We recently started working through the Gospel of Mark in our Daily Devos. It’s been refreshing and encouraging to read Jesus’ life and words in a focused way, and there is so much to take away.
Jesus makes it clear that the great threats to our faith and fruitfulness are the reality of spiritual battle, the inevitable sufferings we experience, and the temptation of a nice life.
The call to the Christian life is built on these simple facts:
We have an enemy.
We must be willing to suffer for Christ.
We must resist worldliness (especially wealth).
I noticed something in the parable of the sower that I hadn’t seen before: losing the spiritual battle results in no conversion. Persecution causes people to fall away. But worldliness eliminates our fruitfulness.
Mark 4:19: “of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful”
If the word of God is not bearing fruit by multiplying to others, then we can examine ourselves for worldliness and consider whether there are too many distractions to see the word of God multiply.
It is fascinating how many Scriptures focus on fruitfulness and multiplication. The Lord isn’t just interested in us receiving information or reading the word, but also in reproducing it in others.
Distractions are… distracting
In our discipleship, it is the third thing in Jesus parable, worldliness, that most often challenges us. Our enemy knows that he doesn’t have to take us out of the game altogether; he just needs to choke our fruitfulness.
Many challenges come to the Christian worldview and the invitation to yield our lives to Christ. But by far the most common challenge we run into is the distractions of a nice, busy life.
This has even crept into the very message of the Gospel we present. If our Gospel is merely that Christ has paid for our sins and given us salvation, then we have a clear task to take up in response.
Presenting the Gospel Honestly
How can we present the Gospel more honestly?
Focus on a relational Gospel: I prefer to think of the Gospel as the invitation to relationship with God and the invitation to co-labour with him in the renewal of all things, a work made possible by Jesus paying for our sins on the cross.
Be honest about the cost: We push too quickly for salvation, without inviting people to count the cost. As Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.”
Preach the same three things Jesus warned us of: We have an enemy, we will suffer, and we ought to be wary of distractions.
By skipping these three things, perhaps in an effort to increase our evangelism effectiveness, we ironically short-circuit the very goal that we have: to see people come to Christ.
The most effective evangelism strategy is simply believers who have received the word, counted the cost, and given their lives to joining what the Lord is doing in saving people.
I would rather have 11 sold-out disciples who’ve carefully counted the cost than 1,000 followers who haven’t, any day. So would Jesus.