The Joy of Outreach
One of the greatest joys anyone will ever know is baptizing someone into Christ (Gal. 3:27). It is even a greater joy if you have taught that person yourself and see faith grow in their heart as they come to know Jesus Christ and understand His will for their lives.
This Thursday afternoon (Aug 31), I will leave for Romania. I will teach in the Northern Romanian Bible School in Cluj, Romania. This is where Rachel, the girls, and I went last year but this year, I’m going alone. I will meet up with my colleague, Daren Schroeder, in Chicago and we’ll fly together to Munich, Germany and then into Cluj. This year, I will be teaching the book of Deuteronomy while Daren teaches the book of Hebrews. Brother David Gibson will also be with us for the week.
But a big part of my heart still aches for the lost in Iasi, Romania, where we lived for 7 1/2 years. We still have three strong, faithful, Christian men who have remained faithful since we returned to America nine years ago; January will be 10 years since we moved back to America. They have tried evangelizing but they do not have any space to conduct Bible studies or worship. They live in apartments that are only about 7’ X 13’. So, we hope to start renting a small place for them in the next 4-5 months.
We have printed flyers to advertise Bible studies and they have started passing those out. My colleague, Daren, has started putting ads and short devotionals on the church’s Facebook page. The last one has generated several thousand views and a few hundred likes. We hope in the next few years to start conducting Bible studies or Gospel meetings in that city of 350,000. We meant to do everything we can do to get the Gospel message into the hands of people who need to hear it.
Let us meditate on the “joy of outreach” – the joy of working to save souls from sin.
The message which the angels gave the shepherds when God became flesh was one of joy: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). When we have realized the penalty of our sin and the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf, it gives us a deep, long lasting sense of joy.
Paul writes one of the most famous verses in the whole Bible in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” The goal of Christianity is to make us like God and God is love (1 John 4:8).
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I want us to take a closer look at 2 Corinthians 5:11-15. As you read this text, I want to point some things out:
Verse 11: Why do we persuade men? Because we know the fear of the Lord. We know what the wrath of God will do to those people who are in sin when they have to stand before God on the day of judgment (which is mentioned in verse 10).
Verse 12: If we persuade men to become Christians, then they have reason to be proud of us.
Verse 13: What we are doing, is for God. For His glory.
Verses 14-15: The love of Christ controls us. Why? Because He died for all and all, potentially, can die to their sins in Him. If there is the slightest soft spot in our hearts, this kind of love constrains us to love him who died for us, and this brings us to a discussion of our love for Christ.
If we have been united together with Christ in baptism (Rom. 6:3-4), then His mission has become our mission. His mission is expressed succinctly in Luke 19:10: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” That needs to be the mission statement and the “reason for being” of the Swartz Creek church of Christ; if we are controlled by the love of Christ.
If we had preachers here in the US in the same ratio that we have them overseas, we would have only about 70 preachers in the whole, entire United States! But is our love for Christ “controlling” us to be about this unfinished mission?
Let us be about the mission of Christ, for love’s sake.
–Paul Holland
