Prayer and Evangelism

Pray for the salvation of those you know.

1 Timothy 2:1 “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men…”

Pray that God would provide an opportunity to be a witness to those people.

Romans 1:16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”

Pray every day.

James 5:16-18 “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.”

Don’t feel guilty if you miss a day or two, or three.

Psalm 51:16-17 “For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise.”

This is not about success or numbers. You are already successful because you are loved by God and are a lover of God, notwithstanding your failings.

Be ready to explain not only why you are a Christian but why it is reasonable to be a Christian.

1 Peter 3:15 “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;…”

Don’t worry about not being able to answer every question or how eloquent you are. It is God who opens people’s eyes and saves them, and He will certainly not be restricted because you are not super awesome. In fact, He loves to choose those who are not super awesome to do His work so that in the end, everybody realizes that it’s Him who is super awesome.

Prayer and evangelism are inseparable.

Ps 51:11-13 “Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You.”

Your heart will be softened and warmed by the fire of God’s word and His presence when you are praying. Your love for the lost and your desire to see them saved from death will grow in direct proportion to your experience of God’s love and mercy for you. Without this fire that is only found in prayer, you may get burned out because your motivation is misplaced.

Expect to draw near to God. There are no guarantees about anything else.

James 4:8 “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

You may or may not experience outward success as you share the gospel. Bad things might happen to you as a result. People might not respond to the message. The Bible is full of examples of people who endured all kinds of external hardship and lack of external success while drawing near to God. (David, Jonah, Joseph, Abraham, Moses, Paul, John, and Jesus to name a few)

Father Email

My sister and brother-in-law, Suzanna and Othniel, live in Tacoma, WA, and had their first child, Ariel, last September. A few days ago, Suzanna wrote this and sent it out to the family along with a picture of little Ariel:

We can’t get over the delight of parenting the little pumpkin pictured in the email. If anyone were to try to harm our innocent little girl in any way, it would take an army to keep us away from intervening immediately and wrathfully. Most of us have heard the words, “God loves you,” and “Jesus died for you.” But have you ever thought about Fatherhood? Have you ever thought what it would cost a Parent to reject His child upon seeing him or her in the throes of the worst possible pain? What about that moment when the Father saw Jesus the Innocent hanging in anguish from a tree, and did not intervene to save Him? Have you ever realized that the Father let the wrath you and I deserved fall on Jesus as He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Bible says that Jesus bore our shame on the cross, and God had to turn away in that moment because His holiness could not bear to look upon it. Spend a couple minutes researching child sex trafficking or the Holocaust and that “theological point” becomes easy to understand—human wickedness is too disgusting to witness. Some of us have considered the cost Jesus Himself paid in going to the cross, but what price could you offer any parent to allow that to happen to their child? Did you know He did it for the sake of redeeming you and me? “BEHOLD, WHAT MANNER OF LOVE THE FATHER HAS GIVEN UNTO US…” Did you have any idea you were so loved and valued, that your worth was priced so high? If you have ever been tempted to think that you are not precious, imagine telling that to a Father who paid such a cost for you. And if you have ever been tempted to think that Jesus is just one of many ways to God or have thought you could satisfy Him by being a good person, again, imagine telling that to a Father who paid such a cost, because one day you will have to. Finally, if you’ve ever been tempted to think that your pain is too deep to be healed or your (heart, marriage, family, identity) is too broken to be restored, imagine a Father describing the above trauma to you and then telling you that after the horrendous death, His Son came back to life and now they live together in perfect wholeness and joy. Your pain, be it ever so deep, is not deeper than His healing. YOU ARE SO VERY LOVED.

The 'tract' (or essay) I wrote - "What is Christianity?"

The following is the 'tract' that I wrote and handed out to people on the street (I referred to this in my last post.) Feel free to use and reproduce this for ministry purposes.
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It is NOT…

…a political agenda or a vision for the optimization of the human condition, although it does speak about right and wrong, justice and injustice, and therefore can have implications for those in government.

…a purely social philosophy that seeks only to end relational problems among humans and their organizations (i.e. personal fights, divisions, and wars), although it does speak to the relationships between people as a matter of primary importance, seeking to bring peace, mercy, justice, and reconciliation in the human world.

…an opiate for the masses, a comfort pill for intellectually weak people to swallow so that they don’t have to deal with difficult facts, although God and His truth are the greatest sources of comfort and refuge in the universe.

…a philosophy that empowers some people to exploit and subordinate other people or cultures for their own selfish gain, although it does give us a justification and motivation for systems of legitimate human authority and governance whose purpose is to serve all people by establishing peace and justice.

