Redefining the Gospel

I have decided that the answer to all of those questions is NO.

Last month in India God shook me. He taught me so many things and opened my eyes to the reality all around me. I spent the whole month in Chennai India and traveled between the two teams we had there. We scraped, cleaned, painted, and loved on kids at the India Gospel Mission Children's Home as well as did village outreach, prayer meetings, preached the gospel on the street, and visited a leper colony. On top of all of that, God also so clearly gave me direction in the next step of my journey as He opened a door for me to go back to Ireland shortly after returning home from the race. God asked me to trust Him, even if it is just for a few months at a time that He reveals to me. I decided to say yes to trusting and yes to more faith. Because of that choice i have realized even more that i have no control over my life…and i like it. It is so much better this way. I would rather live month by month or day by day with God in control than to live by my own 5 year security plan just so that i can have things planned out and under control. I want to trust because every day is new and every day is an adventure, wherever you are!

The last week we were in India i went to visit Travis' team, Team Unveiled. They had been preaching the gospel on the streets nearly every day that month. Their contact would literally walk them into a village, stop in the middle of the street, set up the microphone and speaker, and hand it over to someone from the team and say "Preach the Gospel". Talk about out of our comfort zone! It got a little awkward at times! One day we went into a village and it was my turn to preach. I grabbed the microphone and invited people to come and listen, but my only audience was a goat standing right in front of me listening to my every word. "Meh-eh-eh-eh-ehhhhhh", it said (which im sure must have meant "Amen" in goat language), but nobody else came except for those who happened to walk by. Awkward? You bet! But it was a GOOD uncomfortable! We were literally filling the streets with the hope of Christ and no matter how crazy it may have seemed, we were preaching the gospel of Christ to a culture where thousands of gods are worshipped and many people have never even heard of this man called Jesus, much less what it means to have a relationship with Him.

This is where I started thinking about the difference in the gospel we preached on the streets of India and how I typically share the gospel in America. This might get a little complicated, but bear with me. It gets good. Real good.

1. The message concerning Christ, the kingdom of God, and salvation
2. An interpretation of the Christian message
3. One of the first four New Testament books telling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ
4. The message or teachings of a religious teacher
5. Something accepted or promoted as infallible truth or as a guiding principle or doctrine

I believe it is pretty safe to say that these definitions sum up how the gospel is often approached: it starts with Jesus coming to the earth. I have been guilty of it. I have told people about Jesus' love and sacrifice and told them that was the gospel, but is it really? Is that all there is to it?

Here is my conflict, when we were preaching in India nobody knew who Jesus was, why He came, or how to even comprehend His love for us. They needed the bigger picture. They needed the full story. So my definition of the gospel began to expand and when I allowed it to be redefined, God opened my eyes to something even more spectacular.

He reminded me that Jesus was in the beginning. He has always existed with God. John 1:1-3 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." Then in verse 14 it goes on, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Jesus definitely lived on the earth, but what about the thousands of years before that? Why do we seem to fast forward to Jesus coming to earth like its some movie we can pick and choose which parts to watch?

The definition of the gospel being the message of Christ is not necessarily wrong, but our placement of Jesus in the story is a little off. So, where does Jesus start? Does his story only begin once he came to earth? Certainly not. If we only tell the part of the story when Jesus was on earth we are sharing just a small portion of the gospel. Yes, it is the most important part, but because of the lack of understanding of the gospel in its entirety there are millions of people who now know the "most important part", but still havent quite grasped why Jesus' role was so crucial in God's plan. If Christ has been with God from the beginning, shouldn't we start there? Shouldn't we tell the whole story of God's redemptive plan?

Start from the beginning. Jesus was there back then too. God's heart is not just for us to accept Jesus, but to also join Christ in His work of redemption for all of creation and to establish His Kingdom on earth. Christ taught us to pray, "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." He wants heaven to come to earth by His people bringing kingdom everywhere they go. He wants us to partake in His plan to take back everything that has been perverted and stolen by this broken and imperfect world. Redemption is not just for us, it's for all of His creation. Everything that He called good, Christ was sent to restore. Jesus is not just a restorer of souls, but a restorer of LIFE. He brings life to EVERYTHING.

God has a plan of redemption for the whole world. That is the big picture. He created the whole universe and everything in it. He saw that His creation was good and He loved it. He created you and me and all of the people on the earth. He gave us free will because He loved us and wanted us to freely choose to love Him back and worship Him, but because of our free will, sin entered the world. Man was deceived by his own selfish desires and forgot about God's goodness and sovereignty. God is perfect and in Him there is no sin. We became separated from God because of our sin, but out of His abundant love for us, God sent Jesus, His only Son, into the world to reconcile us to Himself. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life as a man and is an example to us of how we should live our lives. He was innocent and yet still crucified so that our sins could be forgiven by faith in Him and we could enter into a relationship with our Creator, God. Jesus made atonement and paid the price for all of our sins so we could be righteous and blameless before God and have eternal life with Him in Heaven. This is how much God loves us! Isn't that what the gospel is really all about anyways? God's love for us? Everything He has done from the beginning of time has been out of LOVE and yet time and time again we have rejected Him and turned to our own plans, ideas, and desires.

I believe it is time to start redefining the gospel. Redefine how we present it, share it, and start it. Lets paint the big picture and have some conversations about God and His love for creation. We are, after all, His greatest creation. We are precious to Him! Perhaps today is your day to preach the gospel in its entirety. Think about starting here: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…"