In a Nutshell 5-2-10
Last week we saw in Romans 9 that God’s plan for His children involved election. This week we learned in Romans 10 that God’s plan for His children involves evangelism. Unfortunately, history shows that many who believed in election did not evangelize. They thought that if God were in control then He would bring the elect to salvation without their help. They shirked their responsibility to preach the gospel. I find it interesting that immediately after Paul teaches the Roman church about election he tells them that they are still responsible to evangelize. He asks, “How are they to hear without someone preaching?”
This week I was reminded of the great importance of sharing the gospel after hearing of the death of a Rockford Senior student. Stephen May died on Wednesday April 28th at 7:33PM. The thing that deeply affected people about Stephen’s death is that it was so unexpected. He went to school that day just like any other day. He went to Track practice and hung out with his friends. He celebrated his girlfriend’s birthday and went home. It was a day just like any other day. But that evening he died. I asked the students if they had any Stephen’s in their lives. Is there anyone that they come into contact with that they don’t know for sure if they know the gospel? Do they have any friends who if they died unexpectedly they don’t know if they would go to heaven?
I told the students that now is the time to share the gospel. While people are thinking about death and what lies beyond it now is the time to tell them about Jesus. Sometimes students are scared to share the way of salvation because they don’t know how to start the conversation. I showed clips in Big Group from two videos to give students practical ideas on how to share the gospel. The videos are from Ray Comfort’s and Kirk Cameron’s organization called The Way of The Master. If you’d like to watch them they are entitled The Firefighter and What Did Jesus Do. You can watch them at this website http://www.wayofthemaster.com/watchepisodes.shtml.
