Ordinary Evangelism

Well, as you are taking your seats, I wanna show you a picture of this lovely woman. She is 103 years old yesterday. Her, yeah, lovely. I mean like, I'm 50, I wanna look that good at 55, right? This woman's 103 years old, and her name is Rachel Robinson. She was born in 1922, and she a woman who loves the Lord, and she married a man who was also a man of faith. Her husband's name was Jackie. Maybe you've heard that name, Jackie Robinson.

- [Congregation Member] Oh yeah.

- The man who broke the color barrier in Major League baseball in 1947. What doesn't get talked about in their legacy is their faith in Christ. Both of them had to live out the teachings of Jesus in what they were endeavoring to do. This was a big deal when Jackie and Rachel Robinson were entering into Major League Baseball, where there were no African American players at that time, this was a really big deal. They had to live out their faith in the face of vile persecution so that both their words would not ring hollow because their lives would look like Jesus and have stronger force for their words to fall on willing ears. They knew that their testimonies were about impacting other people outside of themselves, so they wanted their words and their lives to consistently point to Christ. Now, I learned about, and I haven't been to Jackie Robinson's graveside, but I learned from a book that I had been reading called "42 Faith." It was about the faith of Jackie and Rachel Robinson, and in reading that book, I remember that it was talked about, there was a quote on Jackie's gravestone. In fact, here's a picture of his gravestone. It just says "Robinson" on it, and it says underneath it, Rachel put this on Jackie's gravestone, it says, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." And I thought that was a great choice that Rachel made to put on Jackie's tombstone because I think that that's actually at the core of what it means to evangelize. Now, before I push into the message this morning from our text in 1st Thessalonians Chapter 1, which is where we'll be in just a moment. I realize that when I say the word evangelize or evangelism, that it might conjure some images up in your mind. I don't know what your background is or whether you've heard that word used kinda pejoratively or how you've heard that phrase utilized before. What comes to your mind when you hear the word evangelism or you hear the word evangelize? Maybe, maybe what comes to your mind is a person with a bullhorn on a street corner that's yelling instructions at everyone. Or maybe you think about, because we watch Bill's games all the time. Maybe you think about the dude with the kinda crazy hair who holds up a John 3:16 sign in the end zone when they're kicking the extra point or kicking a field goal at a football game. Or maybe when you think about evangelism or evangelize, you actually think about someone from a years gone by like Billy Graham, who would fill stadiums full of people and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Or maybe you think of a TV evangelist who has slick hair and an even slicker scheme to make money. Maybe that's what you think about. I don't know if I captured it for any of you guys, but whatever your thoughts, here's what I wanna remind you of is that the idea of evangelism, and even the word, it's a biblical word, and it's a biblical idea. The word itself, evangelism is just an English way of saying a Greek term. That Greek term is euangelion. I hope you're duly impressed that I'm sharing with you a Greek word, but you can see from the word euangelion that we could get a word in English, like just kinda capture that and English it a little bit and make it evangelism. But the New Testament doesn't translate typically that word as evangelism. The New Testament translates that word as gospel. That's the word that is chosen there, and the word gospel, euangelion, it means good news or good tidings. And this term and all that implies with its action and its words isn't just designated friends for some elite Christian special forces outfit. This is actually for ordinary people like you and me. The idea of gospel, the idea of evangelism, the idea of goodnewsing people, it's for all of us. And in fact, as the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the people at Thessalonika, and of course, these days that's pronounced Thessaloniki in modern Greek, the word gospel is a term that Paul grabbed and he used it to describe, watch this, he not only used it to describe the message that he was communicating about Jesus, he also used it to describe the life that he was embracing in Jesus. This was a twofold aspect of not only our words, but also our lives. Listen to Paul's words in 1st Thessalonians chapter 1, beginning in verse number four, he says this, "For we know brothers and sisters loved by God, that He has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake." Now, there's a lot to say here that I'm not going to say all of what could be said here, and that's true. I could pretty much say that every message, there's a lot to say here, and I don't have time to say, some pastors actually cover over their lack of preparation with, you know, I don't have time to deal with this today. It's because I haven't paid attention to it, I haven't studied it. That's really what that means sometimes, right? There's other times where you really have, but you can't fit it all into the context of a teaching and a message and that's true of these just two verses right here. Even though we're gonna look at the broader context in just a moment, Paul says this, he says, that the gospel that I brought, our gospel did not come, watch this, solely or only with words. He certainly said it came with words, right? He's just saying that it didn't come only with words, but it came with, watch this, power and with the Holy Spirit and with great conviction or sincere conviction. See the idea of power there, it depends on the context. This word dunamis in the Greek where we kind of, we get our word dynamite, it's not actually the same kind of thing, but this word power, depending on the context it's used in will determine what's being spoken of. Paul May be talking about to some degree his life, that his life demonstrated the power of the change that happens because of the message of Jesus and the power of Jesus, and they were able to witness that. It can also talk about the miraculous that happened among them in Thessalonika as well, this idea of power. But there's an interesting way in which the NIV renders this and if we could just pull that last slide back up, if you wouldn't mind, if we could just pull that last one up. He says, it didn't just come with Words, the gospel, but it also came with power with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. And then the NIV chooses to do something here, and it's not incorrect by the way, it chooses to put a period here and make a new sentence, but in the Greek language, there's actually a conjunction there in verse number five, the NIV makes it two sentences but if you were reading the "New American Standard" or the "New King James" or the "Young's Literal Translations" or many others, right? They actually embed the conjunction in there, so that instead of a period here, it would say, "Just as you," well, that, you don't need that. That's where this comes in. "Just as you