Many Christian parents take seriously the importance of sharing the gospel with their own children, and many have the joy of helping their kids pray to receive Christ. That’s a wonderful thing. But too many have the view that they don’t have a responsibility to share Christ with anyone else. Such thinking is unbiblical and urgently needs to change.
Many people are nervous about sharing the gospel because they’re afraid of being rejected or humiliated. Yet people rarely hesitate to share with others the details of something they’re excited about, whether it’s a sports team, a new workout routine, a store they recently discovered, etc. We share what we’re passionate about. If we’re passionate about Jesus, why wouldn’t we want to share him with the people we care about? Of course, not everybody is Billy Graham or Luis Palau. Not everyone has the spiritual gift of evangelism. Not everyone has been given a personality that allows them to share Christ with strangers as though it’s second nature. But that doesn’t mean the obligation just goes away.
Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). The apostle Paul told us, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher [somebody telling them]? How will they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14-15). The Lord Jesus is calling you to tell others about him. Do you love him enough—and do you love others enough—to start obeying Christ today?
Ask God to provide opportunities for you to share the gospel with someone, and he’ll do it. He knows your personality—he created you, after all! He knows what you’re comfortable with and what makes you nervous. He will give you the words to say if you trust him and obey him. Engage your Facebook friends in discussions about the gospel. E-mail an old friend and start a spiritual conversation. Invite a neighbor family over for dinner and get to know their spiritual background. Invite them to come to church with you and then go out for lunch afterward and engage them in conversation about the sermon.
If you’ve read and enjoyed any of my fiction books, you might consider giving one of them to an unsaved family member, friend, coworker, or neighbor for a birthday or Christmas or Hanukkah present. I’ve been so encouraged by the number of people I hear from who do this because the gospel is shared clearly in each of my books. Many people have told me that they used to be terrified to share the gospel with others but now they give one of my books because “it’s like a gospel tract woven into a New York Times bestselling novel.” Others have told me, “Your books are good icebreakers for spiritual conversations.” Indeed, it’s been exciting to hear from people—and occasionally meet them in person—who have prayed to receive Christ as their Savior after reading my books. Hopefully these and other tools can be useful in helping you start sharing your faith as well.
Does your church offer a class on how to share your faith? Take it. Is there a conference nearby on practical evangelism? Attend it. And don’t go alone. Bring your spouse or some close friends—maybe even your kids, if they are old enough. Together, set a goal of how many people you want to share Christ with each week or month. Then pray together, and keep each other accountable to reach your goals.
When Lynn and I were first married, I set a personal goal of sharing the gospel with one person per month—just twelve people per year. I told Lynn about it and prayed earnestly for opportunities. Sometimes God graciously opened an obvious door in a conversation, and the gospel came up naturally. Other times, God required me to take a risk and begin asking someone spiritual questions, hoping it would lead to an opportunity to share Christ. As the end of the month drew near, I would often get anxious if I hadn’t shared with anyone yet. But setting the goal and taking it seriously helped me press forward and try to obey the great commission even when it was difficult. Eventually, through my books and blog and speaking opportunities across the U.S. and around the world, God has given me the opportunities to share the gospel with millions of people. I look back and wonder why I set my initial goal so low! But at least I was taking baby steps, and as God helped me be faithful in a few things, eventually he helped me be faithful in more things. The same dynamic will be true for you, if you determine in your heart to be obedient.
9. Reach Out to a Younger Believer and Make a Disciple
In Matthew 28:19-20, the passage commonly known as the great commission, the Lord Jesus Christ told his disciples to go make more disciples. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,” Jesus declared, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
In 2 Timothy 2:2, the apostle Paul told Timothy to do exactly what Jesus said to do—reach out to younger believers and make disciples. “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
Christianity is not a solo sport. It’s about building strong, healthy teams of fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ whom God can use to change the world. It’s about older believers taking younger believers under their wings to love them, help them grow in faith, and help them reproduce that faith in the lives of other, younger believers.
