ACTUALLY LET'S START NOW.

Ok ok so the sermon today was a continuation in the series of sermons about evangelism. Sadly, the word often carries with it the connotations of annoying, rude, belligerent overzealous Christian on the street forcing pamphlets on you that you will promptly throw in the bin. It really shouldn't be like that, however, because how on earth is that showing anyone the love of God?

"Evangelism is not salesmanship. It is not urging people, pressing them, coercing them, overwhelming them or subduing them. Evangelism is telling a message. Evangelism is reporting the good news" (Richard C. Halverson)

So, reporting back from Pastor Daryl: there are three tools, or 'weapons' that we can use in evangelism.

1. Prayer
Jesus always went away by himself to a lonely place to pray before going into the public eye. If he needed to talk with God before evangelising, how much more do we?
Prayer is the only thing we can do to invoke God. “God does nothing except in answer to prayer.” (Wesley) I don't know if that's going too far, but it does hammer the point home. Also, I can't remember who, but someone said that God does His greatest works through prayer. If you think you can't do anything to help someone, you're wrong. So get praying!
Prayer is our shield against the attempts of Satan to poke and prod us away from God. Through prayer we can turn any of Satan's weapons against him - if he uses fear, then we can pray to God in that time of fear. If he uses anger, we can yell out to God to help us. If he uses jealousy, monetary concerns, illness, grief - we can pray. And by using these wounds as a springboard for more urgent, genuine prayer, we can really piss Satan off.
It's not us, but God who will bring whoever you're evangelising to, to Himself. We can't do it. So pray for them, even (or especially!) if they're really negative towards Christianity.

2. Gospel
This is the grounds on which we base our faith. The gospel is our evidence, and a bloody good bit of work it is too. It's far more historically solid than most of the definitive 'historical' texts, but so many people don't know that. So do your research, read up, and with a really solid knowledge base, you don't have to flounder when people ask you questions. (Just me or does this sound like an ad?? o_____o;; )

3. Your story

People like stories. Advertising knows this. All I have to say is, 'charter boat'.
You can tell people as much as you like about the gospel, the bible, etc etc, but if nothing's changed in your life, or you don't talk about how God's ridiculous grace and mercy and love have affected you, then your argument is pretty poor. Your story is one of the most compelling tools, so get to know it, and be able to explain very precisely how God has worked in your life. Write it down. Take an hour and 750 words and start from the beginning (a very good place to start). Then have a concise (not concise in the way that the Concise Oxford Dictionary is concise, though. Really properly - maybe 50 - 100 words if that, or do that 25 words or less thing) version, in case someone asks you and there's no time to go through the whole thing.

Pastor Daryl had a story in which another pastor was just leaving this boat party his family had been invited to, and he had one foot on the ladder of the party boat, one foot in the dinghy he was going back to his houseboat his family was holidaying on, and these people poked their heads over the side and said, 'Oi, why Christianity, why not any other religion? Aren't they pretty much the same?'. He had one sentence: 'The difference between do, and done'.

In any other religion, it's what you have to -do- to earn forgiveness, heaven, eternity, nirvana, enlightenment, whatever the goal is. But with Christianity, our sins are already paid for, in the most shockingly, seemingly irrationally generous way possible.

Ok I'll continue this next time!!!

Neglect

Alright so I've lapsed into my usual state of nothing happening in blog for a million years, then random whiney post, then nothing again. Sorry :( Here we go again...

I'm totally numb. I have no idea why, but I can't seem to feel anything about anything. I don't know whether it's just a low point generally or maybe I've thrown up all the walls subconsciously to try to protect myself from a breakdown, or maybe I'm cocooning, which is what Mum says I do when I've got a big performance up ahead. All I have, though, is a competition tomorrow night that I have no chance of winning anyway. It would take a hell of a lot of pain for me to decide I'd rather be numb than feel, so I don't know what's happening and it's worrying me a lot, in a sort of fuzzy, noncomittal way.

I don't know what I'm doing - or what it is I'm doing whatever it is I am doing things for. I've become supremely selfish, spending my whole day practising, and for what?? So that I can become better at viola. I get up, practise, go to rehearsal, laze around on facebook, have half-arsed conversations that I don't want to face anything big in, practise, eat the dinner my parents have prepared and that I'm 'too busy' to help with, then practise, then go to sleep and wonder why I'm feeling crap. I've become a really lame friend as well: I don't even know if I want to help my friends because I genuinely want to make their lives better or even just see them smile, or because I want to do it because it'll make me feel like I'm being a good friend. This post is selfish because come on, how am I helping anyone with this?? Sure I'm reading the bible and writing in my prayer journal, but is it because I want to or because I think I should? I don't know why I'm doing things. I want to show that Jesus is in my life but I'm doing a pretty shoddy job of it. And it's not like this post is going to help anyone but me, because it's really just an outlet for me to yell about how lame I am. I see people everywhere around me rejoicing in the work that they're doing for God, and in how they're spurring each other on and bringing people to Jesus, and making a difference in each other's lives, and FINALLY I can feel something, but I think it's just self-pity because, 'oh, I'm a crap person, boo-hoo'. I think to myself, I want to help!! But then either never get around to it because I'm busy bloody practising, or because I think they've gotten better when in fact it's just me not seeing the signs.

But of course, in these things, there are always things to be thankful for - just 10 minutes ago, God showed me a really practical way to help my friend, and it was something I'd been thinking about for a few weeks but never got around to doing. I need to make more time in my life for people.

Meh, sorry for the lame rant post! I shall actually update this thing more regularly and with not pooey angst from now.