Questions and Answers, Part 17

Transcript

GRM 1220
Questions and Answers, Part 17
03/10/2019
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

All right, had a question, maybe it’s good to do it. What passages do you turn to when you are discouraged? Like sometimes when our debt was large and we wondered—I think there was only one, maybe two times we had to skip a payroll payment in all those years so that’s pretty good. What passages do you turn to when you are discouraged? We probably have our, each of us have our favorite passages of Scripture. Before I go to Scripture one of the things I do, sometimes I have a hymnbook on my desk. I sometimes go to some of the hymns or gospel songs that, you know they have a way of refreshing your spirit. Music does, and a song like His Eyes on the Sparrow and you think well why should I be discouraged why should my heart be dismayed? Well his eye is on the sparrow I know He watches over me. Well you know then I go to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. God takes care of the sparrows; He’s taking care of me. I sometimes think why are you discouraged? You do want to look, if I’m doing the wrong thing there’s a good reason I’m discouraged. Stop doing the wrong thing. If I haven’t done what I believe I should do, well Lord it’s good that I’m discouraged. I want to correct that before I do anything else.

Sometimes you just feel, boy I just feel like I hit a wall. I just am down, just disappointed with things; we’ll cover some of this in Ecclesiastes, which is one of the books I go to that I get drawn to, I go to what we call the wisdom literature. The book of Job, and Job struggled, but particularly the end. What I find that helps me the most in times of discouragement, and we all get discouraged, is to turn my attention from the situation to the Lord and be reminded. You know things may seem to have changed with me. They may have come to a screeching halt. They may just seem, you know I just can’t go and I’m reminded the Lord hasn’t changed. He’s the same as He was yesterday, last week, last year, so those portions of the word. Philippians 4 is one that I go to often. Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever things are good, think on these things. I say well Lord I have to get my mind where it is and that’s where it helps me to move my thinking to the Lord. Perry is doing a study on the names of God. Well you know that’s what I do. I have a couple of theologies I like to go to periodically, not to start at page 1 and read through, but on the doctrine of God because sometimes it’s just good for me to be reminded of God.

Lord, you are my God. I’m discouraged, and maybe I don’t know why. I don’t know why I feel discouraged but Lord You are there. You promised that You would be caring for me every day and so these kinds of things sort of pull me up, and then there are times that I just have to decide, Lord, You have not changed. As far as I know, I am where You want me to be. You’ve brought me to this place. Maybe, I just need to learn to trust You even though I don’t feel good about it. You know it’s not like I’m going to park here until I don’t feel discouraged anymore. Sort of like we talk about depression, the same idea. Well Lord, I have to be what You want me to be today. Lord I’ll need an extra measure of Your grace, so You know I’m discouraged, it’s just hard for me to make myself go. And then the Psalms are always great. You know the question reminded me and I find myself looking through the Psalms.

Come back to Psalm, I don’t know, Psalm 25. You know sometimes I just open up the wisdom literature I find encouraging like Ecclesiastics, Job, Proverbs, because it brings God’s wisdom. This is His life. We talk about life lessons, so I like to come and if you come to the Psalmists, Psalm 25, I come to these people, and I realize they were real people living out real problems in their day, and so even though my problem may not be exactly like theirs, I’m in the same kind of situation. I’m discouraged, disappointed, I’m depressed, so Psalm 25 opens up: “To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul, O my God, in You I trust. Do not let me be ashamed, do not let my enemies exalt over me,” and quite frankly as I read some of these Psalms, you know you sort of do exegesis in them. My enemies are not the same maybe as David’s. In his position he may have had a literal physical enemy attack him, but you know you have the trials, and I think Lord, I’m in a little different situation than David was when he wrote this, but You know I feel like I’m being overwhelmed by what’s facing me, and in that sense I’m like David. So “To You O Lord I lift up my soul,” and “O my God in You I trust.” I don’t want to do anything that would make me ashamed. I don’t want to be embarrassed by being less than what God wants me to be and I don’t want to be defeated by what comes into my life.

