Monthly Archives: March 2013

Keep on Sharing the Gospel

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“I think one of the main reasons we struggle to tell people about Jesus is that deep down we just don’t think it will ever work. We think we’ve already tried to share with people before and nobody was interested. We imagine sharing our faith to be nothing but muscling up our strength to go do our duty and embrace failure. We soldier on, expecting fruitlessness, ‘did it, pastor.’

Most of us lack faith that God actually has people prepared for us who will listen. This is where the doctrine of predestination is the best news in the world. We have not yet exhausted the number of God’s elect. God has more people to be saved, so keep on sharing.

When Spurgeon was asked why he kept preaching the gospel when he believed in election, he replied, “Because the elect don’t have yellow stripes down their back.” In other words, he could not see who was elect and who was not, so he had to keep sharing, believing that God had more people who would listen.

The sovereignty of God is the greatest motivation for mission. God still has people, preordained from the beginning of time to be responsive to the gospel message. You may think that you have already shared with everyone who would possibly be interested in the gospel, but it is not so. Remember: that the Spirit of God goes before you. As the it says in Zachariah 4:6, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.’

God is more interested in saving people than we are in telling people how to be saved. So as we keep sharing, he will keep providing some to be saved.”

– Kevin DeYoung

God’s Role in Regeneration

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The new birth is necessary and in fact vital before a sinner can enter God’s kingdom. Unless he is first born again he can in no way enter the kingdom of God. However, in making this very clear, Jesus does not then provide a “hot to” list for Nicodemus to become born again. This new birth is impossible to achieve, humanly speaking, and requires an act of God without any human merit, will or cooperation. Yet most of the Church in our day, though very familar with the John chapter 3 passage, has missed this essential point completely, and even devise entire evangelistic strategies and outreaches instructing people to “pray a prayer” so that they might be “born again.”

Dr. John Macarthur, in a teaching series on the Gospel of John, exposes popular falsehoods and informs us as to the true teaching of Jesus in John chapter 3, verses 1-10:

Personal Prayer

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Do my personal prayers make any difference?

Dr. John Piper responded to the question with a short theology of prayer by explaining the significance of the golden censers (bowls) which hold the prayers of the saints (see Revelation 5:8, 8:3–4). In part, he explained the meaning of the passages like this —

Those bowls have two functions. They are censers. They are like incense, and in the presence of God, that incense is really pleasing to him. God loves the aroma of the prayers of his people. Which means that if you are on your face crying out for a lost loved one, or for some difficulty in your church, that very act is pleasing to God. It is not wasted. Quite apart from the answer to that prayer, the prayer itself is precious to God. That is the first meaning.

Second, there’s going to come a day when those bowls are full. In other words, the billions upon billions of prayers that have been prayed — “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come”— the last one is going to be prayed and God is going to look at that angel and say, “Pour it out on the earth.” And he is going to take the bowl of prayers, like fire, and throw it on the earth and the final purposes of God are going to be achieved.

And I think we need to preach to ourselves that our prayers are part of the causality of the final victory of God. He wouldn’t have asked us to pray that his kingdom come if he didn’t mean for our prayers to be an instrument in the coming of the kingdom.

So it is simply astonishing that when you think of the billions of times the Lord’s Prayer has been uttered, all of those times when it has been uttered in faith, God has put it in the bowl and it’s filling up and filling up. And the day is going to come when that bowl will be poured out as the consummation of the age. So no prayer is wasted.