…defined by individuals or groups for themselves. Instead, it is defined by the absolute standard of the Word of God, the Bible.

…simply a system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules, which is what most people identify as a ‘religion.’

It IS…

…a personal relationship with the one true, living, present God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

To understand where we are as humans in relation to God, we must understand the history of God’s dealings with man. The majority of the Bible consists of the account of this history. In the midst of this historical record is God’s revelation of who He is, who we human beings are, what actions God and mankind have taken, and what we ought to do now.

Before the existence of the universe, God existed forever from eternity past; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit had fellowship among themselves, and this fellowship is called the Godhead, or the Trinity. God is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-present (omnipresent), and all-knowing (omniscient.)

God created the universe from nothing. He spoke, and the universe, including matter and energy, existed.

God created angels as well as some other beings who were in His own image, humans. Being in God’s image means that humans possess certain attributes of God such as being an individual person, having a spirit and soul (emotions, will and mind), the ability to love and have relationship with others, as well as a multitude of other attributes such as creativity and the desire for pleasure. Yes, that is correct, the desire for pleasure is one of God’s attributes that he has shared with us; I will speak later about how God fulfills this desire that He created.

It is clear that in the process of creation, God retained all authority, the rightful ability to command all things, both that which is without a will and those who have wills. In the former case, God exercises both authority and control; all creation except for humans and angels instantly conforms to His command without exception. In the latter case, God exercises authority but not complete control. He chooses to delegate a measure of authority to humankind over the rest of the creation. He willingly partners with human beings and shares the authority over the creation, for the most part giving autonomous control of themselves to human beings. In so doing, He initiates fellowship and friendship with humankind while God and human mutually derive pleasure from the creation. He glorifies Himself both through the display of His power in the process of creation and through the display of His love in fellowship with humans.

In contrast to the irresistible commands God gave to the rest of creation, the commands He gave to humans were able to be disobeyed because of the measure of autonomous control He granted them.

God is perfect, not because He conforms to some external standard, but because He Himself is the standard of perfection. Humans were created perfect in the beginning and remained so as long as they remained in unadulterated fellowship with God. When humans chose to disobey God’s command, they were necessarily choosing to break fellowship with God. Once their fellowship with God was broken, they were by definition ‘dead,’ since God is the source of life. He is life; nothing can be ‘alive’ that is apart from Him. Although their bodies were originally intended to persist forever, the death that was wrought in their spirits because of separation from God eventually manifested itself in their physical bodies. Also, because of the authority God had given humankind over creation, the physical condition of the universe was tied to the fate of humans and therefore manifested the same death in the form of decay, most notably identified by the second law of thermodynamics.

Although their fellowship was broken, God’s love for humankind lived on, as strong as ever, unfading, unrelenting, and not willing to give up. God passionately pursued a renewed fellowship with humans in the same way that a man pursues his bride.

After the break of fellowship, the fall of humankind, some humans sought fellowship with God, even though it was imperfect because of their fallen condition. I don’t know why this happened with some people and not others; my best guess is that it was attributable to some combination of God’s calling individuals and the response of those individuals. No one but God knows the full extent of how or whom He attempted to have relationship with or to what extent various people sought Him or responded to Him. One thing is for sure, and that is that God is just and merciful. To whom He directs favor, calling, and mercy is completely up to Him, and He does not choose on the basis of the merits of the person called. He chooses according to His own purposes, which is completely right for Him to do. We must realize that God’s highest regard is for His own glory, not for the glory or pleasure of humans, and rightfully so. It would be wrong and unjust for Him to have an ultimate regard for anyone or anything above Himself and His own glory, because He is the highest and greatest of all, the most beautiful of all, and the One in whom all things have life and existence.

It is with this in mind that we should approach the subject of God’s choosing of the nation of Israel to be the bearers and preservers of His truth and desires for the benefit of all humankind. The Jews were and are no better or worse than the rest of humankind. It is God who is glorified in their choosing, not the other way around. There are volumes that could be written on this topic, but we will summarize the points that are pertinent to a basic understanding of God’s pursuit of reconciliation with His beloved creation, human beings.

First, the very process by which He chose Israel to bear His Word for the world’s benefit is intended to show how God freely and arbitrarily extends His plea for reconciliation to all people. The Bible tells us that Abraham, the physical ancestor of the Jewish race, became God’s friend through having faith in God, or in other words, believing that whatever God said was true and whatever God commanded ought to be obeyed. It was because of God’s personal, yet imperfect, relationship with Abraham that God decided to set Abraham’s descendants apart as the bearers and preservers of His Word. If God’s choosing one man’s descendants to be set apart for a special purpose seems unfair to you, it might help to think of this from a personal perspective. Although you may care about all the children in the world, is there not a special place in your heart for the children of your close friends?

