Does your life reflect a real or plastic Jesus?
I can relate to both, you? Yet our churches are likely filled with people like the man in the video and we say we rely upon lifestyle evangelism.
Friends, I can’t live the Gospel. Thank God my life is not the Gospel. We are not the Good News. That isn’t an excuse for a life poorly lived, but it is a reason for the best news in the world to be shared and shared often. But this instance on pointing to our lives as a model for the Gospel we end up having the greatest story never told.
Don’t give me wrong we need to love our neighbors… we should show compassion. We should love our families and strive to be great spouses and parents.
But we have to share – people need to hear the Gospel. They need to know about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. They need to understand that Christ Jesus came to save sinners of which they are one.
They have to be told. Our lives can’t do that. An unintended byproduct of “lifestyle evangelism” is a reluctance to share when we don’t feel our lives measure up… We have to be perfect in order to share about God’s love and mercy? Do we not think God can use those who are broken?
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:13-15, ESV).
Don’t depend on your life to tell the greatest story ever told.