Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Friday, April 7, 2017

"And then he [Jesus] told them, 'You are to go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere.'"¹

From my youth up I have believed that people who have never accepted Jesus as their Savior and have had their sins forgiven by God, according to God's Word, the Bible, will be lost and without hope for all eternity. Because of this belief I have done my best to do something about this calamity. Every year during my teenage years our small church had a week of "revival meetings," the purpose of which was to reach our community with the gospel. But we didn't spend any money on advertising to make these meetings known to the community. Furthermore, one of the pastor's teenage sons and myself (also a teenager) were the only ones who would ever go house to house to invite our neighbors to attend our special meetings. One year I was the only one to do this.
 
So many Christians say that we are concerned about winning the lost to the Savior but, in reality, how many of us do anything about it? I agree with the Buddhist monk who said, "To know and not to do is not yet to know." To translate this into our Christian terminology it could be stated this way: "To believe and not to act is not yet to believe because I only truly believe that which motivates me to action."

According to Mickey Anders, "Someone suggested that we imagine this fishing club where the members merely sit around swapping fish stories about the big one they landed, the whopper that broke away, but they never stepped into a boat or cast their line in the water. What kind of a fishing club would it be whose members were content to admire the trophies on the wall, but never go out and actually go fishing?

"A lot of churches are like that. They sit around bragging about the days when their boat was full of fresh fish. They look nostalgically to the days when the main purpose of their church was to go fishing, to reach others for Christ. But they never actually go fishing; they merely talk about going fishing. That's not what we're [supposed to be] about as a church."²

As Jesus said to his followers, "You are to go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere."³

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you that when I go and tell others about you and your saving gospel message, you have promised to always be with me.⁴ I admit that I am afraid but I am available for you to use me to share the gospel with others and to be 'as Jesus' in some way to every life I touch. I cannot do this of myself so please fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to do this. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Mark 16:15 (TLB)(NLT).
2. Mickey Anders, "Go Fish."
3. Mark 16:15 (NLT).
4. See Matthew 28:19-20.

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