You know what comes into someone else’s life they have to deal with. What comes into my life I have to deal with, and so I have to face it really. Well I know other people that are going through other things and they don’t get discouraged and depressed and down. I shouldn’t! Well maybe not, but I am. You know I don’t get anywhere by saying I’m not, and the fact is you’re dealing with your problem. I’m glad for you but I have to deal with my problem, but I can come to David and find out, here’s a reminder. You start out, I lift my soul to You Lord, so it’s getting my eyes off of where I am and you know the puddle I’m stuck in. Verse 4, “Make me know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me. You are the God of My salvation; for You I wait all the day.” All of a sudden you see his tension, he’s dealing with His enemies. He’s dealing with these problems, but Lord I remind myself I’m trusting You, You’re the God of my salvation. Lead me in Your truth; you know there are things for me to learn today. Lord You’re sufficient for me when I don’t feel good, when I am discouraged. You know I want to learn what the Lord has for me at that time, and you think; why are you discouraged. Why do you feel down?

Like I say I want to look and see, if I’m not doing the right thing or if I’m doing a wrong thing, there’s an answer, correct it. But sometimes I’ll sit and, to be quite honest, not me but Marilyn might be like this. I’m too spiritual, (laughter). But you want to say Lord, there’s no good reason for me to be discouraged, but you know the Lord knows my heart, so I’m not. Well I’ve got to be honest with the Lord. You know there’s no good reason for me to be discouraged Lord, but I am, and so that’s why I want to be reminded, God hasn’t changed since yesterday. He hasn’t changed at all and He’s still the One sufficient. So I go through a Psalm like that and you know I have many of these Psalms. Verse 16 of this psalm, “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses. Look on my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.” And then I’ve been unfairly treated, maybe that adds to it, but it would seem like when you feel down the devil wants to pile on. Those on top of other things it just seems like, you know, it’s something else, you see where David’s honest. The troubles of my heart are enlarged, I’m lonely and afflicted. That’s where I am, but God You be gracious to me. He’s the One who will redeem all Israel out of all their troubles, that goes beyond David. Passages like that, there are many Psalms. I like the question because then it got me going through the Psalms. But I’m going, I had to remind myself, I have other things to do. Then you begin going through, boy these are just great! The best thing to do is to go to the Word.

Like I said, I like to read sometimes, pull off a theology book and read. Through the last week or two I read a theology book on the doctrine of sin, because you know it’s not, well, that you know you don’t have to read about sin, but you know its great reading about the greatness of God’s forgiveness. It talks about the seriousness of sin and all that, but that reminder, and so you know I fill my mind with that. Lord You are a God who deals with sin, judges sin, forgives sin, all of that. Reading another book on The Greek words for salvation, they come up. Boy, I’ve got to do a study on that sometime at Indian Hills,
on the various words used. Well those, you know, sort of pull you out of where you are. It doesn’t necessarily make it go away. I like to read Jeremiah, he’s the weeping prophet. If I have reason to be discouraged, he had reason to be discouraged. Man he was at times, but you keep going. That’s a little bit how I handle it. I like to read periodically biographies of godly people because, again, their life and what they’re going through. I read some of the Puritans, they are the ones who are so introspective. You have to be careful, they can be so introspective that sometimes they can add to your discouragement. I don’t like too much self-examination. A balance, that’s sort of the way I, you know my personal way, the way I try to deal with the things, and I have a very sympathetic wife.

I tell her you know, I’m feeling down, I don’t feel like doing anything and she very kindly says, well get over it and go do what you’re supposed to do, (laughter) and you know you do that in love. My mother, I share with you my mother. You come in, and you want to get sympathy from your mother and she’d say, well if you’re looking for sympathy it’s under S in Webster’s and you know, not being unkind, but sometimes you know we want to come alongside, weep with those who weep and so on. By the same token, we just don’t want to go sit in the same puddle that that person’s sitting in. I just need to say well, if you’re in the puddle, you may have to slosh your way out. It depends on how big the puddle is, but quit focusing on the puddle. Take the next step, the next step, the next step, the next step. The worst thing you do is you quit functioning. Well then it just sort of piles on. Lord you haven’t called on me to stop being what you want me to be today, so whatever’s going on in my life today You are sovereign over, this is where we’re going in Ecclesiastes.

