BE CONTAGIOUS: WEEK 1
Scott Bayles, pastor
Adapted from “Motivations for Evangelism” by Bill Hybels
Several weeks back we distributed a Congregational Questionnaire that asked questions about your attitudes toward church growth, worship, and our education program among other things. After reviewing the results of those surveys, we noticed several trends.
I, for one, was thrilled to see that 100% of those responding want see new members being accepted into the life of the church and would be willing to support efforts to provide additional facilities, staff, or programs if it meant more effective outreach. That tells me and the rest of our shepherds that, collectively as a church, you want to reach unsaved and unchurched people with the message of God’s grace and love. You want to see lives changed and souls saved. You want to see Blooming Grove being to bloom and grow.
However, those same surveys also showed that not one respondent believed that we, as a church, are actually reaching the unchurched and unsaved very adequately. And, the majority or members believe that we are doing a “less than adequate” job training members in witnessing skills. We hear you and we agree. It’s sad that what is arguably the most important purpose of the church seems to be the area that we’re lacking in the most, but we are aware of the problem and we’re taking action to correct it.
Next month, we’ll be holding a six-session training course, titled Becoming a Contagious Christian, which will equip you to be able to share Jesus, your faith, and your church effectively and comfortably in a way that fits your own personality. I’m confident that together we can grow and learn how to become more effective in this area and I have high hopes for what God might do in each one of our lives as a result. That’s especially true because our Sunday messages for the next four weeks will sync up and synergize with the content of the seminar that many of you will be participating in at the end of this series. That reminds me, there is a sign-up sheet in our foyer. The seminar will be October 15-16. Dinner will be served on Friday, lunch will be served Saturday. Baby-sitting will be provided downstairs. If you haven’t signed-up yet, do it today!
Right now, I want to start this series by asking the question—WHY? Why become a contagious Christian? What motivation is there for putting energy into communicating our faith? I want to jump right in and offer you two reasons why every one of us should be motivated and stay motivated in developing a contagious faith—first, because we love God and, second, because we love people! That should be our motivation in everything we do, right!?
• REASON #1: WE LOVE THE LOST!
Let me start by talking about our love for people—specifically, spiritually lost people. Jesus commands us to all people. He said, first of all, “Love one another” (John 13:34 NIV). That refers to loving each other within God’s family. But Jesus also said, “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:47 NIV). That means treating the people who hate you and persecute you with love and goodness, praying for them even. On top of that, Jesus also said, “Love your neighbor” (Matthew 22:39 NIV). This refers to people don’t persecute the family of God, but they’re not part of it either. These people are your friends, your relative, your co-workers, the teller at the bank, the gas station attendant, and Wal-Mart associates. These are people that you interact with everyday, but many of them are spiritually lost because they don’t know God!
Do you remember the series of parable that Jesus told in Luke 15? First he tells the story of the lost sheep, then the story about the lost coin, then the prodigal son. Each one of those stories teaches the same lesson. The shepherd went out in search of the lost sheep, because the sheep mattered to him. The woman searched for the lost coin because it mattered so much to her. The father waited so intensely for his son to come home, because even though his son was lost he still loved him so much! People matter to God and they ought to matter to us too. If you love spiritually lost people then you search for them and reach out to them!
As a member of God’s family, you have this vast spiritual stockpile and inheritance overflowing in your life and it needs to be shared. Let me share a story with you form the Old Testament. The Bible says, “King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and besieged Samaria. As a result, there was a great famine in the city. The siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a cup of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver” (2 Kings 6:24-25 NLT). Yeah, that’s disgusting! But that’s how desperate these people were for food. Some were so desperate that they started resorting to cannibalism. One woman killed and cooked her own son.
Outside the city walls lived four men with leprosy. They weren’t allowed to live inside the city because people still thought leprosy was contagious. One day they look at each other and ask, “Why should we sit here waiting to die? We will starve if we stay here, but with the famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have died anyway” (2 Kings 7:3-4 NLT). So the four men start walking out toward the enemy camp, but when they reached the outskirts of the camp, no one was there! What they didn’t know was that God had come down and chased all the enemy soldiers away, leaving behind their empty tent, supplies, their horses, their donkeys, and—most importantly—their food!
Half-starved, these four lepers start going from one tent to another eating and drinking whatever they could find, packing away the gold, silver, and supplies—it was like winning the lottery! But after a while their consciences got the better of them. One of them looked at the piles of food they had, then turned to the others and said, “This is not right. This is a day of good news, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone… Come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace!” (2 Kings 7:9 NLT). So they went back home, told the gatekeepers what had happened and the city was saved!
