A Thousand Questions Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiNBmNl88Pk

This link is for a 10 and a 1/2 minute video that is really powerful. Theme goes along great with my last post of Workers Needed.

Workers Needed

So last Thursday night I went to Milligan College in Carter County TN for the evening worship service for a conference called Youth In Ministry. I went because a band was playing worship there that I absolutely love and I haven’t seen them in about two years. The band is Marc Imboden and Year’s Wages (at least the last time I heard the name, that’s what they were calling themselves). The worship was amazing, but to be honest, it wasn’t even close to being the best part of the night.

I didn’t know it when I decided to attend the night of worship, but Tommy Oaks was preaching that night. In fact, he had been the preacher for every night of the conference. I had only seen Tommy in person one other time in my life. He was at Cincinnati Christian University for a three day event about three years back while I was a student there. The really weird/cool thing is that my parents, way before I was born, used to be youth sponsors. They would work weeks of church camp during the summer and on more than one occasion had worked weeks with Tommy.

The whole concept of this conference is helping prepare teens to possibly go into full-time vocational ministry. The night that I just happened to be at seemed to be the climax of the week. Tommy’s message was simple, to the point, very clear and yet is was one of the most powerful messages I’ve heard delivered in a very long time. In fact, Tommy himself was almost in tears on many different occasions throughout the night because of how passionate he was about the message he was delivering from God. It was simply something I could only describe as a God moment. God was fully in that place and using Tommy to deliver His message with passion.

That message came from two separate passage, one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament. Looking back at it now, I don’t think I would have ever put these passages together, yet it makes perfect and complete sense to do so now. The New Testament passage came from Matthew 9:37-38 which states, “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field’”. The Old Testament passage is actually one of my favorites from the Old Testament. It was the calling and commissioning of Isaiah found in Isaiah 6. Isaiah found himself in the presence of the Almighty God and the presence of God made him feel so unworthy and scared. This, however, is not the part that Tommy chose to focus on. His focus was on what happened after Isaiah was cleansed by one of the angels. The focus was actually just one simple verse. Many of you have probably already figured out what it is. Isaiah 6:8 states, “Then i heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’”.

While these two passages have a lot to say separately, they say volumes more when used together. Tommy ended his message by giving the teens a little quiz, although he gave them the answers. The answers came straight from the verses. He asked, “What is plentiful?” and they were to answer “The harvest!”. “What are there few of?” and the answer was “Workers!”. “So what are we to do about it?” and the answer was “Pray for workers!” After asking this a few times, Tommy moved on to Isaiah 6:8 and did the same thing with that verse. “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” and the answer was “Here am I. Send me!”

After asking these questions a few times he went on to say that he was going to have two invitations that night. The first one was he believed was something that every single person in the room that night could accept and commit to. That invitation or commitment is what is driving me to write this at almost 2 AM. He asked us all to commit to make this part of our daily personal prayer life. In fact, he asked that we pray for this in every prayer that we pray. That prayer is simple, but is very very important and I believe can have a great impact on this world. The commitment is to pray “Lord, please send workers into the harvest” every time we pray. Now I will admit that I have already failed at keeping that in every prayer or even praying that every day, but I am committed to making that a daily part of my prayer life because this world needs more people doing God’s work full time.

The next invitation he had was something that not everyone was going to be able to accept, and that was completely natural and fine. It was for anyone who felt God’s call in their life to enter full-time vocational ministry to stand and from the depth of their hearts answer God with, “Here am I. Send me!”. Now there were about 100 teenagers there that night and from what I could tell, half or maybe a little more than half of those teenagers answered God’s call in their life to enter full-time vocational ministry. You talking about an emotional scene, it was so uplifting to see teens making the same decision/commitment that I had made 7 years before them.

After Tommy closed out his message, Curtis Booher (my youth minister from back in my youth group days) got up to close the night out. He started to give the same quiz that Tommy gave earlier that night. He asked, “What is there a lot of?” and the teens answered “Harvest!”. He then asked, “What is there not a lot of?” and they answered “Workers!”. Then Curtis said something that was the perfect end to what had just happened. He stated, “But not as few as we had before tonight”.

Now I write all of this to get two points across. Matthew 9:37-38 still means the same today as it did the day that Christ first said it. What I mean is that there is a plentiful harvest out there just waiting but we don’t have enough workers. We need to prayerfully ask God to send workers into that harvest. So my first point is to ask that anyone that reads this blog and considers themselves a Christian to make the commitment with me and many others to pray on a daily basis for God to raise up workers for this harvest.

My second point goes along with Isaiah 6:8. If we commit to praying daily for workers to be raised up, some of us might start hearing God asking “But whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”. Not everyone will hear this call, but I truly believe that if we pray for God to raise up workers, He will. If you start feeling like He is asking you “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” be prepared to answer “Here am I. Send me!” Take it from someone who has personally experienced this. I tried to not answer for a long time, yet it never went away. Don’t waste your life.

