“Effective Witnessing” - Give Em’ Hell!

     A Does this sound familiar to you?  You turn on your television set, and listen to a wonderful Bible message.  The preacher gives an inspiring altar call, telling all about living victorious lives once we come to Jesus!!  After all, God does provide for the needs of his children, and we can cast our every care upon Him!  Amen to that!

          Or perhaps your Pastor preaches on how “we can do all things through Jesus”, how Jesus loves and cares for all who are His! He invites all who may not know Him, to come forward to make a profession of faith, so they to can share in the beautiful Christian experience!  Just look at all of those dear souls turning to Christ!!  It truly blesses the Believers heart!

          These popular evangelical methods are employed in many, if not most churches, but is something missing here . . .   According to statistics mentioned in “Hell’s Best Kept Secret”, a book by popular Christian author Ray Comfort, “modern evangelism, from large campaigns to small gospel meetings, boasts only a 20 percent holding rate”!  That means that 80% of those professing to make a decision for Messiah, never join a congregation or show “fruit” in their lives.  They even reported about “one recent evangelical campaign that had a 92 percent backsliding rate!”  The September 1977 issue of Eternity Magazine reported on an evangelical outreach involving 178 churches where only 3% of those supposedly converted actually joined a congregation!  What are we doing wrong here??

          The author of that book used an illustration that I would like to share with you to demonstrate an important point.  Two fellows are sitting together on a small plane with a couple of dozen other passengers aboard.  The flight attendant handed one a parachute and said, “put it on because it will make your flight easier”!  The man puts it on and finds it a bit cumbersome and uncomfortable. Soon, the other passengers start to make fun of him and pass snide remarks.  It doesn’t take long before the man takes the parachute off and resumes the flight just as before.  He decides that he can live without the parachute!!

          The flight attendant then approaches the other man, hands him a parachute, but leans over and whispers in his ear, “we are almost out of gas, and we will soon have to jump out of the plane”! As you might imagine, this fellow could care less how uncomfortable or cumbersome his parachute is, or what the other passengers might say to him.  He is holding on to his only chance for survival, for all he is worth!

          In our zeal to reach the lost, are we selling the attributes of the Christian life, but forgetting to present the savior? Are we giving the message that Jesus will make the trip of life go easier, so why not just jump in because the water is fine? Those who make a profession of faith because of all life’s wonderful advantages to a child of God, are coming for all the wrong reasons! 

          Scripture say’s that “in this world we WILL have tribulation”!   Jesus said “marvel not that the world hate you, because it first hated me”! The Christian life can indeed be uncomfortable and cumbersome, and we will face the wiles of the unredeemed when we make a stand for Messiah.

           Just like that first passenger, as soon as they hit a few of life’s bumps-in-the-road, being a Christian becomes a bit uncomfortable or cumbersome, or when family and friends confront their new professed beliefs, they shed their “new faith” just like a snake sheds it’s skin..   There is only one RIGHT reason to come to salvation . . . it is SALVATION!  Coming to Messiah is the only way to prevent certain eternal death!  All the benefits of the Christian life come as the result of being saved, but are not a reason of them selves to cause a heart change!

          I believe the old “Fire and Brimstone” preachers of bygone days had it right!  Once we understand that the world is cursed as the result of sin, and that we are part of the world, and therefore cursed along with it, we can start to get a picture of the terrible situation we are in.  When we grasp the depravity of man when compared to the absolute holiness and purity of God, only then can we hold on to Messiah Jesus for all we are worth, just like that second man did when he realized that his parachute was the only way to save himself from certain doom!

          When we reach that point, life’s bumps-in-the-road, tribulation, discomfort, or the reaction of unregenerate non-believers can in no wise cause us to take off our only spiritual parachute - Messiah Jesus! Then we will cling to Him with every ounce of strength that is in us.

          We don’t hear “hell” preached much anymore!  It’s just not fashionable!  We don’t want to scare people, perhaps because they may not want to come to church anymore, or take offence!  Those that do mention “hell” will often describe it as only“eternal separation from God”!  To those who have never known what it is like to have a personal relationship with the God of the universe,  that may not mean very much! 
          The fact is, the Bible teaches that “hell” is a very real place where unbelievers will spend eternity in unimaginable physical torment and pain, with no relief . . . ever!  That’s reality!

          I don’t know about you, bit it sure scares me, and made me realize that Messiah Jesus was my only ticket out of there! Praise the Lord! 

          If we do not know about sin, then having a sin bearer will mean little to us!  If we do not understand how lost we really are, then why would we think we needed to be saved?  We need to see ourselves and the things that we do, as Isaiah did when he uttered the following in desperation,  “from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and petrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (Isaiah 1:6)   We need to understand that this is how our perfect, sinless God sees us and our feeble attempt to justify ourselves without our spiritual “parachute”! Our efforts to please Him are like open, running, stinking sores!

          When we share the “Good News” with others, GIVE EM’ HELL!  We need to keep in mind that a profession of faith without being “broken” is not a true profession!  Before we shout with joy, and smile from ear to ear over our salvation, we first need to fall to our knees with tears and repentance.  That’s true conversion!

          Only a broken spirit and a humble heart can accept the “free gift of God”, Messiahs atoning sacrifice for me personally, and never turn away from it!  The next time you hand someone a “spiritual parachute”, make sure to tell them that the world is running out of time, and we will soon be forced to jump off into eternity with no other chance to survive!

Ron Cusano,

“The Lion’s Tribe”

an outreach of Shiloh Ministries

www.Shiloh-Ministries.org

(631) 864-2932

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