Dealing with the ups and downs of life with Godly wisdom, not that these aren’t the reality of life. This is the reality of life and having a realistic picture. I think that sometimes we get discouraged as Christians because we don’t have a real picture of real life. We have a great hope, we’re moving toward that, but we have to live today. It’ll be great when we get to heaven. It’ll be great when all tears and all this are done with and all problems are resolved and absolved, but I have to live today. Jesus said you know you take that a day at a time. You don’t worry about tomorrow. It doesn’t mean you don’t make any plans as best you can. I have some things I’ve planned that have to be done tomorrow, but I’m not going worry about it because the Lord may come tonight. He doesn’t give me tomorrow’s grace today. He gives me today’s grace today, and if I don’t take hold of today’s grace today, you know what? I’ll have carried the problems of today over to tomorrow because I didn’t draw on today’s grace today and that set a pattern for tomorrow. I probably won’t be drawing on it either, so I don’t want to make it more complicated than it is.

Lord, here’s where I am. Here’s where I am today. You are sovereign over my life, over the circumstances of my life, over the ups and downs of my life. I want to function with godly wisdom in dealing with the down time today, like I deal with the up time. It’s all part of what God chose. Job’s life is a good example and when it’s all done, we’ll talk more about this in Ecclesiastes, God never tells Job why this all happened. There’s no explanation at the end. Just Job, you be careful you don’t challenge Me. But Lord, I’m discouraged, I’m depressed. As far as I can tell, I’ve been doing what You want me to do. That just makes it worse. I don’t think I should be discouraged if I’m doing what You want me to do. Well, when we go through Ecclesiastes, we’ll find out that’s not necessarily biblical. Well Lord, I’m where I am with my mind and my heart and my conduct. I want to honor You, so what do I do next?
I’m going to proceed a little bit in how I handle discouragement. That’s enough of that unless you have some comment but I’ll give you a chance. You have anything you would like to raise as a question, or it doesn’t have to be on this subject?

All right, I’ll give you another one, another question. I’m responding and if I double up on these we may have missed it, if I answered them and I double up it must be Jeff’s fault because I surely wouldn’t repeat myself. How do you respond to someone or to a church who are promoting the idea, we are doing kingdom work? Are we called to build the kingdom for Jesus? I know that we saints will eventually rule and reign with Christ when He sets up His kingdom, but we are called to proclaim the gospel not promote the kingdom or bring people into the kingdom, and I think that basically that’s true. The problem with most of this, now Colossians 1 says we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light and the kingdom of His beloved Son, and we will be part of that future kingdom. But this terminology comes from a confusion of what the kingdom is, and it’s usually viewed as a spiritual entity, and the church is the spiritual entity today. It is not the kingdom, and so when you get into the kingdom that’s where then they get into things associated with what the bible says about the coming earthly kingdom. They have transferred that with the coming of Christ and the Church to a spiritual idea, so we are doing kingdom work. We are building the kingdom, we are bringing people into the kingdom, and then with that we should be doing kingdom things. Have social justice, to have you know all that’s going to go on in the kingdom, so that’s the problem with this language.

It’s built on a faulty unbiblical theology. You say well, it’s not doing damage, it’s just terminology, but if we’re doing kingdom work and we’re in the kingdom — well, right now we’re doing church work. Christ is building His church. Now the church will be part of the future earthly kingdom but this is not the kingdom, and what the church is doing is not the same as what will be done in the kingdom. It’s not the same as what Israel did when they were an earthly kingdom that God was using. They had an earthly king, they had rules and regulations that governed, you know, their life in all aspects. That’s not where we are today, so I think you just have to show people. They have to develop and have explained to them a biblical doctrine of the kingdom, and you know part of the problem is it’s hard to do that in just a few statements. Now I can talk to you because most of you have the background.

These people who come out of the background, well what’s wrong with doing kingdom work? Didn’t Jesus do kingdom work? Yes, He came to offer the kingdom. He’s still living under the Old Testament rule, so when you start to build the churches responsibilities out of the Gospels, and there’s certain things in the Gospels just like certain things in the Old Testament that remain true, but you have to be careful. Jesus was offering the kingdom. Remember, He sent the disciples out. Don’t go to anyone except to the lost of the house of Israel, don’t even go to the Samaritans who are mixed blood Jews, just to the Jews. Well we wouldn’t say you’d do that today, and now what? The church is going to all the world. There are things that change and when you don’t recognize those things, you begin to blur the Scripture. You think well, we’re doing good things. Let’s just not make an issue of that.

