Tonight marks an important step in the ministry of Lakeside. We are encouraging every parent, Sunday school teacher, nursery worker, wee worship leader, children’s church leader, and every person volunteering for VBS to come to the church tonight at 6:00 pm. We are eager to hear your ideas, thoughts, and candid reflections on all aspects of our children’s ministries.
Next month we have our StudioGo Vacation Bible School, and we want to rally the troops. We want to brainstorm, pray, and promote this event like crazy. We have over 80 adults working to make VBS a success. Just wait until you see the smiles on all the little faces as kids have a blast learning about Jesus.
If you can take a moment, please pull out your green communication card. If you are planning on coming tonight, please tell us! And let us know how we can pray for you andwhat you are thinking about. And remember to be here next Sunday to celebrate Father’s Day!
Are you intimidated at the thought of doing evangelism?
This morning we come to Colossians 4:4-6. These verses have had a huge impact on my attitude about evangelism. Now that we have learned all these exciting things about Christ’s identity, his work of redemption, and how to live for him, how do we get about the work of evangelism? How do we share Christ with other people?
If you have ever tried to share your faith, you know how intimidating it can be! Often we become some paralyzed by fear, and we never get around to sharing our faith. We don’t want to mess things up. We don’t know what other people will think. Secretly we are hoping that God will send someone else. Truth be known, sharing Christ with people takes an extraordinary measure of faith. You will never feel more reliant on God than when talking to others about Christ.
We can be honest. It’s uncomfortable telling people about Christ. It’s uncomfortable not feeling in control, andnot having confidence in directing where a conversation might go. Well, Colossians 4:2-6 is written for reluctant evangelist!
How did the people of Colossae hear about the gospel?
Before we explore these verses, I want to remind you that the book of Colossians begins with the apostle Paul reminding the Colossians how they heard about the gospel in the first place. Colossians 1:6-8 (NIV) says, "All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,and who also told us of your love in the Spirit."
The Colossians heard about the gospel because of a man named Epaphras. Friends, it only takes one person talking about Christ and just look, an entire church pops up in Colossae! Jesus never set foot in Colosse. Paul hadn’t traveled there. Just Ephaphras. And look at the extraordinary way God worked through the simple testimony of Epaphras!
If you think God just uses superstars, you are wrong. God prefers to use the uneducated, the tongue-tied, the ugly, the poor, the clumsy, the weak, the powerless, and the forgotten. In fact, the more you have going for you, the harder it can be for God to use you. Epaphras needed one thing to be used of God. He needed faith.
When it comes to evangelism, we have to let it be all God. Otherwise we’ll fall flat on our faces. Not our education, not our eloquence, not our strength, and not our personality will allow us to evangelize. Nothing but God.
Colossians 4:2-6 (NIV) says,"Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."
Five principles for sharing the gospel of Christ.
Before anything else, these verses command the person of faith to pray. Prayer is always the starting point for evangelism. Before anything else, we must get on our knees and pray.
We should pray faithfully.
First, we should pray faithfully. "Devote yourselves to prayer," Paul says. Prayer is never in vain. It is never an act of futility. There isn’t a single activity that is more fruitful than prayer. If you want to be effective, pray. There is a reason prayer is always the first order of business in everyNew Testamentletter. If you don’t invite God to show up, then very little else will happen.
Now we don’t learn to pray faithfully by nature. Prayer takes discipline and it takes perseverance. It’s hard to pray faithfully without other people holding you accountable, without scheduling it into your day, or without making it part of your routine. I make it a point to pray while driving, while mowing, while walking, and while exercising. It takes a lot of practice, but I try to use my idle time to pray.
We should pray confidently.
Second, we should pray confidently, or as Paul says, "being watchful and thankful." When we pray, we should already be watching for God Spirit’s to move in a person’s life. Our attitude should never be, "This is futile.God isn’t listening.God’s not going to work in this situation." The Bible has already told us that it is God’s will that none shall perish, but that everyone come to a knowledge of the truth. It’s always God's will for people to come to faith in Christ.
When we pray, we can count on the fact that God has already begun working to get the attention of our unbelieving friend or foe. We saw this in our Life Group just last week. Someone asked that we pray for their neighbor, and we prayed not knowing that God was already at work. One week later the neighbor we prayed for showed up at church. If you’ll get serious about prayer, you'd better watch out. God will work.