Please pray with me for workers to be sent into this harvest. Be prepared, however, to answer that call if God starts leading you down that path. I feel like something big is getting ready to happen in this world. It seems to be close to catching on fire for God, but we need workers. “God, please, I beg of you from the depth of my heart and soul to send workers into this harvest. I am answering you again, and will answer you this way for the rest of my life, ‘Here am I. Send me!’. I know You have great plans in store for this world. Let us passionately serve You with everything that we have and use us, O God, to help bring in Your harvest! I love you with all of my heart God. Hear this heartfelt prayer. In Your Son’s precious name, Amen”

Delay

It's been a while since I posted anything on here. While I plan on somewhat regularly posting, this has been a really long gap in my writing. This is partly due to filling out a bunch of applications/questionnaires for ministry positions lately and partly due to finding the time to actually sit down and write. I do have a new post that is in the works, but I have no idea how long it will take me to get it done. I am in the process of trying to answer the question "What Makes You Believe in God". While I know the answer to this personally, I am trying to answer it from as many different angles as I can and it is proving to be a long process. I really enjoy writing posts for this blog and just wanted to explain the delay in my posting.

Kraig

How Much Do You Have To Hate Someone...

I saw this video the other day that has really hit me hard. The longer and more in-depth I think about it, the more I see God speaking to me and all Christians. It is amazing to see how God uses people to teach us His truths, people that sometimes do not even believe that God (or any god for that matter) even exists. I was not aware until I saw this video that Penn from the famous Penn and Teller duo is a very strong atheist. The video that I saw (which I will post a link for later in this post) was a clip from Penn as a response to a gentleman that attended one of his shows and then after proceeded to give Penn and Bible and witness to him.

While Penn openly states in this video that this man did not change his mind and he still “knows there is no god”, I believe 100% that God is using Penn to teach Christians an important lesson on evangelism. The reason I say this is a statement that Penn makes about those of us that believe in an eternal life and whether we should be telling people about it. First of all he says that he does not respect people who believe what Christians believe and do not try to tell others about it. Then he drops what I consider to be a huge bombshell and possibly the most amazing thought on evangelism I have ever heard (and I have spent my entire life in church and four years in Bible college). Penn states, “How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them”.

Here is the link for the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3hM

I do not know about you, but I had never thought about it this way. As a Christian, evangelism, or telling people about what you believe, is something that should be of top importance. While this is how it should be, I have not experienced this a lot in my own life or observed it a lot in other Christians that I have had the pleasure of being around on a regular basis. In fact, I would even go as far as saying it is a topic that most Christians would be uncomfortable talking about. This is because either we truly do not care about other people or we are so scared about what other people will think of us that we think it better just to keep the most amazing gift ever given to ourselves. Another possibility that I see some people using as an excuse not to tell people about Christianity is they believe that only ministers or educated people can effectively do this. It might even be that they think it isn’t even their job to bring others to Christ.

No matter what our excuses are, we need to stop making them and start telling/showing everyone that we come into contact with the truth and gift that we were so freely given. There is no excuse that could ever be enough for us to not tell people about our wonderful loving God. In fact, Christ even commands us to go and bring others to Him. Matthew 28:18-20 states, “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (NIV). This is one of the last things Jesus told his disciples before ascending into heaven. It is a command that all of us are suppose to follow.

This is not an easy command to follow. In fact, I would argue that because Jesus commanded it, it isn’t really supposed to be easy. People will reject what we have to say. We will face persecution from following this command. Jesus never promised us a peaceful life in which no one would hate us for being His followers. In fact, He told us that this would not be the case at all. Jesus states in Matthew 24:9-10, “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,” (NIV). Following Jesus is not easy. Following Him comes at a price and following His commands comes at a price as well. While Jesus never promised us it would be easy to follow him (in fact He promised it would be hard), He did give us something to hold on to. This is found at the end of the Matthew 28 passage I quoted earlier. Jesus said, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (NIV). What could really go wrong with Jesus promising us that He will always be with us? It won’t be easy, but we have the King of the universe on our side.

I want to focus on what Penn said again for a few minutes. I really feel that his statement shows that he, as an atheist, might actually understand what is at stake with evangelism and why we should be doing it better than most Christians. “How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them?” Let that sink in a little bit more. We are supposed to love everyone but it really is an act of hate to let someone go through our life without trying to show them what we have to look forward too when this world is over. We should be motivated by our love for humanity more than our fear of persecution. All we can control is what we do, and we should try to show everyone what we have.

I do not believe that this means that we have to get in people’s faces every time we see them and try to convert them. We need to be outspoken about who we are and what we believe, but we have to come across as sane people who just care about others enough that we want to share what we believe can lead to everlasting life. Not everyone that we come in contact with is going to listen to us or end up believing what we believe, but we can still plant that seed. We can evangelize in many many different ways, but I feel convicted that we are supposed to evangelize anywhere and everywhere we go.

Again, there are no excuses that can get us out of that. You don’t have to be the best speaker in the world or know the Bible from cover to cover. In fact, I would argue that one would not even have to tell someone about Jesus to evangelize. One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from St. Francis of Assisi and I think it fits this post very well. He states, “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words”. That hits it right on the head. We should always be trying to bring others to Christ by our actions. Actions speak much louder than words, but our words should back up our actions. No matter what, we should be trying to bring every person we meet to a loving relationship with Christ. No excuses. When it seems hard to tell someone about your faith and what you believe, look back to what a self-proclaimed atheist once went on video and said, “How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them”. Also remember that Jesus promised to always be with us even to the end of the age. Let’s all try to make an effort to plant seed wherever it is we go.