Mandate To Evangelize David FieldSeptember 11, 2009
People, and even Christians seem to think that I have a mandate to get people saved in order to validate myself in Christ. That means that I would be helping others, not for their good, but for my own edification. I have a love for others of course, but if my motive is confused, the message gets lost. People accept what I say or don’t. I am going to the same place with the same rewards, blessings of God regardless. I am not judged by the actions of others, but for my own actions, and choices. We are not called to bear one another's cross, when we cannot make the decisions for them, moreover when they refuse. How can we be held accountable for what we have no control over? How many non-Christians have you converted? I have converted the same number as Billy Graham; one, and that is myself. I present the truth with all means available to me just as he does. The only person capable of converting you is you. You alone have been placed in control of your destiny.
A friend tells me that if I want to be more successful at winning others to Christ, that I should be more subtle, and less way out there. Woe! Wait a minute. First of all, it is not my objective to win more souls. My objective is to speak the truth, and speak it in the way only I was created to speak it. Maybe someone else was created to speak more subtly, I don’t know. I only know what the Lord has placed in my heart, and I will not change that. Jesus said preach the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. He did not say, “Win souls”. We need not take a count of how many souls we have helped. This is not a measure of how obedient we are, and this is not a measure of how much we love the Lord.
If it is said we are sent into the field to harvest, I would say, for God’s sake, don’t harvest everything in the field!, just the good crop. Don’t waste time trying to harvest weeds, or rotten crop. Jesus said dust off your feet and move on from that place. And why try to sew seed on unfertile ground? Sewing the seed is speaking the word of truth. I would try that once to see if it were fertile, and come harvest time, when I see nothing, I have better things to do.
We have a Mandate to Love God
Our primary purpose is to worship God. In other words, what God desires most of us, is our love. Everything else is secondary. Everything else we try to do, if we don’t first do this, is futile, and a complete waste of time. Even if you already concur with this, I feel that because of the importance of this message that it needs to be brought to the forefront. God firstly wants to have a relationship with us, personally.