One of the big questions on my mind this month is this:
How do you share the gospel with someone who already believes that Jesus exists, that Christ died on a cross, and he provides for us, that it’s necessary to pray to Him, and who goes to church every Sunday, and follows all the laws.
And you might wonder for yourself, why would you need to share the Gospel with this person? It sounds like they’re already a Christian. My response might be as follows;
“Christian“, perhaps yes, but Christ follower, who knows.
But again, what would you say to this person?
The verse that has come to me countless times this month has been Galatians 5:1. This verse is monumental because it presents the idea that Christ did not just die to forgive us, to set us FREE!
“For freedom Christ has set us free� (Gal 5:1)
It’s not exclusively from sin that we were set free either…
It’s from the chains of traditions, laws, and religion.
Our debt is caused by our failure to meet “legal demands�.
Colossians says “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human traditions� and that God “disarmed the rulers and authorities“.
Almost every home we evangelized to this month was Orthodox (minus one couple who was Jehovah’s Witness—which felt really ironic witnessing to them). It was simply a struggle to even know where to begin, because simply telling them that Jesus loves them and died for them was straight-up pointless.
We follow a God that is so spontaneous, so unpredictable, so uncontainable that the rules that men have made only bind us. Moldova is a very conservative country, where the precepts and traditions of the Church have confined peoples’ ideas of who God is. And many of them believe that they are a “good Christian�, but they don’t know what it means to know Christ. (Honestly, I’m still figuring out what it means to know Christ!)
Trying to show someone that faith is different than religion, and that relationship trumps all is hard , even exhausting. And that’s what a lot of this month has been. Knocking on doors, telling people Jesus loves them, telling them Jesus has given them freedom, and then leaving; hoping and trusting that the holy spirit is taking care of the rest.
　
