Implosion (32 page)

ACTS 2:42-47

This passage tells us six things about the churches those early believers were establishing:

• They were studying the Word of God together and listening to the teaching of wise men who were familiar with the commands of Scripture and had walked with Jesus.

• They were spending time worshiping the Lord and encouraging fellow believers.

• They were taking Communion, or what’s known as “the Lord’s Supper,” together. That is, they were taking time to formally remember and give thanks for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross on their behalf.

• They were praising God and lifting up their concerns and needs to him.

• They were sharing their possessions with one another and even selling property in order to have the financial resources available to share with those in need.

• They were spending time together, sharing meals and fellowship with one another.

As a result, not only did the believers feel “a sense of awe” at the goodness and majesty of God, but the Lord blessed them with “many wonders and signs.” And not only did they enjoy a favorable reputation in the community, but the Lord blessed them further by bringing newcomers to their fellowship daily.

Are you a member of a solid, Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church? Good! Ask the Lord how he wants you to serve there, grow there, and invest your time, talent, and treasure there. How can you serve and encourage your pastor and the staff? How can you welcome new people and make them feel at home? What nonbelievers do you know whom you can invite to attend the next church service with you? What skill or spiritual gift do you have that you could use to encourage and strengthen the other believers in that congregation? When the Lord shows you, follow his lead.

If you’re not in such a church, don’t grumble or complain. Just ask the Lord to help you find one, and then prayerfully start looking. Seek a congregation that is theologically solid and personally loving and warm. Look for a place where the pastor and the people have a heart to strengthen the body of Christ and reach out to the lost. If the Lord gives you such a place, get involved and see how you can learn and grow and make a positive difference.

Don’t expect to find a perfect congregation. They don’t exist. All congregations are made up of sinners just like you and me. Don’t let yourself be discouraged if you can’t find a congregation that feels “just right.” Ask the Lord to put you where he wants you, even if it’s a fellowship that seems less than ideal, and trust him to guide you one step at a time. Maybe God wants you to join there to pray for that congregation’s revival. Or maybe he wants you to become friends with a particular couple or single person or a group of young people whom you can encourage in Christ and who can encourage you in turn.

The Scriptures are clear that apostasy will rise in the last days, and thus more and more congregations will turn away from the Lord. Therefore, we must be on guard against attending a church that is teaching false doctrines and willfully and publicly disobeying the teachings of the Bible. But we must also guard against letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Too many Christians in America are giving up on going to church at all. Too many have let themselves become discouraged because they haven’t found congregations that truly welcome them or teach the Scriptures as deeply as they wish. Too many have given up entirely on being in fellowship with other Christians.

Too many others have become overly critical of worship styles and preaching styles and decorating styles and all kinds of other things and have given up attending church for these reasons. Still others are attending church on Sunday morning but are not getting involved in small-group Bible studies, home fellowship groups, local outreaches, foreign missions, or other areas of service. Yet the Lord specifically commands us to be proactively involved in the local church—and to be committed to building close personal relationships with local believers. As the writer of the book of Hebrews put it, “Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).

8. Reach Out to the Unsaved and Share the Gospel

Have you ever taken the opportunity to share the gospel message of salvation with someone who didn’t know the Lord Jesus? When was the last time?

Have you helped a person pray to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord? When was the last time?

I have found that few things in life are more exciting and more satisfying than being used by the Lord to help people become adopted into God’s Kingdom. Sadly, however, I find that many Christians are hoping to slip into heaven incognito—wearing sunglasses, as it were, hoping no one notices that they haven’t ever led a single person to the Lord. Too many Christians think they have no responsibility to share the gospel, even when people all around them are lost and headed for hell if they don’t repent and receive Christ. We have to turn this around. We have to help each other become faithful to the Lord in telling others the Good News about our great Savior!

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.