know how we lived among you for your sake." So you would read it this way, the gospel didn't just, it was not just merely words, but it also came with power with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction just as you know how we lived among you for your sake. Now, why do I include that here, and why do I remind you of that? Here's why, because it shows the force of what Paul is actually saying, in my opinion, slightly better, namely that the power of Paul's preaching of the gospel correlated to the manner of his living out the gospel. You see, this is really important for us. Paul's not just distinguishing between his preaching and his life, he's saying the power that is coming from the preaching is correlated to the life in the gospel. A deep conviction of believing that this is true and I will give my life for it. This is what's unique about this. Why does that matter to us? Here's why it matters, because our lives also impact the power of the Words of the gospel that we communicate. Sometimes people don't hear our words because our lives are in the way. You see, this is why this matters so significantly and too often when we talk about this idea of evangelism, this gospeling, we're talking about it not holistically, we're usually only talking about it relative to our words, and they're very important, but we should also make sure that it involves our lives as well. We instead of, if evangelism is a scary word to you, it shouldn't be by the way, because it's a Bible Word, literally. But if it is a scary word, call it gospeling. I'm using my life to gospel, I'm good newsing, so to speak. You could say it that way, and no doubt the gospel is an actual message that requires words to communicate. It is about the life, the death, and the resurrection and return of Jesus. This is the good news for the world. So the gospel can never only be about our lives. Saint Francis of Assisi got it wrong. You maybe have heard that phrase before, right? Preach the gospel and if necessary use words. He's wrong about that. The gospel will never be less than words. It can be more, but it will never be less than words. But the gospel can never just only be about our lives, it must be with words, but gospeling can and should be more than words. It can just never be less than words because it is in fact the message of Jesus. But we see clearly in this passage in 1st Thessalonians chapter 1, that Paul talks about both aspects of this good news. He talks about his own life and the power of his own life and the power of the gospel of his words, and we should take that to heart in 1st Thessalonians chapter 1. So I'm gonna give you two big eye, just kinda big thoughts right here that maybe we could walk away with. It's not overly complex in fact. Here's the first truth I'd pull out, it's this. "Our lives should testify to the good news." Your life, my life, it should testify to the good news. In fact, we see Paul arguing that for his own life, but if you back up, he's actually saying it about the Thessalonians. Look in verses two and three of 1st Thessalonians chapter 1, here's what it says. "We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." See what? Here's what Paul's doing. Paul's commending the Thessalonian church for how their lives reflect confidence in God. Specifically, here's what he says. He says, "Their faith is what motivates their work for the gospel." And then he says, "Their love motivates their sweat!" That's what that word means, labor, it means intense toil. It motivates their sweat for the gospel. And then he says, "Their hope motivates enduring hardship for the gospel." In other words, their lives are looked at as a stewardship under God, where the faith that they have in God, the love that they have for God and the hope that they have in Christ, basically characterizes their whole entire lives and their decision making. Here's my question to you. Can the same be said of your life? Can your life be characterized by that triad of deep faith in God, deep love for God and deep hope in Christ in all things related to your life? Is that what characterizes your life? Because that's what Paul was commending the Thessalonians for because it added a veracity to their gospel message, because their lives were testifying to it. Or is it a different triad that we actually take faith, love, and hope, and we make it into different things? In other words, faith in money motivates our work, love of self motivates what we will intensely toil for and hope in selfish gain is what motivates what we will endure to be able to get it. You see what Paul's trying to say here is this, your lives should actually testify to the good news and their lives in Thessalonica pointed to the good news and so should ours. So there was a faith, a love, and a hope that they exhibited. But do you know how else their lives were testifying to the good news? Their lives actually imitated godliness, their lives imitated godliness. Listen to how Paul talks about that in verse number four. He says, "For we know brothers and sisters, loved by God, that He has chosen you because our gospel came to you not simply with Words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake, you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. You see, what these folks did is they followed Paul's example of life in the gospel, which was actually Jesus' example of life in the Gospel. Really, as they were emulating or imitating Paul, they were in essence imitating Jesus because Paul was imitating Jesus. When you're imitating someone that imitates Jesus, you're in a good spot. And Paul would say in other times, like when he wrote to the Corinthians, he'd say, "Follow me as I follow Christ," right? Imitate me as I imitate Him. Lives need to imitate godliness. And what did that entail? What did that imitation of Paul's life and ultimately Jesus' life entail? Well, here's what it would mean. It would mean that faith and hope and love would be reflected in their lives because of the life of the spirit in them. But you know what it also meant? It meant that they'd articulate the message of the good news to others. That's what Paul brought to them. That's what Jesus did. Isn't it interesting that Jesus didn't show up and just live a good life? Jesus showed up, lived a perfect life and told people about the kingdom of God, right? Isn't it great that Paul didn't just show up to Thessalonica with a model life, he did, wasn't perfect, only Jesus. He did live a model life, but he also talked about the beauty of life in Jesus and the good news of God's work in Christ for the salvation of the world. This is what you are emulating. That's what Paul did, that's what Jesus did, and they were characterized in their lives because they were emulating Paul, and by extension they were emulating Jesus. But here's the thing, listen, your lives aren't meant to just only imitate. They're also made to model. See, Paul says to the Thessalonicans, he says, "You imitate me as I imitate the Lord." And then by the time, and then he says, "Great job by the way that you've been doing that and you've become a model for the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. So listen, if your imitation is truly of the Lord Jesus in your life, you are a life to be imitated. You're a life to be emulated. So let me ask you this, I wonder if you would pause for just a minute and