The Path

By Craig Etheredge: The path you choose determines your destination.

This is a simple way to share the Gospel. The Gospel begins, “in the beginning.” In our day and age, we cannot assume someone has a Biblical worldview, or even believes in a personal God. It’s best to start with the idea that God exists, that He created the world, and that He has a plan for your life.

As you sit down to share the Gospel, you want to start with the reason God created each one of us in the first place. When God created the world, He created people with the desire and capacity to know Him in a deep and personal way. All of us were created like this. We all desire to know God and discover His purpose for our lives.

As you share the Gospel, start out by drawing a line with an arrow on the end.

You may say something like this: “The path you choose in life determines your destination. If you are living in Dallas and you want to go to California, you won’t get on a highway headed east. You might end up in Georgia, but you will never get to California that way because the path you choose determines your destination. And in the same way, the path you choose in life determines what kind of life you will have and where you will end up. This line represents God’s path for your life. God created every person to know Him in a deep and personal way.”

Psalm 16:11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Write “Path of Life” along the line.

Then continue: “Along this path you can know God. You can experience His peace and discover His purpose for your life, and you can have assurance that you will be with Him for eternity when you die.”

As you say those words, you can write them at the end of the path line — peace, purpose, assurance.

The Detour

We have traded God’s way for our way.

After you have drawn out God’s path of life and written the words “peace, purpose and assurance” at the end of the line, you are ready to describe the problem.

You may say, “While God has a path that is good for us, not everyone is on that path. All you have to do is look around to see that there is a lot of evil and hurt in this world. Something has gone terribly wrong.”

At this point, you can draw a line coming off God’s path that turns and goes in the opposite direction.

Say, “The problem is that we have lost our way and veered off course from God’s path. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way.” The Bible calls this straying away from God’s path sin. Romans 3:23 says “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In a very real way, we all have fallen short of God’s path. We have taken our own path, exchanging God’s way for our way. Although we may not realize it, we are going the opposite direction from God.

Now draw a vertical line in front of “my path” on the diagram, showing a dead end.

Say, “Ultimately, if we continue down this road, we will hit a wall. Usually this comes in the form of a crisis or difficulty. It is then that we realize we are missing something. We don’t have a relationship with God. We don’t have His peace. We don’t know His purpose. We don’t have assurance of what will happen to us when we die. Oftentimes, this wall is God’s way of getting our attention.”

You may want to pause here and see if that resonates with them. However, if we continue to go down this road, then ultimately we will hit the wall of God’s judgment.

Romans 14:12 says, So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Each one of us will have to stand before God and be judged for our sin. Because God is holy and perfect, He must judge the wrong in the world and the wrong in us.

Romans 6:23 says, For the wages of sin is death. We have sinned against God, and our sin is leading us down a road that is far from God and will end in not just physical death, but spiritual death and separation from God forever.

This is the bad news of the Bible. We’ve lost our own way, and we are powerless to get back on our own.

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By Craig Etheredge. Used by permission.

The post How to Share the Gospel appeared first on Discipleship.org.

Source: How to Share the Gospel

The post How to Share the Gospel appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Jason C. Dukes: How do you think of “the Gospel”? How would you summarize it if you had to?

Do you think of it as “Good News”? Is it the most important message to you?

While Jesus certainly intended us to present a “Good News” message to a world full of people who are seeking, I suggest that it is more than merely something we present to others.

Before I give my alternative, let me suggest you download another eBook offered by Discipleship.org called The Discipleship Gospel Primer. It offers rich wisdom and compelling insight about the importance of the Gospel we preach. The Gospel we preach must move us toward being disciples of Jesus who make disciples with Jesus. I recommend it to you as a supplement to what I’m saying here!

The takeaway I want to highlight from The Discipleship Gospel Primer is that the Gospel is more than just an assertion that we are sinners and Jesus died for our sins. That is part of the Gospel, and we must present those facts. But the Gospel is much more than those two facts alone, and it must be presented over time and with our actual presence.

It’s like what a friend of mine named Tommy emailed me about the other day. He said he had heard me speak recently on “what the Gospel is not,” and he typed the following question, which I thought was worth sharing:

What if the Gospel, the Good News of the Kingdom of God, was about Jesus making a way to invite all mankind to become children of God, to live with Him in His kingdom, and to participate in His nature, experiencing His presence in an eternal life lived now and forever with Him? If this were the Gospel we upheld, wouldn’t it change the story of the church today?[1]…

Note: I am not saying presentation of the Gospel is not necessary for conversion. I am saying presentation is, in fact, necessary but most often in the context of this “presence” type of friendship. Sharing the Gospel on a whim with a stranger is not the norm in the New Testament; it is the exception. I write this so that we don’t feel pressure to make it the norm in our disciple-making efforts today.

Written by Jason C. Dukes

Jason and Jen have been married since August 1998. They met at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. Since August 2015, they have lived with their seven kids and yellow lab in the Nashville Tennessee area, where Jason coaches and equips disciples making disciples, churches starting churches, and churches renewing their intended purpose. Jason has helped start Westpoint Church, House Blend Cafe, the Reproducing Churches Network, and the Church of West Orange. He has also served as a student pastor, college pastor, lead pastor, and multiplication minister. Learn more about his writings at www.LiveSent.com.

NOTES:

[1] Shared here with permission.

The post Shifting From Gospel Presentation to Gospel Presence appeared first on Discipleship.org.

Source: Shifting From Gospel Presentation to Gospel Presence

The post Shifting From Gospel Presentation to Gospel Presence appeared first on Passion for Planting.