-
How Our Witness Testifies To Who We Follow
Contributed by T.j. Conwell on Mar 7, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: We are called to witness; to disciple; to give others what we received and tell about the One who has redeemed us. With this knowledge, Christians need to consider the answer to one crucial question in their life: "God, can I be obedient to you?"
- 1
- 2
- Next
How our witness testifies to who we follow
Galatians 6:7-10
Introduction
- If the church is faithful to obey, souls would always be impacted for Him
- Today, we will look at our role in church growth (impact of outreach)
- Centering on our witness for Christ and how our lives must reflect Him
- Everything we do should be a mirror image of who Christ is in our life
- Read Galatians 6:7-10
- Pray
- Before we can honestly serve the Lord, we must understand …
Point 1 – God cannot be mocked (we reap what we sow)
- Before we can truly witness with our lives, we must understand that God is paying attention to what we do.
- Our witness really must be consistent in who we are in Him
- Re: God cannot be mocked; which means His ways cannot be fake
- When we mock something, we are acting with a complete lack of respect
- We are saying that this or that really isn’t important
- Example: when we say we will pray for someone, and we don’t – we are mocking God’s thing … Prayer! God created prayer for us to use … not vice versa.
- Another example: When we make a commitment to do something – in the name of the Lord – to not do that thing is mocking God.
- Consider for a moment a garden that you want to plant.
- All year long you are thinking about that garden – all the crops you want to plant, the harvest that is going to come from it – and when it comes time to plant the garden you never lift a finger.
- Result: Months later … do you think you will have a successful garden?
- The same applies to how we work for the Lord.
- If we sit and consider all the things we would like to do, but never get out of the pew to do them, we won’t be very successful either.
- When I read verse 7 I see two things to consider.
- First, I see that God commands that we work for Him in everything that we do – from our personal to our visible life – we are to be working constantly for the Lord.
- Second, I see that we obviously reap what we sow.
- Consider that old garden again … if we never work in it, it will be a pile of weeds that we will never see a harvest from.
- Many Christians are walking around telling people that they have these beautiful lives of worship and service to God, when in all actuality, they have nothing more than a pile of weeds.
- Therefore, if we are acting like we are doing all these wonderful things – but are doing nothing – we are mocking the very principles that God established for His believers.
- We must always be willing to understand the effect of reaping and sowing
- If we do nothing, we get nothing.
- If we work for the Lord, we see results from the Lord.
- It really is that simple – we reap what we sow
- No work produces no results of God in our life
- But, when we do work for the Lord, there are ALWAYS godly results!
Point 2 – What is the result of sowing?
-Verse 8 shows us that no matter what we do, there will be results.
- When we sow into our sinful nature, we get the world’s results
- It is what the world has producing for thousands of years … sin
- Consider this: As Christians, we allowed the removal of prayer from schools for one reason – we were too lazy to take a stand – and because of that schools have deteriorated to the point where police officers are in attendance every single day.
- This is not my opinion – but a fact of life we are now seeing every day!
- We conformed to this world to not hurt feelings, and now we have results.
- Consider what else we are allowing today in the name of not making any waves? Marriage issues? Abortion? Sinful desires? Greed?
- APP: Where do you stand church?
- We need to stand on the Word of the Lord.
- When we do things to please the Spirit of God, we bring eternal life not only to ourselves but to others around us!
- When we press forward to deliver the Word of the Lord in our witness – we are preparing to see a harvest from the Lord Himself.
- But, if we say nothing no one around us will know there is a better way!
- No one around us will ever come to repentance!