ask yourself what or who your life imitates. Because this is really important to our gospel witness. Is it an imitation of those people that you just want to accept you regardless of their character? So you start taking on their stuff, right? Well, I gotta be cool. I gotta use all their phrases. I gotta do the things that they do because that's what you're emulating because you need acceptance from that group of people because you haven't realized that you've been accepted in the beloved in Christ Jesus. Or maybe it isn't an imitation of those that you've put on a pedestal because they're good looking or they're popular, or they're talented or they're smart, or they're influential or whatever it may be. And you've decided, "Man, I wanna be like that so I'm emulating those people." Or could it be said of you that your life is emulating Jesus? When people are around you, do they get the aroma of Christ in your life? Or is it an emulation of other things that are around us? The people sense that you live with real, genuine, deep conviction of faith in God, of love for God and of hope in Christ, and that you actually communicate the message of the good news of Jesus in those circles of relationships. Can that be said of your life? Because this is what Paul is commending. He's saying, "Your life needs to testify to the good news." Let me show you a second truth I pulled outta here, it's this, "Our words should testify to the good news." You probably, I telegraph that before all of this, right? You knew this was gonna be the setup. "Our lives should testify to the good news, and our words should testify to the good news." Now, listen to what Paul says in verse number eight. He says, "The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore, we do not need to say anything about it," meaning, your faith, "for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath." You see, here's what Paul does. At first, Paul says that the message rings out from these believers in Thessalonica and that their lives and their witness have been heard all throughout Macedonia and Achaia and even beyond. In other words, he's saying, "Your testimony is out there all over the place." Then Paul reports what other people are saying about them. He's basically gone to all these other places and they are testifying to what's happened in the life of the Thessalonians. He says that others are testifying that they turn to God from idols. Now, I wanna pause here and think about this for just a moment, because you may be saying, "Well, yeah, but is this really about the Thessalonians actually speaking the message of the gospel?" It is and I'll tell you why. I mean, Paul says, their message rang out, right? And you may read that and say, "Well, that's their lives testified to it." Well, and then other people are testifying that they turn to God from idols. Pause right there. This is what I want us to think about. You're in a pagan culture in Thessalonica, a completely pagan culture that worship a variety of Gods. In Thessalonica alone, you had the temple of Isis and Serapis. Isis was an Egyptian goddess, and she was linked to this Greek God, so to speak, named Serapis. And there would be all kinds of pagan rituals and pagan holidays that would occur during these times. But these people who had been transformed by Jesus Christ, now when their families are gathering up to go to the annual pagan festival and they're not going, they've got to explain that. They don't get a chance to just say, "I'm just hanging here being good." No, their family's gonna wanna know. Their friends are gonna wanna know, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? You're not gonna go offer sacrifices at the temple of Isis?" No. What are they gonna say? Why not? And what do you think the Thessalonians who had been made new by the power of Jesus Christ, what do you think that they did? They explained it. What do you think would happen when the Imperial cult, the Imperial cult, was a cult of worship around the divinity of the Caesar, the Roman Caesar, of which Thessalonica was a part of that empire. It was an outpost of the Roman empire, basically a Roman city at that time, even though it was not located in Rome, Italy, right? But it was an outpost of the Roman empire. And then there's people that are wanting to call the Caesar divine and recognize him as Lord, and they're saying, "No, no, no, no, he's not Lord, Jesus is," because they're testifying to the truth of who he is. You have to explain it. They would've had to say, the message of the good news is that the one true God, there's not multiple Gods, the one true God and His Son, Jesus the Christ, this is who I worship. And then they'd have to explain the fundamentals of the good news. There's only one true God. And this God sent His Son Jesus to rescue human beings, because as sinners we're deserving of His judgment, we're deserving of His wrath but the sinless savior came and lived among us, died on a cross for our sin to satisfy the justice of a holy God against sin and then rose from the dead demonstrating that His sacrifice was sufficient and He will return to finally and completely judge the world and bring salvation and bring new creation to His people and rescue His people from the wrath to come. And yes, wrath is coming. They would've had to communicate that. So they are using their words to be able to say that, I know what this is like, I've been in these positions before, and maybe you have as well. When I came to faith in Jesus, it was in the summertime of 1989, and I was between my sophomore and junior year at the University of Georgia. Life prior to that was wildly ignorant and stupid for me, wildly so. And you're like, "I can't picture that Jerry." Good. Because my life's been changed. I'm a trophy of God's grace. But my wife, who's known me since sixth grade, she remembers who I was and she thanks God for who I am. But that's by God's own grace. But here's the thing, when I showed back up, I got, I came to faith in Christ in the summertime and had to go back into the same environment, in the same apartment with the same roommates who were doing the same stuff. And when I walked in, they were sitting around the table, and let's just put it this way. They weren't drinking Kool-Aid, and I was the last one of the roommates to arrive. I set my bags down, they had it going already. It was Mach 10 with the hair on fire right then. And they said, "Jerry, we've got it ready for you. Let's throw it back. Let's go." And I said, "Guys, that's not me anymore. That's not who I am anymore, Jesus has rescued me. I've recognized that I've been a sinner, lived in sin, walked away and rebelled against God. But God in His mercy showed me His kindness by opening my mind to the beauty of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. And if we would put our faith in what He's done on the cross, dying for our sin, rising from the dead, that I could be forgiven and I have been. And because I've been forgiven, I don't wanna break the heart of the one who set me free from the things that were holding me in ******* and in chains." And I want you guys to know, look, I'm not here to judge. I love you, but I'm a different young man. I'm not that guy anymore, I had to do that. I was by myself, it was a line in the sand and it wasn't easy but God by His strength and His power gave me the opportunity to do it. 

