Evangelize or fossilize (1)

Coach Vince Lombardi led the Green Bay Packers football team to victory after victory. But one day, they lost to a team they should have easily defeated. So Lombardi gathered his team together. He put his hand into a bag and brought out a football. With his inimitable smile, he told them, “Gentlemen, this is a football!” In other words, it was time to get back to basics. Jesus is “the captain of [our] salvation” (Hebrews 2:10). And before He went back to heaven, He gave us the game plan: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NKJV). And since a person’s last words are some of their most important ones, it leads us to ask this: who was Jesus talking to? You! “You shall…be witnesses to Me.” There are people around today who will never go to church. Their only chance of hearing the gospel is through you; through what your lips declare and your life demonstrates. What is this “power” Jesus spoke of? The Greek word for “power” is dynamos, from which we get the word dynamite. Dynamite is an explosive force, which when properly harnessed can remove any obstacle that stands in the way of progress. You say, “I have never been to seminary, and I don’t feel qualified to share the gospel!” God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called by filling them with His Spirit and using them to reach a hurting world. Today you have been called to do that.