Sunday, January 22, 2006

The Fire Inside and Outreach thoughts.

The time is 3:10 p.m.

I woke up this morning at about 8:00 am and had a quiet time. Afterwards, I went to church. For the past few days, I've been looking inside and pondering about the fire inside of my heart for God and the gospel. It's there, it's burning, and it's real! But it's hard to channel it into something that is practical and hands on. Not sure how I can put this but, it seems that all around this campus there are people who are gospel resistant I guess.... those who have been exposed to the good news before and maybe many many times, and there are even believers who don't seem to care so much for one reason or another. Of course, there are those who don't quite know, but what about those who do know and are extremely harden to the gospel? This can be a challenge, even if you are gung ho about the spread of the good news. I know that I'm not the only one who has been wrestling with this situation, but I think we can shed some light on how to actually spread the gospel with some fruit I guess... eh. It seems that in other places in the east such as India and China, you hear about multitudes of people coming to Christ within a short period of time, but here in America, the number of born again believers is hardly growing at all! Now right now I am not sure where I'm going with this because my mind is now an open platter, so bear with me, heheheheheeheh. This is a complex yet simple subject! Why do our outreach efforts here seem so ineffective? Here's where it can get very cloudy, but here is what I think.
We have strayed away from the biblical way of outreach. Today, we don't see God's hand in our witnessing attempts as much as should I believe. As I mentioned before, multitudes of people in the east have been coming to Christ for the past 50 years or so....millions!!!!!! There have been tons and tons of miracles also, which has been a powerful witness of the truth of the gospel in Asia. But here, we don't see tons of people coming to the Lord and we don't see very many miracles. Now I could go on and on with thoughts, but I'm going to make this short. I believe we must rely on God when it comes to spreading the gospel, not social events, not our own intellect, and not even our own personalities or kindness!! Look at the books of Acts, the gospel spread like wildfire because when people spoke, God confirmed his truth with His power and presence. There weren't apologetical arguments like we have today because the Lords hand was on there efforts. We must cry out to God and plead with Him to change the hearts of men whether we know them or not! I believe that we have made the mistake of taking the matters into our own hands when it comes to outreach, and as a result we have not seen very many lives transformed by the gospel. I think that we need to go back to the pattern of Acts even it does seem like it won't fit into this culture! God will fight for us if we let Him, step out on faith!!!!!!!!
If you want to really getting a glimpse of how God is moving in Asia check out the newsletter archive on www.asiaharvest.org.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

It continues..

It's been a while since I have posted here.... But today is my 20th birthday, lol. I feel like I'm getting old haha! Does this mean that I have to actually act older since I'm no longer a teenager?

Catching up.... I have recently changed my major, and I am no longer on the microbiology track! I am now on the religion track and so far it is pretty interesting!!! I've been warned about my future however by my family to really make sure that I want to do this because of job opportunites, but this decision was a leap of faith and I trust that God will use this some how. I came to this decision by examining my heart and what God has put on it. It is on my heart to serve God full time when I graduate college, and I was experiencing a growing discontentment with my previous major, so now I am doing religion.
The fire to spread the gospel still burns within my heart and it has played a role in my decision to change my major. This summer I am going to be involved in a church plant, and I am very excited.
This is all that I have for now, more soon to come.....