I was by myself. It was a line in the sand and it wasn't easy, but God, by His strength and His power gave me the opportunity to do it. I've had to do it other times, even as an adult. When I moved here, when I moved here, I got to start getting to know all our neighbors and stuff, and they were like, "Hey, we're going to this place. We went to this place, wherever we were and had pizza and whatever," and I'm getting to know some of the dudes, right? It was just us guys. And then I'm writing with one of them, and then they're all going to this bar that I, nope. Like one of those. Nope. It wasn't just a regular one, it was a nope. And I couldn't just say, "I'm not allowed." I'm 32 years old. Do whatever I want, but I had to be able to articulate with the guy giving me the ride. This is what my life is founded on. It's on Jesus. I love Jesus. He has saved. And by the way, this guy that gave me a ride, they ended up, they were our next door neighbor. They ended up moving not too long after we had an opportunity to witness to them stuff. We found out some months later after they moved, I think they moved to Pittsburgh, that they had come to faith in Christ in Pittsburgh. And we didn't lead them to Christ, but we got to plant seeds in their life for the sake of the gospel. You see, this is what we do, and you're going, "Okay, is this something I can do?" You better believe it. Watch this, "Ordinary people living out faith in Jesus and speaking the message of Jesus is the good news the world needs," ordinary people, Paul's writing to ordinary people in Thessalonica, you and I, ordinary people living out our faith in Jesus and speaking the message of Jesus is the good news the world needs. Like I said earlier, this isn't just for some elite Christian special force unit called evangelist. This is for everyone. Every single one of us can be good news people. Every single one of us can gospel in our lives. Why don't we illustrate that a little more specifically? There's a wonderful faithful brother who has been a part of our church for a very long time, longer than I've been here named Dave Kennedy. Many of you know him. And Dave's wife, Judy, went to be with the Lord this past September, so it's not quite been a year. And he ended up bringing her home to live out the remaining days back in July. It was almost this exact time last year, so I think July of last year. And then she went to be with the Lord, I think in September. But while they were there, what do you think happened? There's medical care people and all that they're coming in. What do you think they were doing? Even in, listen, even in suffering, their lives were showing their faith in Christ, and their words were communicating the gospel of Jesus. And God got in it. Dave's actually in Maine, but I talked to him by way of Zoom, so I want you to hear from him.