Lynn and I were deeply fortunate to have several older, wiser believers come into our lives and truly care for us and teach us and model for us a more godly, biblical path. For us, this began in college when we were both involved in Campus Crusade for Christ and some CCC staff personally discipled us. We were also blessed by our college pastor, T. E. Koshy, and his dear wife, Indira, who showed a special love toward us and invested deeply in our spiritual growth. They taught us how to live our faith and how to share our faith. They modeled lives of prayer and fasting and compassion for the poor and the needy and for immigrants and refugees. They sent us out on ministry projects, encouraged our successes, and helped us correct our mistakes. We were forever marked by their care for us, and we’ve tried to pass along what we’ve learned to younger believers we’ve encountered along the way.
Jesus, of course, set the supreme model. He prayerfully recruited a team of young men. He invested in them. He cared for them like family, loving them with an everlasting, sacrificial love. He led them on spiritual adventures. He modeled a life of intense prayer. He let them see supernatural answers to their prayers. He gave them assignments—to feed the hungry, care for the sick, comfort the brokenhearted, and preach the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. He treated them like sons or younger brothers, correcting their mistakes, praising their successes, and marking their progress. And then he told them to go invest in others. He told them to make disciples. He told them to build warm and loving and nurturing communities of believers. And in the process he ignited the greatest spiritual revolution the world has ever seen.
The problem is that nearly two thousand years later, remarkably few Christians are able to point to a single disciple they have made or are in the process of making. Indeed, many would be hard-pressed even to define what is meant by the phrase “make disciples.”
Jesus came to make disciples. Therefore, it isn’t enough to win men and women to Christ, though obviously that is an essential first step. We must also build people up in Christ. We must also invest in them until they are fully devoted followers of Jesus, able to help others come to Christ and become fully devoted followers as well. This requires training Christian leaders—vocational ministers as well as lay leaders and volunteers—to see themselves as investors. After all, the key to Christ’s definition of success in ministry is that we produce successors, disciple makers who produce still more disciple makers.
How is it possible, then—for all the emphasis in the church these days on world missions and on winning souls to Christ worldwide—that so many Christians have missed the centrality of personal, intentional discipleship in God’s plan and purpose for his people? How is it that we have more and more seeker churches but so
few investor churches—churches committed to helping Christians achieve a healthy balance of evangelism and discipleship in their daily walks with the Lord?
And it’s not just “baby” Christians—young and inexperienced in the ways of God—who are not being discipled or beginning to learn the importance of discipling others. Far too often it is mature believers within the church—those who have known Christ for quite some time and whose lives may be busier than ever with ministry activity—who don’t seem to understand the centrality of discipleship. Indeed, in Lynn’s and my experience, we find that many pastors and church leaders have never been personally discipled and have yet to discover how exciting and transforming and fulfilling it is to be discipling their staffs and teaching them how to disciple laypeople and particularly young people.
How about you? How would you answer these two simple questions?
• Who is investing in you?
• Whom are you investing in?
Let us not get to heaven and be stunned and saddened—mortified, even—when Christ welcomes us with open, loving arms and then asks us to show him our disciples, and we have no one to show him and nothing to say. Making disciples was a big deal to Jesus. If we really love him, making disciples should be a big deal to us, too.
Bottom Line
If you and I are faithful in these nine areas, are we guaranteed that God will give America a Third Great Awakening? Honestly, the answer is no.
But let’s ask the question another way: If you and I are too lazy or too proud or too busy or too self-absorbed to obey the Lord in these nine areas, why should God give America a Third Great Awakening?
America is on the brink of collapse. We desperately need God’s mercy. Without his grace, we will implode. It’s not a matter of if but when. Thus, now is the time we must urgently ask the Lord to give us a sweeping series of spiritual revivals in every part of our nation that will culminate in a Third Great Awakening. Whether God decides to say yes is up to him. But let us not compound our many national sins by failing to get on our faces before him and implore him to pour out his Holy Spirit and save us from disaster.
Let us get serious once again as individuals, families, and church congregations about turning our hearts fully back to the Lord so that on the day we stand before Jesus Christ, we will hear him say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!” (Matthew 25:21, NLT).
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CAN AMERICA AGAIN BE A SHINING CITY ON A HILL?