That was an issue when we were part of a denomination that was mixed. There were some dispensationalists, there were some non-dispensationalists, so they wanted to do kingdom work and we needed to be giving to these social projects. We need to be, you know helping people do better in the world, and get better food and better water, but their foundation for doing that, when you challenged it was, we’re in the kingdom. Jesus did this. He healed people. This is foundational for Wimber’s Vineyard Movement. We’re in the kingdom, we do kingdom work. Jesus healed people. We’re in the kingdom. We do what Jesus did in the kingdom, we heal people, so what seemed like, well, let’s not make an issue. We can all agree on the facts of the gospel, but there’s more to it than just the gospel. If God just wanted to state the basic facts of the gospel, for example as Paul did in writing to the Corinthians, He could have left out a lot. You know it’s not like, well, all that we agree on. This is the problem with the organization, “Together for the Gospel.” Well, can you be against being together for the gospel and we overlook non-essential things like Eschatology? That’s why God established a local church. We are not a kingdom, and we keep coming back to this. The seven churches of Asia in Revelation 2 and 3, He doesn’t tell them to get together. Organize, you’ll be so much stronger in the region of Asia Minor, if you all come together united. We constantly want to go that way. Well, Israel was a united kingdom. We saw the three kings that ruled over that united kingdom today, and it was dealt with even when it divided, still as God’s people Israel that belonged to Him. It’s not the church today. God establishes local churches, that is different than the kingdom, and this idea we would do better, I just don’t find anywhere. Which doesn’t mean we can’t help another church, but there aren’t commands to join together and do those things. So that’s a problem with denominations, and I’m not going to be attacking denominations, but you end up with a mixed group.

We finally had to leave. They finally asked us to please either get in or out, but we couldn’t get in because so much of what they did. Well, but we had a lot we agreed on. Yes, but we have a lot we disagree on, and I had to say, I just don’t have time to get involved in denominational things. They want us to send good people to be part of denominational committees. We’re being used of God to build a local church. We had people pointing—oh, you’re selfish, you just are concerned about yourselves. No, I’m concerned about what Christ said He wants us to do and what the biblical pattern is. Why are we selfish? God has planted us here. None of the churches in Asia Minor, none of Paul’s churches is rebuked for not reaching someplace else. I’m not against doing something someplace else. We want to be careful this is the biblical requirement. If it could help other churches, that’s great. We have done that on occasion. We’ve been involved with people in other places. I share, I just did my taxes and I reported what I gave to outside organizations or people. That’s a matter of what I thought the Lord would have me do in that. But as for what is the church to do, what are we about? This is our ministry, and I realize we’ve been criticized by some people that I respect. They’re just closed; they’re just concerned about themselves. What’s more important?

I said when I came, who’s going to reach Nebraska if we don’t? I told you my dad called me one day years ago and said you know what, you’ll be happy to know we just got our budget for our church in New Jersey. We support missionaries in Nebraska. I said, why? I’m not saying those missionaries aren’t doing a good thing, but why do you have to send missionaries, supported in New Jersey, to reach Nebraska? What did God put us here for? Now I feel the same with the campus. We ought to reach it. Why do people in Wisconsin have to send campus workers? We’ve got lots of people here. Why doesn’t this church? There are other evangelical churches in the city but the campus has to be reached by sending people from other places. What is the local church to do? We’re to be a light where God put us.

All right, you don’t ask a question, I’ll just keep going. All right, what about the prospect of a surplus in the budget, and this is kind of going along with what you’re talking about now, with the surplus in the budget, is there some sort of future plan that the board may have for future things that you’re looking ahead to, and possibilities? I guess one thing I don’t want everyone here to leave with is a sense of complacency. And I appreciate that, and that’s the danger for many churches. That has been a negative for them because the goal of the church becomes not what ministry could we have, and how can we reach out, and then talk about how do we pay for this—the number one thing is we don’t go into debt. So I think complacency, we want to avoid that, and we want to be thinking, yeah, are we doing everything we can to reach the University of Nebraska campus? We have what, 25,000 students down there? We have a facility there. Should we be investing more? Maybe more in personnel that can devote more time to that. I mean, we do have multiple campus ministries who have missionaries and that’s between them and the Lord. I’m not attacking them, I’m just using them as an illustration.
It makes me wonder, we’re just one of the evangelical churches, what are the evangelical churches in the city doing? If we reach people there we can draw them into here, which is what the local church ought to be doing to nurture and build them up. So some of those things we are talking abou, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We are talking about, what could we do, what areas? We want to be careful, when you start adding personnel you quickly run up the cost. You want to remember, you know, what this will be, because they’re ongoing things. That’s different than a building. The remodeled building, we paid it off, but for salaries and all that’s associated with that, all is ongoing, so you do have to plan. Are we planning wisely? So the first thing was to get the debt paid off. Then you can look and say, well now, if we’re going to have surplus, would that enable us to add a salary, and you want to look. We commit to this person for three or four years at least. You don’t want to hire someone and then decide, oh, we’re going to let them go because we didn’t get the income we thought, but we are looking at some of those things.