- She died September 30th. I brought her home July 1st. And you know, I had prayed even back in the nursing home, "Lord, please take her. I don't wanna lose her. But to watch somebody not breathing and yet, she never once complained, never complained about the situation she was in, that she didn't have enough air in her lungs to speak."

- [Host] Yeah, hm.

- So she would, you know, people would say, "Show me your smile," or they'd walk in our house and all those accepted the Lord said, and others that came too, "There's something different when we walk in this house, so we know it's the presence of the Lord." And I told her, and I've told it, I preached it up here already, that as long as we have breath in our lungs, God's got us here for a reason. But I believe that the reason that God didn't take her was that there was still people that needed to come to Him. And it was in that first week and a half is when Elise accepted the Lord. Then they'd accepted the Lord about a week or two before he was the nurse, and he accepted the Lord about a week or two before Judy passed. And then Liz accepted the Lord. She knelt beside Judy's bed holding her hand. And she said, "That's the best decision I ever made." Liz was sent to the Lord at 8:30 on a Monday morning, and at 3:15 in the morning, Tuesday morning, Judy took her last breath. The reason they came to Christ, I mean, God will save anybody at any time, but was because she was where she was.

- [Host] Mm-hm.

- In a bed, in our living room, still breathing after I had prayed, "God, please take her because of her, what she was going through." And it may have been for Liz, for that last girl. And when people say, "I can't do this and I can't do that," it's not about what you can do, it's what God can do through you.

- Strong testimony. Ordinary people in the ordinary and sometimes difficult circumstances of life, trusting God with their lives and communicating the beauty of the gospel with their words. There's another family that has a beautiful testimony as well. Butch and Lisa Gerald are part of our family and their daughters and part of our church family here. And Butch shared with us among their family that they had a really significant health crisis that they were facing with Butch's niece who's only 20. And it was really, it was heartbreaking to hear about that, but I want you to hear what God did in that process. Here's Butch.