Second, the people of Israel were chosen with a purpose and a plan in God’s mind to reconcile every single human being (both Jews and non-Jews) to Himself. Through the physical lineage of Israel, God chose to incarnate one of the members of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus, in order to save the world. The lives and circumstances of the births of those in the genealogy from Abraham to Jesus were intended to be prophetic pictures of how God would repair the relationship between Himself and humankind, with the intent that by reading those accounts, we might better understand God’s plan of salvation for us. In particular, certain recorded events in the lives of David, Ruth, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were orchestrated by God to show us over and over again that He would bring reconciliation between Himself and humans simply through faith; it would not depend on the good works of the individual. Through the lives of these Israelites, He showed time and again that His calling of all people to be reconciled to Himself was completely born of His own desire and choice, not prompted by any merit or goodness of the humans he was calling and irrespective of their good or bad deeds (Jacob), their social or economic standing, or their race (Ruth.) Just as in the process of creation, God is using the process of reconciliation to display His glory, both through His power and His matchless love for all people.

Third, Israel was the bearer and preserver of God’s revealed Word. In order to let humans know the truth about who He is and what He wants from them, God has spoken to a variety of individuals throughout the centuries, prompting them to write down what He has spoken as Scripture, and the collection of Scripture is the Bible. God supernaturally revealed some key points in human history to Moses, as well as the specification of the manner in which God was to be worshipped and His strict law was to be obeyed. Again, much has been written on these subjects, but I will draw out the points that will help in understanding the path to reconciliation with God.

First, we must understand the Law and its purpose. The Law was full of all sorts of minute details and technical requirements as well as more general and overarching moral principles. To obey it required total dedication, and yet no one ever was able to go through life without breaking it. Why did God hand down a seemingly impossible set of commandments? The apostle Paul explained later, in the New Testament, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the strict detail of the Law was meant to show us that God’s standard was absolute perfection and that every human being falls short of that standard. But one should not stop there! Paul says this realization of the impossibility of perfection that the Law brings is intended to compel us to seek God’s merciful redemption and salvation – His free gift of atonement for our sinfulness, the only possible remedy and the only possible path to reconciliation between God and man. He said the Law was his “schoolmaster” to bring him to Christ. Just as without the nerves in your hands, you wouldn’t feel pain from touching a hot stove which tells you pull your hand away, without the Law, we wouldn’t know that we were sinful and in need of salvation. And without a nation of people who would faithfully pass down the written Law from generation to generation, all of the rest of the world would never get to read it.

One important, yet often confusing, part of the Law was the many sacrifices that God commanded the people of Israel to perform ritually and perpetually. There were multiple purposes for the sacrifices, which included incense, drink, grain, and animals. The most important aspect of the system of sacrifices was that God commanded animal sacrifices to be made where the blood of the animal was spilled because of the sins of the people, their breaking of the Law. God never said these sacrifices actually absolved the people of their sins – it is clear that the blood of animals never could satisfy God’s perfect justice on behalf of the sins of the people. So, why did God command the sacrifices for sin to be made? The answer is that it was a picture of the true salvation to come. It is amazing how analogous the details of the Jewish rituals that God had ordained are to the way Jesus came to save humankind. Just as the people of Israel were commanded to offer a pure, spotless, innocent lamb, spilling its blood and killing it as a symbolic sacrifice for their sins, Jesus said He is the “Lamb of God,” lived a perfect, sinless life, and was slaughtered, spilling His precious blood as atonement for our sins. Unlike the blood of animals, however, the blood of Jesus does actually atone for sin and can make us righteous in the sight of God regardless of what sins we have committed. The whole Old Testament system of sacrifices was set up so we could understand this slightly odd arrangement when it happened. In contrast to other religious teachers throughout history who showed up on the scene and spread a new message, Jesus was the fulfillment of several thousand prior years of prophecy and revelation.

So this is how God fulfilled His plan to restore His relationship with us, His human creations. He could not have simply ignored our sin and invited us back without consequence, because His perfect justice would not allow it. But because of His great and awesome love for all of us, both Jew and non-Jew alike, He bore the consequences of our sin on Himself so that we wouldn’t have to be separated from God forever as we deserved. No one but God can perfectly describe this transaction in an exhaustive way that dispels all mystery, but we can understand the basic fact of the matter: Jesus received the punishment for our sin on Himself in order to reconcile us to Himself.