Some of you have asked about areas like, are we doing as much as we can on the campus? Other areas of ministry? We don’t want to lose our focus on reaching out to other places. Part of what we do, and I joked about it, but we do provide people, good people, for other churches, and I have had that expressed to me by other churches, and what good people they’ve gotten from Indian Hills. I want that to be true, and that’s part of maybe the way the Lord uses us. I don’t want you to think about leaving, but you know, for whatever reason when the Lord does move people, and I want to be honest with them, if you believe the Lord wants you someplace else you need to be someplace else. I love having everybody here, but if the Lord wants you other places—but then I look around, I see we have empty seats. Would it be better if we could see a hundred people saved this year and we had new believers in those? That’s what burdens me.

How many lost people are on our doorstep? Every year we have a new contingent of people moving in to the city, a new contingent moving into the university. Maybe have some of our people go look at some other churches that seem to be having an effective impact. Are we doing everything we can to bring the gospel to the lost? I mentioned the first dozen years I was here, I baptized personally a thousand people and I can’t reproduce necessarily what the Lord did in the past that He’ll guarantee that in the future. You preach the word in season and out of season, but what I also am concerned about, and I appreciate what we’re doing working through the city, carrying the gospel to the homes because at least we’re sowing the seed out there. You know if you’re not out there doing it you ought to be praying for those who are and the Word that’s being shared, and maybe we need to do a couple of more classes on reminding ourselves.

Carrying the gospel, you know, stop and think, we’re here. How many people have we shared the gospel with in the last week, the last month and you remember, how shall they hear without someone to tell them in Romans 10. They have to hear the gospel to be saved, and to hear the gospel they have to have someone tell them the gospel or bring it to them, and so are we doing everything we can there? Are there other things we could be doing? That’s probably the biggest concern I would have at this point. The Lord’s given us extra seating. There was a time when you couldn’t get a seat, and we’ve expanded, the Lord’s blessed. Maybe He’s enabled us to have extra seats now. Are we excited about the Word, about Christ? You know people used to come because their friends invited them. That’s the best way, that somebody they know just talks to them, invites them, is excited about the Lord, and the Word, and their church, and they invite somebody. Well if we have 500 people, each one brought someone, so you know we begin to think what we do. How can we reach more people?

There’s just as many lost in the city of Lincoln as there’s ever been. In fact, most of the evangelical churches that are growing are growing with transferred growth. I didn’t want to come to Lincoln and just see a church grow with people who came from other churches. I thanked the Lord that He brought people from other churches because we needed them, because we were getting so many new believers, you needed those people who were grounded in the Word to help those people, but my planning for church growth is not to get as many people from the other evangelical churches as we can. I don’t want to be fighting over those people. Let’s go find the lost, go bring them in, go reach them. Maybe there’s a process. Could we be doing more in inviting them into our home, getting to know them, establishing a contact, inviting them? What can we do to accelerate getting the gospel out to the city? I like that we’re tracking even how it goes from the streets, and getting the gospel there. Maybe we need more intense prayer from those maybe who don’t go out on Monday night. But maybe we ought to have people who sign up and commit, they’ll pray for this block of time for the contacts being made, the gospel being left, who’ll pray for the impact of that.

You know it’s easy to get excited about doing it in other places. For some reason it’s hard at home. We’ll travel to another country and share the gospel and have people say boy, this is exciting. Why don’t the people in that country do it? You know I’d like for the people in New Jersey, I’m using New Jersey since that church happened to be the church where I was baptized as a believer that was sending missionaries out here, I’d like them to stay at the campus so, you know, we don’t need to send any campus workers to the University of Nebraska. Boy, the churches there are saturating that campus with the gospel. We’ll have to go to places where they’re not doing that, I mean what’s the Lord put us here for? You know, it troubles me a little bit that there are missionaries that have to come from other places on our doorstep. Now again I realize, God can send them there and use them in a special way. I don’t want to play that down, but I don’t want us just to be sitting here being observers, so thinking about where we’re going.

