Knowing and Doing

When Richard and I were going into the harvest on Sunday evening, we prayed and loaded index cards to share the 3 Circles (Gospel) and took to the street according to our assignment.  Months have past and I have shared the gospel yet no one has believed and surrendered to Christ.  I wasn't disappointed or frustrated because i know this is a marathon not a sprint.  Halfway through the block, we rang the doorbell and Michael came to the door.  Asking for prayer requests, he said that he needed to get his girlfriend.  "Hold on for a minute."  I thought he was ditching us but Richard reminded me to be patient.  A few minutes passed and I was beginning to think we were suckers.  However, Ashley came out of the house on the front porch to share a prayer request.  We prayed over them and the request.  Then, i offered to show them a story that changed my life like we always do and Michael replied to "Go ahead." They tracked the story well....

We did a follow-up on a family we visited and shared the gospel with a few weeks ago.  Immediately, the two children were excited to see us.  But the kicker was the youngest who asked the father "Dad, can we go to church?"  (repeatedly asked dad) As thoughtful and encouraging this question is, my question is "is that really the end result?"  Do we really want more people to go to church? My Baptist instinct for years has been this mantra, "go to church."  And, obviously, get more into church.  But that has caused this HUGE spiritual problem in American Christianity.  We haven't truly seen spiritual growth, we have witnessed masses of people attending church.  We have forgotten that the gospel message leads people into a relationship with Jesus to change their lives.  Away from the selfish life of serving sin and turning to Jesus to follow him all the days of our lives, forgiven, redeemed and transformed.   The pressure among ...