You see, this stockpile was so big, this miracle so amazing, this news so wonderful, that silence was an unthinkable crime at that point!
What you need know is—your stockpile, your miracle, and your news is even bigger, more amazing and more wonderful than theirs! The Bible says, “In Christ, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world” (Ephesians 1:3 NCV). As a Christian you have a purpose to live for, power to live on, people to life with, principles to live by, and the promise of eternal life to look forward to. There are spiritually lost and starving people all around us and if you love those people like God’s commanded, then you have to share with them what God has given us! I like what Bill Hybels has to say about this. He says:
More and more these days, I’m finding it difficult to watch people go from bar to bar, toy to toy, fun-fix to fun-fix, lover to lover, fad to fad, trying and crashing and then trying again and crashing again! I feel like telling every “scavenger” I meet out there: “Stop picking at refuse piles! There’s a stockpile in the kingdom of God. There’s plenty of God’s grace, there’s plenty of his favor, there’s plenty of his love. It’s spilling over in my life and you could probably live happily on just the overflow, if you’d open up your life!”
When you are living with an awareness of the size of your spiritual stockpile, I hope you’ll feel compelled to share with the people around you, because you love people—they matter to God and they matter to you!
• REASON #2: WE LOVE THE LORD!
The second motivation we have for developing a contagious faith is our love for our Lord, Jesus! I know that you love Jesus, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. But Jesus said something very challenging on the night before he was crucified. He said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15 NIV). You see, we demonstrate our love for God by living according to his instructions. He is our Leader and he has instructed us very clearly to be his messengers in this world!
After his resurrection, Jesus told his followers, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people everywhere about me—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NLT). If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, then that command belongs to you! And if you love God, you’re going to obey that command. We, as God’s witnesses, as God’s ambassadors, or agents, are “PLAN A” in his strategy for reaching the world. He chooses to use individuals like us as spokespeople for him. I’m “PLAN A” and you are “PLAN A.” And there is no “PLAN B”!
And keep in mind, Jesus said that you are going to receive power. You’re not on your own. The Holy Spirit is going to make you an effective witness. I have found in my own life that when I’m humble, pure, in tune with the Holy Spirit, and living with a spirit of anticipation about being an effective agent, I have plenty of opportunities to be used! But when I am a little off-base spiritually, not so tuned in to the Holy Spirit, when I am grinding out my own agenda and saying, “Lord, I’m sorry, I’m really not that concerned about what you have for me today, because I’m overwhelmed by what I have to get done,” then I find myself with little to no opportunities to be a spokesperson.
I love God and I want to obey him. I’m motivated to think that God would entrust his great message to somebody like me for the purpose of spreading it to others! Also, because I love God, I’m motivated to help grow his eternal family!
In Romans 8:29, Paul gives us some insight into God’s purpose for life, the universe and everything. He said, “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29 NLT). Essentially what Paul is saying (and you really need to go back and read the whole context to get this) is that God created you and me and everything else to accomplish two goals: (1) to grow the biggest eternal family possible, and (2) to develop within each member of his family a heart like his. God wants a big family—many brothers and sister! And because I love God, I want the same thing!
William James once said, “The best use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” The truth is—only the Kingdom of God, only the family of God, is going to last. Everything else will perish and vanish away.
Conclusion:
Why become a contagious Christian? Why share your faith with others? Why? Because we love the lost and because we love the Lord! They deserve our love don’t they? Especially Jesus! He’s wonderful. He’s the way, the truth, and the life! Leading another person to Jesus and into his family is the greatest contribution you could ever make to someone’s life and the most fulfilling and rewarding thing you’ll ever do.
Four weeks from today, as a follow up to this series, I’m going to give a message adapted from one of Max Lucado’s books, titled simply 3:16 and designed to communicate the core truths about how a person can understand and receive God’s forgiveness and leadership through a relationship with Christ. That will be a service we’ll all want to bring friends and family to. So would you start now by praying and asking God to use you to reach out to and bring at least one other person? And would you also be praying that God would prepare and lead us together to make that weekend one of the most powerful, highest impact weekends that we’ve ever had as a church? Let’s ask God to be here working in a powerful way—and then let’s invite our friends, believing it’s going to really happen!
Oh, and by the way, if you’re one of those friends and you’re already here today, we’re really glad you joined us. I hope you see that we really care about you and your spiritual journey and we want to help you consider and sort out what it means to know and follow Christ.
Invitation:
If there is anything that we can do for you right now, or if you want to talk to someone about taking the “next step” whatever that might be, becoming a member of the church, or making Jesus your forgiver and leader of your life, just let us know.
