(Isa 6:8)…”Here am I! Send me.”
Can you believe how much faith the Lord has in us to win the world for Him? (Mark 16:15) And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. I look at this mammoth task and wonder how are we going to do it? There’s a huge world out there and we are only “us.” The job seems so big and Christians are the minority out there. How should we look at all this?
When I look at a big project I try to break it down so I won’t get frustrated right off the bat. How many things have I assembled something that came in a huge box with many pieces? I remember buying that swing set for the kids and almost crying when I opened the box and all the fittings and hardware fell out. I about quit before I began. But I recovered because I told myself that I would break this down into manageable segments. I tore the box completely open and put all the similar pieces together. I did the same with the bag of hardware. I estimated my time and knew it would take more than one day. I broke the project down into sensible timeframes and figured it would take me three Saturdays adding in the concrete for the legs. Dividing things up like this kept me sane and sure enough in three weeks I had happy kids!
I think we need to look at world evangelism in the same way. If we break the job down into manageable parts we will get the job done. I’d like to call it CIRCLES OF EVANGELISM. By this I mean if we look at it as, “I’m not able to win THE world to Christ, but I can win MY world to Christ” then we create a personal circle that goes out into our “neck of the woods.” Everywhere I go is a sphere, or circle, of influence. I’m just responsible for that part of the world around me. But what about the rest of the world you might say? Well, if I go out in my circle and you go out in your circle and so and so goes out in their circle…we’ll have enough circles to circle this globe with the good news of Jesus Christ!
Do you see it now? Doesn’t it make sense? We have to admit we are no par with giants like Billy Graham. He has done what you call mass evangelism. Our only mass evangelism will be the collective amount of people we have shared the love of Christ with at the end of a lifetime. But that’s okay because if we all do our part then at the end we’re going to see lots of people influenced for Christ. We’re talking about a lot of “one on one.” Reaching out to people the Lord puts in our path. Think of how many people you know. Family. Friends. Coworkers. And think of the new people that will cross your way. The stranger in the line, etc. Think circle!
So don’t quit before you start! Break the heavenly call down into bits and pieces. It’s not all on you. It’s on US! We can do this thing together. If you get overwhelmed and give up then there will be a gap in the world because you didn’t fill out your circle. It will make the job bigger for the rest of us. The world is one big planet…a globe…a circle and can be reached by CIRCLES OF EVANGELISM!
Louie