- At the beginning of June, our family received some devastating news about my niece, who's 20 years old. She just graduated college, was married this past August. She was diagnosed with Choriocarcinoma, which is in a very aggressive form of cancer. The doctors had discovered that the cancer she had was all over her body. She had six tumors in her brain. The cancer was in her lymph nodes. It was in her stomach, in her reproductive organs, and all over her body. And she was given 6 to 12 weeks to live, as a result of this devastating news, our whole family and many extended family, friends, many friends even here from the chapel that didn't even know her were praying and just lifting the whole situation and our family and Jacqueline up in prayer. There were plans to go to Tijuana, Mexico to receive treatment because some of the major reputable cancer facilities here in the US, Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and others would not accept their insurance. So they were looking at other options and going to Tijuana to get treatment. And then on June 16th, she had a series of seizures. She had been averaging one to two seizures a day, but she had six seizures on June 16th after the fifth seizure, her pain was so excruciating and the challenges with the result of these many seizures that she had had that day, she came out of the seizure and told her husband that he needed to call family. And because she thought the Lord was bringing her home at this point, and when the family was there with her, she went into her sixth seizure. And it was during that sixth seizure that she raised both hands towards heaven, sat up and then fell back into the mattress. And their family thought she had passed at that point, but she was still breathing. And then just seconds later, she pointed to heaven with her left hand. She sat up, opened her eyes and said, "I'm healed. The cancer is gone. There's no more pain." As you can imagine, that was a very challenging moment for them. They immediately went to the hospital, began to have tests rerun that had already been taken. The doctor that had originally diagnosed her who was a believer, he was rerunning the same test and had other medical people coming in, running tests. And it was confirmed through that evening of the 16th and the next morning of the 17th, of June 17th, they had determined that her cancer was completely gone. And there was no medical explanation for this.

- [Congregation] Come on!

- She had not received any chemo, no radiation, no treatments whatsoever. There was a team that came together and they began to review Jacqueline's case. And they came to the conclusion that there was no medical explanation, no medical miracle.

- After seeing my scans and my blood work and now seeing my blood work now, they ended up trusting in the Lord and getting saved today just because of seeing that this is not medical reasoning that this happened other than God, God did it.

- As a result of the team of oncologists and doctors that came together. Three of those doctors professed faith in Christ and came to know Jesus as a result of this. It was an exciting time to hear how God used what seemed like was gonna be a loss to our family, but used it for His honor and for His glory. Jacqueline is doing great. She's pain-free and just praising the Lord.

- All glory to God. Nobody else could have done this, but our Lord.

