East End

3-23-08

What a crowd on Sunday! God is awesome! Many times we must go out into the community to spread the word; however, yesterday the community came to us. I remember being asked by the pastoral search committee before being hired, “will you grow discouraged if people do not come up to be saved very often?” My answer was and still is the same, no. All I can do is turn my life over to Christ, allow Him to speak through me, and then leave the results up to Him. Was everyone that needed to be saved, saved yesterday? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that God isn’t already at work in their lives. Isaiah 55:11 says, “So shall My word that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” This is an encouragement to me because it tells me as long as I allow God to speak through me on Sunday mornings and any other time I get to share the gospel, God is going to use it to work on someone. That takes all the pressure off of me. As long as I am prayed up and studied up and yield my life over to God, He will take care of the rest. Would it be great to see people streaming down the isle to turn their life over to Christ, sure it would but it is not necessary to validate the calling of God on my life. This is the problem many churches and pastors find themselves in today. They want to compare their scorecards to see who is leading in the “Won souls bowl.” God never called us to keep score, He only called us to play the game. In other words, at every opportunity we must share the gospel with people. We can not let the fact that people don’t turn their life over to Christ right then discourage us from sharing our faith with the next person we meet. Because if we do that, we may not share our faith with the person who God has ready to turn their life over. Can you imagine not sharing the gospel with someone who was ready to accept Christ and then they die without Christ? Yet this is precisely what many Christians do on a daily basis. God said that it will not return void, but it will accomplish what He wants it to. I hope and pray that as you go through this week you will ask God to give you opportunities to share your faith. And when He does, don’t worry about the outcome. You simply say what God lays on your heart to say to that person and allow Him to work through you. After all, you can’t save anyone, only God can! Let’s share our faith with people now more than ever and watch God work like we have never seen Him work.