Yeah, what we can do to strengthen the ministry and have a greater outreach? We don’t want to lose sight, we want to nourish and nurture our people, and I think we do an excellent job on that. We have good sound teaching from the youngest age up through the adults. We want to draw our people in. Are we taking advantage of that? You know we have a Sunday night service, maybe a good way to do it. You know how our family got from the Methodist church to a bible teaching church? The Methodist Church didn’t have church on Sunday night, so my parents got invited to go to Sunday night church and they didn’t have to leave the Methodist Church. They could come, and so they got into the bible and into the Word and pretty soon, you know, we’ve got to be in this church. I don’t mind stealing from the liberal churches, they’re our ground, so I don’t want to necessarily invite the people from the other evangelical churches. If you don’t have Sunday night services we’d love to have you come over, be part of our Sunday night service. You don’t have to give in the offering. We understand you have a church you support, that’s fine. We’d love to have you come and be part of the ministry. I don’t have a problem with that, but we really want to reach the people out there. So maybe we start we want to invite somebody to church, don’t invite them Sunday morning, invite them Sunday night. Then they don’t have to leave their church. Don’t leave your church. We’re talking with a family now. They’re of a different denomination and they meet at a different time. Well, you’d be welcome to come and sit in our service. You’re free when we have a service, we’d love to have you come—and we try to reach that family, so be thinking about that. I appreciate that, yeah, and anything you have about improving, you see you think we could strengthen our ministry, maybe things we should do. Feel free to share that. Put it on a card, drop it in a comment box, because you know that’ll help stimulate our thinking, how we might get stronger.

Gil, you do a good job of stimulating us, I appreciate it. You bring up evangelism. Could you talk perhaps a little bit about the difference, if there is indeed one, between the gift of evangelism and then the comment in the Scriptures that talk about doing the work of evangelism? Yeah, I think, as far as I can tell, and there’s not a lot said about the gift of evangelist, but it would seem in light of the other gifts, the gifts of the evangelist were like that. Tthose who have the gift of evangelism would be those specially gifted of God to carry the Word to other people, the lost. Now I think what they do, they’re not the only ones to do it. Like Timothy, you do the work of an evangelist. It doesn’t necessarily say he’s an evangelist. Just like giving, and we see that in the breakdown of giving. We have people, some people, who have the gift of giving. That doesn’t mean they have a lot of money, but they’re perhaps moved by the Lord to give a larger share of their income than others might do and, in that, they encourage people. I think the evangelists sort of, lead the way. You know you want to pray for the Lord to bring us gifted evangelists, but for all of us, we are to be ready to give an answer.

For example, those who go out on Monday night. You know, if you have a hard time sharing the gospel, that’s what I’d say. Say I’d like to go along. I’m afraid so I don’t want to be put on the spot to say anything, but if you just go with someone who’s sharing the gospel, you learn. You know we used to break the congregation down on Wednesday night when I was teaching on personal evangelism. After we’d teach some, then we’d sit down into small groups and share the gospel with one another, and I’ve shared with you to this day, I’ll sit in my office and talk to a pretend person. Trying to think of how we got into this and what did they bring up, and how would I get them from here to where I wanted, so I’d get used to hearing my voice. Have you ever considered, where you’d spend eternity if you died tonight? Perhaps they’re talking about someone they knew that died. Do you ever consider where you go when you die? I want to hear my voice, you know not just thinking it in my mind, but I’m talking it out loud to this person. I think the gift of evangelist is the person probably that has that special burden for that area.

Some of you do, and you’re out there doing it. Don’t necessarily think it means that there will be many people saved through that person, any more than just because you have the gift of teaching that means many people will come and hear you teach. Now you have to be able to effectively teach, you have to be able to effectively share the gospel, but I think that burden that a person feels is connected just like any other area. Why do you find a person showing mercy? I just have a desire to go and be involved in that kind of ministry. They sort of lead the way, and provide help for those then who don’t have the gift of evangelist. But let’s face it, if every one of us is sharing the gospel with just one person a month, there are hundreds of people in the city that would hear the gospel.