The description I have made brings us to this day in history and the choice that stands before you. God has extended His love and grace to you and awaits your response. Will you be reconciled to Him? Would you turn away a neighbor who came to you and said, “Please be my friend?” How much more should you receive the friendship and adoption of your Creator who has loved you and sacrificed so greatly in order to make reconciliation possible?

There is another factor that you should consider: time is limited. Each of you knows that your life is short, finite, and like a vapor that appears for a little while and vanishes away. You do not know how long you will live, maybe 90 or 100 years at best. I urge you not to put off or postpone this decision, because today is always the best day to be reconciled to God. You may wonder why urgency is required. The answer is very important, and it is an often misunderstood part of Christian faith: the judgment of God.

Before understanding God’s final judgment of the world, you must understand that God’s desire is for every single human being to be reconciled to Him, to be ‘saved.’ Those that perish in God’s judgment will have nothing to attribute their condemnation to but their own hardness of heart, because on God’s part, there has been no lack of proactivity and sacrifice in His attempts to bring them close to Himself. This judgment sounds incredibly harsh and inconsistent with God’s mind-blowing love unless you understand of what exactly eternal condemnation and eternal life consist. The worst part about eternal condemnation, the real kicker, the thing that makes it ‘hell’ is that the people in it are forever and hopelessly separated from the presence of God. Likewise, the very best part of eternal life is not the pleasures of golden streets, mansions, etc., but rather that those who partake of it get to enjoy perfect and intimate fellowship with God forever. They get to see His beautiful face and rest in His arms! Once you understand this, it is painfully obvious that, simply understood, God’s final judgment is to solidify for eternity the choice that each individual has made, to be or not to be reconciled with God. As I wrote previously, God created us with the desire for pleasure, and eternal fellowship with Him is the fulfillment of that desire.

I beg you and plead with you to be reconciled to God today! There is no complicated process or church membership that is needed, because God promises that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus, the man born in Bethlehem who lived about 2,000 years ago and was crucified by Pontius Pilate, is God and you believe in your heart that God the Father raised Him from the dead, you will be reconciled to God. You will be ‘saved.’ If you truly believe these things, you will want to tell God that you are sorry for the sins you have committed in your life such as (possibly) hating other people, lying, cheating, and being selfish. Start to love and obey God’s commands which are for your benefit and are found in the Bible (I suggest you start with the book of Matthew.) Your salvation does not depend on you or any other person, but rather on God’s unshakeable promise which you have received though faith in Jesus Christ. God sees everything that is in your heart, and He is eager to hear your prayers. He has been waiting for you, calling you, and longing for your friendship.

Written by Sam Peterson

My Experiences Witnessing

Twice in the last few weeks, I've gone out street preaching in dowtown Palo Alto, just a few blocks from my apartment. I really didn't know what exactly to do at first; I was nervous. I just knew that God was calling me to do something to step out of the comfort zone and be obedient, and He had placed a burning desire to see His power move and capture the hearts of the people for Himself.

I wrote up a 'tract' and made copies of it to hand out. It was really more of an essay entitled "What is Christianity?" because it was over 5 pages long, single-spaced. I'll probably post it here soon. I first walked up University Ave., where I intended to witness and then wandered back off that street to a less crowded area, because I was still pretty nervous and wasn't sure exactly how I was going to do this. So, I prayed and thought for a little while, and the Lord gave me courage to go talk to people. I don't know if my approach was the best, but I tried to get the passerby's attention and then ask them what they thought of Jesus. If they expressed some sort of interest, I usually asked them if they wanted one of my tracts. I convinced a bunch of these people to take one to read later because I had written it myself and it wasn't literature from a big organization.

I had some decent conversations with a few people who were already religious but thought they would get to heaven by being good people. The most likely people to stop and actually talk to me were the old and the young. The vast majority of people who passed by either said "no" without stopping or ignored me altogether. Some people laughed with contempt and only a couple got angry. I could tell by the looks on a lot of the faces that they really looked down on me for asking such an ignorant question.

When I was with my friend the other time, we had a long conversation with a guy who was really off the deep end with all sorts religious/political conspiracy theories that looked to Eastern religions for the answers. The one thing that struck me toward the end of our lengthy conversation was how impervious he was to any sort of logic. Logic is generally my style. I usually think I can convince people of the truth. But it wasn't happening. On our way home, we got to buy some homeless guys some sandwhiches and talk with them a little.

