Why is it so hard to reach people for Christ?

This is going to get a little hairy, so hang on.

There is a problem in reaching people for Christ these days.
Really there has always been a bit of friction between non believers and believers. But I think the problems faced COULD be overcome! Here is the problem... Are you ready?



In order for us to reach the unsaved, we, ALL OF US, have got to stop being hypocrites.

When we all get into arguments over the color of the carpet and what color we think God would rather have, or how the chairs ought to be set up, or whether we should have chairs or if Pews mightn't be better, These are stupid arguments which are divisive and petty, people who see us acting like that are going to say, "why bother?" or "I thought their 'GOD' was supposed to be a God of love and here they are fighting."

On the other hand!!! We DO need to follow Christ fully.
(This is where we find DOCTRINE.)

We often will not agree on the important points of Doctrine, some even try to claim that Doctrine is divisive and "we all should just love each other and stop looking for ways to divide the church of Christ".

But this is a path to destruction.


Then, of course, we do not have a clear understanding of what is really in the Bible! We don't learn it or study it! We just pay lip service to it.

As for an example of hypocrisy; I can think of several...

We say that we follow God and we go to church EVERY Sunday to prove it. Then the rest of the week? Not only do we not follow God's word we rationalize WHY we don't!

We lie to people "oh but it is just a little white lie!".

We Steal! "oh but I needed it more and anyway it wasn't REALLY stealing."

We commit Sexual sins as in premarital sex, adultery or cohabitation. "but I had a really rough week and needed to let off some extra pressure, anyway how am I supposed to KNOW if s/he is the right one if I don't live with her/him first."

And what may seem biggest of all? We act like we are better or more important than everyone else while telling them that we are all servants of Christ.

I Knew a guy who was a good Christian. There was no doubt about his sincerity, there was no question about his walk with God. But he had a real problem with bringing people to God because he just could not relate to others.

One reason for this was because he was a nitpicker. you know the kind... He delighted in finding the Typographical or English errors in letters, He would jump on a single point in a counter argument and hound it to death ignoring the whole picture that people were trying to present to him.

In short he missed the forest for the trees.

People were driven away by his behavior! he had an undeniable ZEAL for the Lord. But he couldn't reach people on their level to tell them about it.
He even drove "Christians" a little batty.

He Might have seen himself as being like one of the judges or prophets of God in the Old testament, I don't know, but there were many who wouldn't listen.

Now for someone FOLLOWING Christ already, this is all well and good! We do need an Elijah, Samuel or even Paul to let us know when we are straying.
But for non Christians there is an attitude that says, "I will not listen to you spewing out about your, apparently, hateful GOD."

We need to reach these people ... differently.

The first thing we need to do is to PRAY for those who do not know Christ, those we are trying to reach.

Then we need to LIVE the life that we are supposed to be following, Show them how different it is and show them the peace that God gives us even in tribulation.

We need to Study God's word, ALL of it. And we need to KNOW it... I have seen and dealt with people who have truly had real questions about the faith. (I once taught a 3rd grade Sunday school class... they had LOTS of questions!)

In order to teach them I had to know what I was talking about. Even more so with evangelism!

People will always have questions, some of those questions will be designed to catch you out, to show the "silliness" of your "religion".

Other questions will be honest representations of struggles a person has with trying to understand, maybe something s/he was taught or heard conflicts with what they perceive the God of the Bible to be, maybe they saw too many Movies or T.V. Shows where Christianity was falsely presented.

In order to teach these people we need to know what the Bible says and we need to be prepared to answer those questions.
We ALSO need to be ready to speak up against the false teachers!

I know that I mentioned the problem with the divisiveness people see in the church BUT one really important point made in the Bible is that we must NOT associate ourselves with those who call themselves followers of Christ but don't obey/follow Christ.
Paul makes that very clear! (1 Cor 5:11)

When we relate to people (hang out with) who do not live according to God's word, we are saying to those watching, that the word I claim to believe doesn't matter as much as keeping my friends and hanging out with them.

We are then condoning sinful behavior.

And at that point the one you are trying to reach will say, " why should I listen to you? You do not have anything different let alone better."

So there you go, a few points of why it can be hard to reach others for Christ.

To review.
In order to reach people with the Gospel we need to...
Pray for those who are lost, and this is the most important step to begin with,
Live our lives FULLY for Christ removing all hypocrisy,
And KNOW what it is that we are talking about, through studying and learning the Bible.

