Jesus.”  I don’t remember praying, because I didn’t know what that was.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique in each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  The act of praying can make an X marks the spot type of surrender, but the prayer itself is not a formula.  (See my thoughts at The Mystery of Christian Conversion).

God is the one who works conversion in the human heart.

As evangelists, preachers, and individuals who call people to start following Jesus, we can offer to pray with them, we can help them pray, but we are to help them respond to what God is doing in their heart.

Praying is one form of response to God’s awakening.

In the coming posts next week, I’ll tie this into:

  • Postmodern Evangelism: Find Your Story
  • Postmodern Evangelism: Discover Their story.
  • Postmodern Evangelism: Connect to God’s story.

To keep the articles readable and short, they are spread out over a few days.  Grab the RSS feed to get new articles automatically.

Order your copy of Faith Like Potatoes direct from Amazon.

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Quotes from Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

Found on a blog this morning, posted in the context of debates in Baptist groups about Reformed Theology.  Since this was such a good summary from Dr. James Gaylon, I simply share it here

JI Packer Evangelism and Sovereignty of GodIt is with this hope that I provide an excerpt from J. I. Packer’s classic, Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God (InterVarsity Press, 1961).

Dr. Packer writes about what the belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect.  I hope, even if you don’t embrace the doctrines of grace, that you will read with open eyes and an open heart.  Dr. Packer, himself a “Calvinist”, asserts on behalf of historic Reformed theology:

The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the necessity of evangelism. Whatever we may believe about election, the fact remains that evangelism is necessary, because no man can be saved without the gospel. . . . They must be told of Christ before they can trust Him, and they must trust Him before they can be saved by Him. Salvation depends on faith, and faith on knowing the gospel. God’s way of saving sinners is to bring them to faith through bringing them into contact with the gospel. In God’s ordering of things, therefore, evangelism is a necessity if anyone is to be saved at all. . . .

The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the urgency of evangelism. . . . The world is full of people who are unaware that they stand under the wrath of God: is it not similarly a matter of urgency that we should go to them, and try to arouse them, and show them the way of escape? . . . The non-elect in this world are faceless men as far as we are concerned. We know that they exist, but we do not and cannot know who they are, and it is as futile as it is impious for us to try and guess. . . . Our calling as Christians is not to love God’s elect, and them only, but to love our neighbour, irrespective of whether he is elect or not.

The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the genuineness of the gospel invitations, or the truth of the gospel promises. . . . The fact remains that God in the gospel really does offer Christ and promise justification and life to ‘whosoever will’. ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ As God commands all men everywhere to repent, so God invites all men everywhere to come to Christ and find mercy. . . .

The fact that the gospel invitation is free and unlimited—‘sinners Jesus will receive’—‘come and welcome to Jesus Christ’—is the glory of the gospel as a revelation of divine grace. . . . Some fear that a doctrine of eternal election and reprobation involves the possibility that Christ will not receive some of those who desire to receive Him, because they are not elect. The ‘comfortable words’ of the gospel promises, however, absolutely exclude this possibility. As our Lord elsewhere affirmed, in emphatic and categorical terms: ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.’ . . .

The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the responsibility of the sinner for his reaction to the gospel. . . . A man who rejects Christ thereby becomes the cause of his own condemnation. . . . The unbeliever was really offered life in the gospel, and could have had it if he would; he, and no-one but he, is responsible for the fact that he rejected it, and must now endure the consequences of rejecting it. . . . The Bible never says that sinners miss heaven because they are not elect, but because they “neglect the great salvation”, and because they will not repent and believe.

There is a pretty active comment thread at the original post if you wish to read it.

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