This last week I mentionedthename of a person I have been praying about to Lara. As we pulled into the parking lot of a store, I told her I felt like giving up praying for this person, becausehe hasbeen so unresponsive. And as we walked into the store who do you suppose happened to be there? We should pray faithfully and confidently, watching expectantly, and already thanking God for being at work and answering our prayer.
There is one thing, however, God will never do no matter how faithfully and confidently we pray. God will never usurp the will of those we pray for. God will convict the sinner, he will call the sinner, and he will invite the sinner, but the sinner can still harden hisr heart. Ifhe does, keep on praying anyway. The whole goal of prayer is to maximize the activity of God and the work of His Holy Spirit so that a person has every possible chance to come to faith.
One little prayer isn’t going to get the job done. We need to be stubborn and persistent in prayer every single day. We want a person to be showered with opportunities to believe. And God will do it.
We should pray specifically.
Third, we should pray specifically. In Colossians 4:3-4 (NIV) Paul asks, "And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should."
I suppose it is okay to pray, "God help all the missionaries. God help our church reach people. God help our church grow." But what if you were to choose a particular missionary, or church leader, or preacher, or person to pray for? And what if you prayed for God to open up a door for the gospel to a specific person, or a group of people, or a city, or a neighborhood, or a tribe?
If you are so paralyzed by fear that you cannot share your faith, at least become a faithful, confident partner in prayer! Stand by the door and pray for every person that comes on Sunday morning. Pray for cars passing by the church on the highway. Pray over every chair in the auditorium. Walk through your neighborhood, praying for each home. Pray for each person in your office and for each and every clientwho walks through the door. Pray for me every Sunday that I can hit a grand slam in my preaching, and proclaim the mystery of Christ clearly! Pray for our worship teams, our Sunday school teachers, our life group leaders, our volunteers, and our various missionaries.
If we don’t all pray, we all become less effective for God.
We should live wisely.
Fourth, we should live wisely. Colossians 4:5 (NIV) says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity."Prayer is a vital component of evangelism, but it is not the sum total of evangelism. In evangelism, we need to be very careful how we act toward people who are outside of Christ. And when opportunity presents itself, we need to have the courage to step through the door that God is opening up.
When it comes to living wisely, I think Paul has in mind that we would actively search for opportunities to do good for people who are living apart from Christ. Epaphras was a servant and faithful minister of others. If we’re going to do good, it means we're going to have to slow our schedules down and learn to pay attention to other people’s needs. A lot of times we're oblivious to the people around us who are hurting. We can be so absorbed by what we're going to do next, or with what we want to say, or even with having our needs noticed, that we miss the big one! Sometimes we see an opportunity, but then we're too lazy or selfish to carry it through.
When we pray, we need to keep in mind that it is often our love, our acts of kindness, our acts of service, and our compassion that God is going to use to soften hardened hearts. With prayer must come a willingness to live wisely when we're in the midst of those outside of Christ. And with prayer must come a willingness to trust God and to take a courageous step through whatever door he opens.
We should speak wisely.
Along with this we need to speak wisely. Colossians 4:6 (NIV) says, "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." This is an extraordinary verse. One of our temptations is to speak sharply toward persons whose behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes offend us. We may even take things a step further, and flat out condemn those outside of Christ, and start arguments and the like. Sometimes we can be "right" while being completely "wrong" in our approach.
As Christians, our approach must always be one of grace. The core of our message is grace. If we have to err on one side or the other, it's best to err on the side of grace. Grace invites, it restores, it encourages, it forgives, andit leaves space for people to grow and mature. Without grace none of us would even have a chance. Grace perseveres, it's kind, it's patient, it's slow to anger, it's abounding it love, and it relents from sending calamity. So our basic disposition toward others must always be one of grace.
But notice how Paul wordsColossians 4:6 (NIV)."Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt...." The salt is the truth with which we're to speak with people. We must become fierce advocates for faith in Christ and righteousness, yet in a grace-filled way. This is no small task. As a pastor I wonder if we ever truly strike the perfect balance! Yetwe must tryto be always full of grace and to speak the truth of Christ in love. We can disagree without being disagreeable. We can judge without being judgmental. It takes wisdom, it takes prayer, and it takes godly counsel, but it is an ideal that we must strive toward.
So let’s step back and consider a composite picture of an effective evangelist, per Colossians 4:2-6.
•Effective evangelists pray faithfully.
•Effective evangelists pray confidently.
•Effective evangelists pray specifically.
•Effective evangelists live wisely by doing good to others, especially those outside of Christ.
•Effective evangelists speak wisely, using a good measure ofgrace and truth.