For John Winthrop (1588–1649), one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, though he died more than a century before the Revolution, America had a special place in the world and a special mission from God. One of the key figures in helping to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop served as governor of the settlement for twelve of its first twenty years. In his famous address in 1630 to passengers aboard the ship Arbella, bound for the New World, Winthrop called on his Christian brothers and sisters to aim high and think big.
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.[429]
Winthrop was referencing the New Testament, quoting from the words of Jesus to his disciples. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus told them. “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house” (Matthew 5:14-15). Winthrop believed that followers of Christ were to radiate the light that Christ himself put in their hearts. We are to reflect his holiness, his love, his kindness and compassion for others, his justice, and his mercy. Christ did not expect his disciples to be perfect, and he doesn’t expect perfection of us, either. He knows our perfection cannot and will not come until the Resurrection and the Rapture. But he does expect us to be different from the dark and fallen world. He does expect us to stand out, to be distinct and thus attractive to the lost. When people look to Christ’s followers, they should find Christ, his Word, and his life-changing Holy Spirit. Winthrop thus challenged the believers on the Arbella to set their feet on the fresh soil of the New World with the intention of building a society that radiated, reflected, and represented Jesus Christ. And overwhelmingly, those on the Arbella agreed.
They were not alone. Many Americans from the days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and beyond saw America as not just another country, not just some new nation-state among many. To them, America was something special both for those who lived here and for others around the world. To them, America was a new Garden of Eden or a new Jerusalem, at least metaphorically speaking. They agreed with Governor Winthrop. They saw America as a shining city on a hill, and they committed their lives to making that dream come true for themselves, their children, their grandchildren, and the world.
Winthrop, Kennedy, and Reagan
Over time, the concept of America as a shining city on a hill became less about Christ’s calling for his followers and the unique and powerful role of the church in this world and more a generalized expression of American political, cultural, and economic exceptionalism.
John F. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, for example, referenced Winthrop’s famous line in an address to the Massachusetts General Court on January 9, 1961, as president-elect of the United States.
I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. “We must always consider,” he [Winthrop] said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.” Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us, and our governments, in every branch, at every level—national, state, and local—must be as a city upon a hill, constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors . . . merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required.[430]
Likewise, Ronald Reagan, the California Republican, loved to reference Winthrop’s line and did so repeatedly throughout his political career and particularly during his presidency. In fact, in his farewell address to the nation, broadcast from the Oval Office on January 11, 1989, President Reagan said:
The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still. And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held s
teady no matter what storm. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.[431]
Reagan offered a powerful and beautiful image of America’s role in the world. Sadly, that was a different era. Today America no longer seems to be standing “strong and true.” Her light is dimming, her impact fading, her magnetism weakening amid so many storms and self-inflicted wounds. America’s enemies sense opportunities in our vulnerabilities. They are convinced we are doomed. But many Americans also fear we are on the road to decline and that this decline could be permanent. Others fear our situation is worse than a matter of mere decline. They believe they can hear the ice cracking beneath us. They fear that if major and fundamental economic, spiritual, and moral changes are not made immediately, America is heading for implosion. Some Americans go even further. They believe the implosion of America is not merely a possibility but an outright certainty.
How about you? Do you believe America can still be a shining city on a hill? If so, how have you chosen to be engaged in the battle to save this country? Or have you decided it’s too late and no longer worth the fight? If that’s the case, are you just planning to watch from the sidelines and do nothing to help?
I admit that in my darker moments I worry we have crossed the Rubicon and there is no way back. But I refuse to succumb to the pessimism in my DNA. As I write this, America is not finished—not yet. America has not imploded—not yet. So I refuse to give up. I choose to believe there is hope. I choose to pray that God will save this country. So long as there is still time, I choose to press on and do everything I can possibly do—or more precisely, everything the Lord directs me to do and gives me permission to do—to preserve this great nation and to mobilize people to work together and pray together to turn this ship around before it really is too late. I’m not blind to the enormity and gravity of the challenges we face. But neither am I blind to the power and might of our God. The Bible says “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). I believe that, and that is what gives me hope.
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