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I've collected some of our healing stories and my blog posts on the fatherhood of God into two new articles in our Testimonies section which is now called God Stories . My own personal testimony can also be found in this section of our site.
Just a couple of quick updates about our worship stuff. I've pulled the recordings of a number of the songs on our SoundCloud stream as I haven't been very happy with my recordings of them, either because my singing sucks or they need a new arrangement (i.e. better playing and/or different instruments). Songs that will (eventually) be re-recorded are now listed as such on the Songs page of our website. I also happened to stumble across another verse I had written years ago for my song Lord, Have Mercy which I recently uploaded to SoundCloud . The additional verse goes like this: Son of David! Son of David! Stretch your hand out and make me whole. Heal my body, my mind, my soul. I've added this extra verse to the free PDF leadsheet you can download for this song which has the melody, lyrics and guitar chords so you can learn how to play it :-) Enjoy! --Mitch
Carol Wimber once said that as followers of Jesus, our lives should be like an open book for anyone to read. This means that as Christians, we shouldn't try to cover up our weaknesses and failures; we should instead be open and honest about them. "I will boast of my weaknesses," says Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, "so that Christ's power can rest upon me." And as disciples of Christ, isn't that what we all want to see more of in our lives — the power of God? Paul understood this. He was originally Saul, named after the first king of Israel and a man described in 1 Sam 9:2 as being a head taller than anyone else in the land. Paul's father probably named him Saul in the hope that he would turn out to be a great man of God. And until Paul met Jesus on that road to Damascus, he certainly seemed to be headed towards greatness as someone who could boast of his character, zeal and achievements (see Philippians 3:3-6). But fame, and the fortune which often attends it, meant nothing to Paul after he came to know Jesus as his Lord (Philippians 3:7-8). So instead of Saul, he changed his name to Paul (Acts 13:9) which in Latin means "little." It seems Paul did this because after he met Jesus he no longer saw himself as someone destined for greatness. Instead, he saw himself as "the least of the apostles" and someone who didn't even deserve to be called an apostle (1 Corinthians 15:9). In fact he said his success in his calling was due only to God working in him, not because of his own human efforts (1 Corinthians 15:10). "I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling," he told the Corinthian converts (1 Corinthians 2:3). Doesn't sound very much like a "great man of God," does he? Jesus says that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted (Matthew 23:12). He also says that whoever humbles himself like a little child will be great in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:4). Being open to others about yourself can be scary, because you might end up getting hurt. But guess what? If someone does laugh at you or look down at you, your reaction should be to jump for joy! Because that's how the prophets — those "great" men of God in the Bible — were treated (Matthew 5:12). As for me, I will humble myself and be like a little child before my heavenly Father. Because that's actually what I am — just a simple, ordinary guy trying to follow Jesus. How about you? Cheers, Mitch
Don't worry, I'm not talking here about trying to convert Catholics to Protestantism, or Protestants to Catholicism, or Baptists to Pentecostalism, or anything like that. I love the church — all of the Lord's church — too much to ever want to do anything like that. What I'm talking about is fulfilling the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:18-20 where Jesus gave his first disciples the task of making more disciples — of multiplying themselves — by teaching others to do everything Jesus taught them to do. But the Great Commission isn't about making more Evangelicals, or Pentecostals, or Charismatics, or Catholics, or Orthodox believers. And it's not just about leading people to Christ either. It's about helping people become followers of Jesus. And that's the essential character of doing personal evangelism. It's about meeting people wherever they are at and then trying to move them a bit further along towards knowing Jesus and becoming more like Jesus. Because the ultimate goal of being a follower of Jesus is to become like Jesus. "A disciple...when he is fully trained will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40). This might mean for example trying to convince an atheist that there just might be some inconsistencies in their position. Or helping an agnostic see that believing in God isn't such a difficult thing after all. Or talking with a longtime churchgoer about actually having a personal relationship with the Lord. Or demonstrating to a Dispensationalist that Charismatic Christians aren't so looney after all. And so on. Moving people further along the path of discipleship and deeper into God's kingdom. That's what evangelism is really all about. —Mitch