Well, they can’t believe in someone they have not heard about, they can’t hear about Christ unless someone tells them, so in a sense we’re here to do that. Some of us will be less effective in that, some will be more so, and so I want everybody to feel if you’re not doing that particular ministry you’re not doing their job because obviously you’re going. You know, there’s a balance in the body, but I think the gift of evangelist sort of sets the way and that burden for that area, and those people, you know, they think of what can we do more, what else could we do? How could we do what we do, maybe to reach more people? I think that’s part of what I’d see the gift of evangelist doing, but all of us to one degree or another, and I want to say one degree or another, because everybody’s not going to be at this level with every gift. It’s just not going to be. I wouldn’t want people here to feel pressure to study to spend the time, for example, that someone with the gift of teaching does, but we all want to become knowledgeable of the Word and understanding of it, so there’s a level of involvement and that’s going to vary. The gift of showing mercy, it would probably be spent more in one area, but you know there’s overlapping. Everybody is constructed a little differently and gifted a little differently, so I want to be careful I don’t make it all one thing. Indian Hills is strong on teaching because that’s foundational to everything, that’s what nourishes the body. Ephesians 4, equipping the saints to do the work of their service, but then every other gift develops and is used. You know we have people involved in so many ways, which is a strength of Indian Hills.

Someone who left was sharing that with us. You know it’s different being in another ministry. You know we have so many people involved in so many ways, and now we’re in a place where that’s just not true. Maybe that’s why the Lord has them there, to help get it going. Those with a burden of evangelism, not to get discouraged, and maybe they meet together and talk about how can we help the body. Maybe let’s look for some people that we might see could be used in this area, and maybe there’s some ways they could be used. Like we talked about, maybe they would open their home, maybe they would go along, maybe they would set up a meeting. I had a businessman at the church. He’s now with the Lord, but he said to me and interestingly, I live not too far from the man now, he’s in his ninety’s. He said I’m going to set up lunch with so and so. I believe Don was going with me then. He said I’m going to open the conversation. I’m setting up the lunch, I’m going to open the conversation, and then I’m going to be quiet and I want you to share the gospel with him and tell him how to go to heaven. Well that was a ministry he had. Great, invite this man that you can invite to lunch that I couldn’t, because you have the business contact, and he sets it up and then he opens the conversation and he starts and then he just transitions. Gil has some things that he wants to talk about and share with you, so maybe we talk about some people, look for people. You have anybody that you work with that maybe you invite to a breakfast and we could talk about it, and you know I’m not going to beat on them. I’m not that man. To this day as far as I know he’s never trusted Christ, but those kinds of things, so different people can maybe be used in different ways. I don’t know. Well, do you have a friend that you could invite to lunch or coffee, and you could say you know I have someone you’d like to meet, I think you’d find interesting. He could set up the coffee and you can come and be the gospel presenter so some of these kinds of things. Thinking about how can we help one another to be involved with where we are in different ways rather than saying if you don’t verbally present the gospel to the lost you’re failing. Maybe that person sitting down hearing how the gospel’s shared and it puts him in the spot, because you know you can end that lunch. You know you might have more questions or be open to talk about it and so and so here who has been your friend would be a person to talk about—you sort of have opened the door for them. I don’t know, just thinking of how different ways we might help one another, but I think the evangelists sort of, they have the burden to do it and then how do we equip the saints and draw the saints into that area like we draw everybody into different areas, and each area is probably lead by people who are primarily gifted in that area, but other people get involved, even though they may have a gift that’s primarily in another area. Appreciate that. Okay, did I leave anybody out since I talked so long? Okay, let’s have a word of prayer.

Thank you, Lord, for the way You have blessed us as a church family. Lord, Your grace has brought us together. You’ve brought us to salvation in Christ. Lord if we each shared our testimony we’d see the wideness of Your grace. How You’ve used us in one another’s lives and, Lord, we want to be used of You to bring other’s to this saving knowledge of Christ. Lord, You’ve blessed us in so many ways and we have on our doorstep a city of people, the vast majority of are people without Christ. A university population, young people, older people, people that we work with, neighbors, family. Lord, I just pray that You will use us to reach out with the gospel. Lord, our desire is that You would be pleased in Your grace to bring others to the knowledge of Christ. Lord, only You can work in a heart but we can be the instruments that You use to bring the gospel to those that You bring us into contact with, so I pray that you’ll stretch us as a congregation in this area, that we might have the impact in making Christ known that we desire all that You would have us have. Thank you for this time together, the blessing of this day. Now as we go out and face the week before us, Lord, we want to be strong for You, faithful in all we do. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.


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