We did pubs again tonight which I love but I keep hearing something that disturbs me a bit. The phrase I keep hearing is, "I like the salvos, you dont ram religion down our throats." Now, I know alot of Christians would take that as a compliment, but I don't think it should be!
If anything it highlights how we don't preach anymore! It shows that people who are not saved yet know we are Christians and are saying I like you because you dont preach! And Paul says in Romans 10 that if no one preaches no one will hear, and if they dont hear they wont believe, if they dont believe they wont be saved.
It is sad that we dont preach the gospel anymore, and we can say "Ah, but we do preach, we preach with our words!" That is fine but again, look at Romans 10! We need to preach otherwise they cant hear and then believe and be saved!
What are we more interested in, souls or human gratification?
Friday, March 20, 2009
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6 comments:
should be souls. Sadly sometimes I think it is the latter.
-I think you meant 'preach with out actions?'
grace.
a.
interesting although you seem to be confusing preaching with "ramming down your throat". Now i've seen a lot of preachers, i've known of a lot of people who share the Good News but none of them "ram" and THAT is what's important. The fact that we don't ram down throats means when the opportunity arises (like at a pub) we can gently and confidently preach, testify & build relationship with the lost. If we insist on "ramming" i.e, blindly and blatantly forcing our views on others then we lose the respect needed to gently guide another to Jesus...
hey kris,
your right, i totally agree with you. preaching doesnt always mean ramming down throats! thanks for pulling me up on that one...
But, sometimes it does mean doing that, which is what our founder Catherine Booth wrote about in her papers on aggressive christianity.
Maybe Im just too idealistic wanting to head back to our 'glory' days of revival where we did ram the gospel and stacks of people did get saved. I believe you can ram the gospel down peoples throats in love...
I think what I meant by the post is that preaching the gospel does end up annoying people sometimes, so much so that 11/12 disciples were murdered for their preaching! And thousands of others all around the world. We can not let human gratification get in the way of preaching even if we're doing 'nice' things which i think is the general state of Christianity in the western world...
- "ram the gospel down peoples throats in love..." - James, you are one of a kind!
I believe that one of our biggest weaknesses is that we often do not take the opportunity when it is handed to us on a silver platter. I am not one for "ramming" but I am certainly at the ready when opportunity knocks. I was at a work Seminar the other evening and in front of all the people around me I witnessed to the fact that I am a Christian. Someone was trying to force a member of staff to do something that was totally hypocritical to her (and she is not a Christian) and the person who was trying to force her to do the thing that was totally wrong was doing it in the name of Christianity. In fact it was all about man made rule - not of God at all. I had to speak up for two reasons one that what she was being asked to do was not of God and the other that I was a true Chritian and had a duty to point her in the right direction. I didn't care who heard me because it was all about God and what He requires of us. May God help us all to speak for Him whenever the opportunity arises and in the doing may we bring others to a knowledge of Him as Lord of their lives.
I'm not entirely sure that ramming religion down the throats of anyone, whether "in love" or not, would be a very beneficial evangelical tool. I think the reason so many people like the Salvos and give these types of compliments because they don't like being forced to believe a certain thing.
I think that if we did do that, we'd come across as arrogant, stubborn and not willing to build individual relationship. I'm sure that majority of these people in the pubs would want a 1 on 1 conversation not to be preached at while trying to relax after a hard days work.
I agree that preaching is an essential part of Christianity but maybe taking a different tact would work better than "ramming religion down people's throats".
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