And By the way, another good reason for learning the Bible and understanding it is, when you are talking to a "pastor" who is teaching a falsehood you can gently correct him, or know to find a place where the truth is taught.

O.K. Now you have this info... what are you going to do with it?

God: The great physician.

Something we often seem to miss is that God Is perfect; And, as I said before, he is unchanging. This creates a dilemma for most People (yes even Christians). I mean, How do you describe perfection? I mean Honestly, c'mon how do you do it?
Nothing in our lives or this world is perfect, so what can you compare with to describe perfection?
He is not just 99.9 percent pure this is the real deal.

But here is the thing, being perfect no sin or evil can be in his presence, period.

I suppose you could look at it like the “Black Plague”.
The Plague, or Black Death, was spread by Infected fleas, which lived on rats and then spread to humans.
Once a person was infected there was the chance of the disease being spread in a form called pneumonic plague, which attacked the respiratory system and was spread by breathing the exhaled air of the victim.

It decimated the known world in 1348 with some reports stating that up to half of the people existing then died.

Now in order to stop the disease, you either have to stop the carrier or destroy the disease.
Usually it is easiest to stop the carrier of the disease, this does not require anything special in training or fabrication and the disease, hopefully, will not spread any further.

In order to do that you might kill the carrier, the rats or fleas (or even the people)that spread the illness, or you can quarantine the infected until the disease has passed and is no longer virulent.

Sin is a lot like disease, and all of us are infected. So to keep God from being contaminated he might keep us away. But there is also the second possibility… antidote/vaccination or destroying the disease itself.

God offers us a way to do this. We just have to accept it.
And that is what Jesus did on the cross. His blood acts as the vaccination for our sins. He died that we might be saved. We were not allowed in God’s presence (quarantine) because of our sin but because of God’s love, and Jesus' sacrifice (antidote) we are able to come into his presence.

And that is probably the closest I can come to offering you the chance to see what Sin is like compared to God.

Now the question is... will you accept the antidote? Or do you think that is too harsh?
If you went to a doctor and he said you need to have a certain medicine or you will die, would you accept the medicine? or would you turn around and walk away saying... "I do not like death and for you to give me that ultimatum makes you mean and harsh."?

I hope for your sake that you choose the medicine.

How to pray!

O.K. here is the thing you gotta remember about prayer.
Prayer is having a conversation with God.
That was easy huh?
I have actually had people say to me " [Colt] I have never prayed before, how do you do it?"

I can sympathize! I know how difficult it is to do something you have never done before.

Like I said here Prayer is talking With God. It doesn't have to be fancy, full of thee's and thou's (Nehemiah used "prayer Arrows" just a simple "help me Lord")

It does need to be respectful, don't lie to God, he WILL know. But otherwise it is just like talking to anyone else. One big difference though is you can do it quietly. God will hear you even if you just think the words (kinda like telepathy maybe?).

Of course there is one important part that most people forget! (even Christians ;-)) you also need to take the time to listen.

Is God really mean?

Today I heard something that was very interesting to me.

A guy was trying to make a point on a radio talk show.
The host had on, as a guest, a Catholic man, who apparently recently wrote a book, which states, in summary, that there really is no conflict between science and religion.

I would actually have to agree with that idea; and my conflict is not lying there! My issue was a Christian at one point called the show and made a mistake that MANY Christians make.

He was not prepared.

I would therefore like to offer the rebuttal that ought to have been made at the time.
I need to offer the argument as it progressed, then I will jump in to the debate with the response that I feel is appropriate.

First though I ought to lay some groundwork. For some reason the caller had brought the conversation around to the rapture. Catholicism doesn’t believe in the rapture so the caller was trying to point out the support for it in the Bible. And, this may be the real start of the problem, he kept belaboring the point though it really wasn’t the issue that he called about.

But he did declare at one part that the Entire Bible was the inspired God breathed work OF God. And that we ought to take it as such.

The host of the show responded with citing a law he claimed was in the book of Leviticus, which states, “If a child is disobedient you must kill that child.”

The caller said, “well that’s how God used to be but he doesn’t do that anymore.”

And right there is his big mistake.

The host then responded “well if that is the God you have I don’t want to have anything to do with that God.” The implication was, he believed that to be an unloving and hateful God.