It was after this experience and talking to my sister on the phone that I studied the passages in Matthew about the kingdom of God and the power of Satan. there's no hokey-pokey magic incantaitons here. Just realizing what the Bible said we ought to be mindful of: we have an adversary who is seeking to destroy us. The unsaved aren't just floating out in non-committal without Jesus; they are under Satan's thumb, serving him and being actively deceived by him. What does this tell me? My attempts at logically convincing somebody to follow Jesus are futile by themselves. The power of God must do the work. The person's heart must be broken over their sin and the arrogance of living apart from God's commandments in order for them to realize the truth of Jesus' claims.

First Post

Hello, whoever you are! This weblog is called "plunder the goods" in reference to Jesus' description of his actions in saving mankind in the Bible, in Matthew 12:29.

"Then one was brought to Him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. And all the multitudes were amazed and said, 'Could this be the son of David?' Now when the Pharisees heard it they said, 'This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.' But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: 'Every kingdom divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.'" (Matthew 12:22-30, emphasis added)

The house is the world, the kingdom of Satan, or in other words, the place where Satan has authority. The strong man is Satan and the demons. The intruder breaking into the house is Jesus. The goods are the hearts of the people of the world. Jesus said that when he cast the demon out of the man and healed his body, he was plundering the devil's goods. From this we can infer that those who are not in the kingdom of God (i.e., they have not submitted themselves to the authority and rule of Jesus, the King) are under the authority and influence of Satan. They are part of his kingdom. Every one of us, before we came to Jesus, was a subject in the devil's kingdom, being deceived by his lies and under his authority. We were those whom the apostle Paul wrote about in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4...

"But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them." (emphasis added)

Note in the above passage that Paul refers to the devil with a title of authority, "the god of this age." In Ephesians 6:12, Satan and the demons are once again referred to with titles of authority, confirming Jesus' teaching that Satan has a kingdom of which the demon-possessed man was formerly a subject...

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." (emphasis added)

In order to deliver a person from the kingdom of the devil into the kingdom of God, the power of the devil in that person's life must be bound by the power of God. The key to this happening is repentance from sin (sin is rebellion against God), and we know this by reading the passage quoted above from Matthew in the context of the chapter and a half of text that follows it.

The Pharisees, whose unbelief Jesus was addressing in the passage, were told by Jesus that they were "evil." ("Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." verse 34) So, he began by telling the Pharisees about Himself plundering the goods of the devil's kingdom in order to transfer them into God's kingdom, then he warned them about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and now he explains to them that they are essentially bad and cannot bear any good fruit even if they try. And they were definitely trying. Of all people, the Pharisees were the ones who prided themselves on knowing the truth of the Scripture and living righteous lives. Jesus pointed out their fatal and fundamental problem: they were evil and were still under the sway of the devil, under his authority which rendered futile all their attempts to understand God's truth and live holy lives.

So, how could the Pharisees have gotten themselves out of this terrible situation? The answer is that they couldn't have gotten themselves out, but only God could pull them out by His power. How then could God be moved to rescue them? What could they have done? Certainly, the answer is not what they did. They were still trying to use their minds which were deluded and their eyes which were blinded by Satan to reason through Jesus' claims.

"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, 'Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.'" (verse 38)

Surely a miraculous sign would be significant evidence with which to back up Jesus' bold truth claims and the authority with which he presumed to speak, which had been irritating them so much.

Jesus answers these people who were "evil" and whose minds were captive to the devil's deception (just like every human being before they are saved from this state by Jesus) and tells them that no, He will not give them the miraculous evidence they were looking for in order to accept His claims. Is Jesus purposely trying to prevent them from being saved? On the contrary, He denies them the sign, because it wouldn't have done them any good. The mind that is imprisoned by Satan's deception is totally impervious to the reason and reality of God.

Jesus, the Great Physician, then gives them the heavenly presciption they so desperately needed: repentance!

"But He answered and said to them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.'"

Now we understand why Jesus began his preaching by saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 4:17b)

Reading Matthew chapter 13 will give you a fuller understanding of how exhaustive explanation and evangelistic strategy are useless to reach an unrepentant heart. Only the power of God through Jesus Christ can restrain the devil, plunder his goods, and reveal the truth to the hearts of those rescued people. Let us preach the gospel, calling people to turn their hearts to God in humility.

This blog is open for exhortation and encouragement among those who are seeking to preach, share, and live this gospel of the kingdom of God to the whole world. This is a good place to share your experiences in evangelism, some wisdom that the Lord may have given you from the Scripture, or to ask a question.