- Sometimes God will with His gospel, bring it in power just like Paul was talking about. And that power may be the miraculous. Listen to me though, when God does the miraculous for someone, it's not just for them, it's for others. I'm looking for my miracle, not your miracle. It's actually what God's going to do and it's on your behalf, but it is for other people because God had His eye on three oncologists that He wanted to bring to Himself by faith. How beautiful is that? You see, just like these dear brothers and sisters that I just shared with you, that they will be, they're able to be witnesses in how they lived and what they said about Jesus. You can be too. I can be too. You, ordinary you, ordinary me, we are God's plan A to share the good news of Jesus by how we live and by what we say. Unfortunately, as Tom Rainer's research suggests, it takes 85 church members to reach one unchurched, unbelieving person. It's an 85 to 1 ratio, why is that? Either we don't have the same deep conviction that Paul and the Thessalonians had about God's work on our behalf in Christ, or we're not sharing that with anyone or both. You see, here's the thing, friends, when I'm convinced of, we are often our greatest barrier to evangelism. We are, yes, culture works against us. Yes, spiritual warfare is real and will be waged against us. But most often our greatest barrier to evangelism is ourselves. Maybe it's because we haven't really turned from idols, like Paul said, the Thessalonians did. Maybe the idols of money or the idol of success or the idol of leisure or the idol of self continue to get in the way of our witness. And instead of turning away from these idols, idols meaning things we've made more important than God, we serve them rather than serving God. If we really had what Paul described, my gospel came to you, our gospel came to you with power, the Holy Spirit and watch this and with deep conviction, that's what Paul said, with deep conviction. In other words, this truth is what I'm building my life on. I am willing to live for this truth and die in this truth, then we will experience His powerful presence on our behalf. That's how we do that. So let me ask you, are you building and staking your life on what you truly say that you believe? Do you believe that people who die without Jesus will spend eternity separated from Him? Because if you believe that, what are you and I doing about that? Are we living lives that those people could see the image of Jesus Christ's power to change a life? Are we living in that way? Are we communicating the hope that can be found in Jesus Christ? Or are we just sitting aside doing nothing? Do we truly believe that Jesus is better than anything and everything else and that He's worthy of our trust and worthy of our lives? If so, do our lives reflect that? Or are we just fans of Jesus? We give Him a like on Instagram, but we're not actually disciples who follow Him with our whole hearts. We can't just remain spectators, friends. We are God's plan to show and share the good news of Jesus to the world, with our lives and with our words. As I told you when I was reading that book called "42 Faith," that reflected on how Jackie Robinson and Rachel Robinson's faith impacted their own lives and the lives of others. The author whose name is Ed Henry, he talked about visiting the grave site of Jackie, when he saw the headstone earlier and saw the inscription that was on it. But when Ed visited it, there was a flag. I don't know that it was an American flag, but it was some kinda thing draped over the gravestone and written on that flag was another quote from Jackie. Here's what it said, "Life is not a spectator sport. If you're gonna spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you're wasting your life." I could not agree with him more. It's time for us to be in the game, but this is no game. There are lives that are at stake here, and God has commissioned us to be His plan A, He wants us to live lives that know Him so deeply that it gives credence to the good news that we actually share. And then He wants us to share that good news. So how might God ask you to live that out, now, this week? Will you ask Him? Will you not be scared to ask Him how He might want you to live that out? No matter, you're like, "Well, I'm in a circumstance." Yeah, lots of people are in circumstances. I just shared two testimonies of people that were in circumstances. And if we yield ourselves to God and we allow Him to use us in that moment, God may do more than we asked or imagined. You can do this because He will give you the grace. He will provide the power and the strength that you need. Don't worry that you think you're just ordinary, because ordinary people living out faith in Jesus and speaking the message of Jesus is exactly the good news that the world needs. Let's bow our heads together. In a moment we'll be dismissed and before we are, let me share this with you. You might be here and have never put your faith or trust in Jesus. We've got some folks that'll be standing right down front here, men and women that are down here. And here's what I'd love for you to do. I'd love for you to take a moment when I'm dismissing us in just a second, and I'd love for you to just come and speak to one of them and say, "You know what? I wanna surrender my life to Christ. I wanna give my life to the Lord Jesus." They'd love to talk to you about what that means because God's loved you so much that He gave His only Son that whoever believed in Him wouldn't perish, but would have everlasting life. He's demonstrated His love for us in this while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. And if you've never put your faith and trust in Christ and experienced the forgiveness of your sins and new life in Him, there's no more important decision you could ever make in your entire life than that because it has eternal consequences associated with it. God's done all He can do. And if He's drawing you to Himself, I hope that when we dismiss in just a moment, you'll come and speak to one of these men or women that are standing down here and take an opportunity to say yes to Jesus. Or maybe you wanna take a moment to pray with one of these folks because you sense that the Lord is maybe speaking to your own life about something that He's asking for you to do, for you to be a witness in your life and in your words in a very specific way. And you might be a little intimidated, you might be a little scared. Hey, have somebody pray with you. Like, do that right there where you're seated, maybe a friend or family member around you, or maybe you wanna take one of these folks by the hand and just say, "I need you to pray with me about this. I feel like God's asking me to do this." Whatever He's asked you, do it, do it. Father, I pray that you would do your good work among your people for your glory because that's what you do. Lord, we know that how You work is sometimes beyond our ability to understand. Sometimes You testify to Your glory through our own suffering as the Thessalonians receive the gospel in their suffering. Sometimes You choose to do a miraculous work and a miraculous thing like You did in Jacqueline's life, so that other people might be able to see and hear and experience the good news of Jesus. I don't know how You wanna do all that You wanna do, but I just pray You would do it for Your glory and for our good. I ask in Jesus' name, amen.