I hope I would not have made the caller’s blunder but I do want to try to respond.

First of all I tried to find the verse alluded to and I couldn’t find it off hand.
The closest I came was Leviticus 20: 9a. “If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death.” This is not particularly pertinent to my argument/rebuttal though.

I do want to make it clear, I believe the ENTIRE Bible to be the word of God Inspired/breathed by the Lord and that all of it is for our edification. (Same as the caller.)
I also believe that being such it is entirely True and all of it can be taken at face value. (s.a.t.c.).

I do NOT believe that God has changed.

Those laws do still exist, and God still requires the conditions of those laws to be met, the same as he always has. He has not changed.

The difference is that we do not have to hold to the law the same way that we did because JESUS PAID THE DEBT!

I would like to make an example here, it is like if someone broke a law about littering. The fine for littering is $300.00, which MUST be paid. It is the law.

The offender is taken to court, and he/she pleads guilty as charged. As soon as the offender admits the guilt the judge stands up and pulls 3 hundred dollar bills out of his wallet and slaps that down on the “bench” and declares the debt to be paid in full.

The law still exists, but the penalty has been paid.

See when Jesus came to the earth he said that he “fulfilled the law and the prophets.” Meaning we were no longer under the burden of the law.

All we have to do is accept the generosity of the judge who paid the penalty for us.

You see? God never changed he is the same now as he was 2000 years ago and as he will be 2000 years hence.

Our Radio host chose to take the fact that the law existed as being the result of a mean God. But instead the point we need to take here is that God loved us so much that he PAID for us that which we could not pay on our own.

When I say that the whole Bible is good for our edification, I mean it but I do not mean that I am going to go out and kill all the people who break the laws of Leviticus.

What I get out of Leviticus then is that there are a lot of laws out there. And I could never hope to follow them all, but they are there for my benefit (and yours).
Just like there are a lot of human laws that I cannot follow. Consider this example.

I remember reading about a street worker working in a ditch dug for pipeline to be laid in the middle of the street.
All of a sudden the sides of the ditch collapsed and buried him alive. Nearby pedestrians quickly ran to his aid and dug him out. They saved his life! Then OSHA got involved and fined the good Samaritans a lot of money because they broke the law. It seems in their efforts to dig him out they all forgot to run off and find hard hats to wear and so they were all in violation of the law.

See? Same thing!

That law was there for their benefit. Wearing a hard hat in a construction zone is important! It saves people from injury or death. BUT if those people had stopped to follow that law, the street worker would have died.
We cannot always follow the law but the law still is there. God loved us enough to send his son to pay the cost of it.

That is why God is loving, not mean or vengeful.

The problem is that we have to accept what Jesus did. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.”

That is where people like the host balk. They do not want there to be only the one way. That would mean accepting the God that gave us Leviticus. They choose not to see the love of God but rather they see the bad stuff or the rules that seem so unfair to them, even if they aren’t.

Then they say, as the host did, “I can not accept that God.” Well now here we have a whole ‘nother kettle ‘o’ fish.

See God isn’t in it for popularity. He isn’t sitting around wringing his hands saying, “oh I hope they will accept me, I hope they will love me.”

This is a poor analogy but… It’s kind of like if there was an asteroid large enough to obliterate the entire planet heading for us.
Saying “oh I don’t want to believe in that asteroid because it just seems to hateful, I mean crashing into the planet and destroying all life here. ”

The asteroid doesn’t care what you think. It just is! It exists period. Trying to stop it or dissuade it by telling it we don’t like it isn’t going to make it stop and reconsider.

Unlike the asteroid God does care. But he still is and he still has a certain nature. Nothing can change his nature. He created all there is. You cannot change God anymore than a pot can change the person who made it.

He cares about us enough though that, like a pot maker will protect and care for his favorite pot, God will care for us, in fact like God HAS cared for us. (John 3:16)

See that is where we need to take this. Whether you believe in God, or the Bible, or not. God does exist. Wishing him away, or denying his existence or nature will have no effect.
We need to accept him. God will prevail in the end.

And F.Y.I., when you get before the throne of judgment, saying, “ oh I couldn’t believe in God because he seemed too mean.” Will not work.

By reading this you have been told the truth of God and thus you cannot deny him. When the time comes, sink or swim, it was your choice.