Thoughts about evangelism, hell, the limits of human strength.
So, to update you all, I’ve been spending every Wednesday on campus doing evangelism with students on Wayne State’s Campus. We’ve been doing different kinds of evangelism - anything from just sitting down with strangers to talk about Jesus to putting up interactive artistic displays that have relevant themes for students that ultimately lead towards communicating the gospel. We’ve seen two nonChristian students in the past two weeks sit down and have bible studies with people from our chapter and agree to investigating Jesus further, along with many instances of sharing the gospel with people.
This is good, surely, but something hit me today as I spent time with God.
I found myself longing to be with Christ in heaven, as nothing is as sweet as being in God’s presence where goodness, love, and peace abound without limits. I contemplated being with this God whom I love with all my heart for eternity, and my heart melted. I mean, it is the best news in the world. Then, my mind turned to those whom I believe will not get to experience this eternal fate of joy and perfection.
While I knew I believed intellectually in hell previously, today it connected with my heart in a way it hadn’t before. I realize that I believe that people will be spending eternity separated from anything good or worthwhile, that being God. This is absolutely devastating.
I feel such an emotional burden for these people now that I haven’t felt previously, and I must ask God, why are You not doing more? If You perfectly good and perfectly sovereign, and Your Word even say that it is Your desire for all people to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), then why aren’t You doing more? I know I must have faith to believe that God knows what is best, but it is hard when I consider the eternal fate of people who do not believe in Him. It compels me to evangelize more than I have ever felt before, and to desire more than just sharing the gospel and doing bible studies - seeing lives completely transformed by Christ is the goal.
Yet, I also realize I cannot run out into the world and make everyone believe. In fact, apart from Jesus, I can do nothing (John 15). Evangelizing in my own strength leads only to burnout. However, with Jesus, he promises that fruit will come if I abide with Him (John 15 as well). Thus, my only response is to pray fervently, and to the extent that I can live healthily without burnout, give my all to helping those to realize the dizzying, passionate, self-sacrificing, in-a-league-of-its-own love of Jesus Christ.
Lord have mercy on this world, and on His Church, when we do not really believe that Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats, ushering the sheep into eternal paradise and the goats out of His presence forever. Compel us to be Your hands and feet in this broken world. Amen.
2 years ago