Monday, February 13, 2006

Watered down gospel

I was having coffee with a friend tonight and evangelism came up. Throughout our conversation we realized that as Christians often times we water down the gospel message in order to get the 'sale'. What I mean by that is we offer Jesus and how much he died for you and wants to be in your heart. We talk about the Holy Spirit and his assistance in our lives. We talk about the fathers love almost consuming us with his love. But I think that all too often we set people up for a false pretense of a relationship with God and in essence they get a skewed version of christianity.

We need to be brutally honest with non christians. They need to realize that thier troubles will not go away. They will still be tempted by the same temptations. Life will still be tough and at times suck. What they do need to know is that as they accept Jesus by faith (did you know that there is no place in the New Testiment where people 'asked' Jesus into thier hearts....they accepted him through faith.....interesting) Anyways as we talk about salvation and life with Christ we need to tell people the truth. So many people get siderailed when they pray for salvation, then they go into thier daily life and they get frustrated because the elevated feeling they had is gone and they are back feeling the pressures of life.

There is so much to learn about sharing the gospel of Jesus with people. I do believe thought that if we simply share the "gentle Jesus" gospel we will be setting people up for a false understanding of Christianity.



5 comments:

Jeffrey said...

http://www3.calvarychapel.com/library/Tozer-AW/PursuitOfGod/0.htm

need I say more

CWG said...

thanks Rene
LBF 2
It was fun having you over...come anytime

Jeffrey said...

41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

Matthew 25:41-42

It would appear to me Jesus has given us very specific and objective instructions. Despite everything else if we simply fail to do these few things we can expect to be "cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels"

Anonymous said...

Worshipwarrior:

It seems to me that modern x'tians do emphasize works before grace. We first have to believe ancient stories to be true, then accept their central character(christ) into our lives, then continue to live as x'tians, and only then will we receive god's grace(eternal life). As Marcus Borg has said "grace that has conditions attached is no longer grace". True grace should be this - when we die and stand before our Maker he will say to us "you are forgiven, will you join me in my kingdom?"

Roger said...

Read:
A Door That No Man Can Shut - http://whilethereistime.blogspot.com