A few months ago I started a series of blog posts on personal evangelism. My goal in doing this was twofold: to motivate myself to share my faith more effectively, and to help equip other followers of Jesus to do the same. And it's working — at least for myself. I've had several opportunities recently to share my testimony with others, and it's almost like the Lord has been bringing people to me who are already moving towards faith on the Engel scale . (See also pages 54 – 57 on this topic in Wimber's book Power Evangelism ). What has helped me are the guiding principles for doing evangelism that I described previously and which can be summarized like this: The Lord wants everyone to be saved, and he's commissioned and empowered his followers (including me!) to help Him gather people into his kingdom. So let's get on with it! To put this into practice, whenever I go out into the marketplace I try to start by praying a simple prayer along these lines. But it's still hard. Often I don't know what to say to people and feel like it would be useless to even try to talk to them about Jesus. And instead of feeling I'm being led by the Spirit, I usually feel like God is a million miles away from this cold, dark world I live in. The answer of course is to persevere. But it's also important to build upon these evangelism principles by adding priorities and practices. It's just like when you're building a house, you first lay down the foundation and then you erect the walls. And that's what I'll try to briefly do here. Evangelism Priorities The number one priority for effective personal evangelism is to make time for people . You can't tell people about Jesus if you don't talk with them! Our world is so hectic nowadays, and we are so stressed out most of the time, that we tend to be more focused on the tasks we need to do than the people we encounter as we perform them. This is probably the major hindrance that prevents us from sharing our faith with those we encounter in the marketplace. Valuing people more than our tasks, goals and accomplishments is a huge shift for many of us, but it's essential if we're to become effective in evangelism. Another priority when doing evangelism is open, honest sharing of your personal experience of God . Sharing your testimony — what you were like before you were a Christian, how you became a Christian, and how meeting the Lord changed your life — is generally more effective in winning people's hearts than reciting the Bridge to Life (Navigators), the Four Spiritual Laws (Campus Crusade for Christ) or some other salvation formula. A third priority is to view evangelism as a lifestyle . When Jesus called his first disciples, he told them he would make them fishers of men (Matt 4:19). Then later after he rose from the dead, he instructed them to go and make disciples, that is, others who would do what Jesus taught them to do (Matt 28:18-20). And if we too are followers of Jesus, then clearly our main job is to fish — to work with the Lord to bring men and women into God's kingdom. Evangelism Practices While taking time just to talk with people must be a priority for those of us who want to become more effective in evangelism, it's even more important for us to learn how to listen . While the ultimate goal of evangelism is to bring people into the kingdom, our immediate goal when we share our faith with someone should simply be to try and lead them one or two steps higher on the Engel scale. If you can simply lead them from merely having some interest in Jesus Christ to deciding to investigate Jesus further, for example by reading one of the gospels or visiting your fellowship, then you've probably done your job for the day as far as fishing for that particular person is concerned, because they've gone from sniffing the bait to actually taking a nibble. To accomplish this, you must listen carefully how people respond when you talk with them as this enables you to determine what level of awareness, interest and involvement they already have with Christianity. A second practice that is important when doing evangelism is to use the J-word . For example, if you're in a conversation with someone and they offer some objection concerning what they perceive as negative in Christianity, you might respond with "Well, you have a point there. But Jesus says..." and simply quote some verse where Jesus said something that bears on the subject. Remember, the goal of evangelism isn't to win people to Jesus, not to your church or denomination or personal way of thinking. Finally, if you want to become more effective in sharing your faith you should make it a practice to ask God for boldness . When the early disciples did this together in Acts 4:23-31 the result was that they were filled with the Holy Spirit and with boldness to proclaim the gospel even in the face of opposition. As Ken Blue, the former pastor of Foothills Vineyard in San Diego once told us many years ago, "Evangelism is just guts." So ask God for guts. Cheers, Mitch
