“Christmas Time” – No Better Time To Share The Gospel (Part 1)

I have found that there is no better time to talk about the love of God and the birth of Christ than during the month of December. The real truth is that the radio and TV are doing a lot of the work for us and the Holy Spirit is speaking to the human heart no matter how broken the person may be. We so often are reluctant to share the story of the gospel because we look at the outside of people and think they don’t need our help when, in fact, they are crying out on the inside.

This relates to my wife and I volunteering to work with families that have suffered a great loss relating to the late summer hurricane that devastated eastern North Carolina. We traveled from Charlotte, North Carolina to a city called New Bern about 5+ hours away from the coast. This town was hit hard by the last hurricane mainly because the land there is fairly flat and, in addition to the rain, the ocean surge was around 6 and 8 feet. People had to gut their houses of everything inside, including the sheet rock on the walls and the insulation. I was struck by how houses on the outside looked almost normal yet on the inside people couldn’t even live in them. On top of the pain and anguish of losing half the value of their homes, they also lost all that was on the inside…..which had to be put out on the street. Each day the county would try to remove the mountains of debris but they were months behind because of the sheer magnitude of the destruction. Every day, many of the home owners who were able to stay in upper floors of their house or in trailers in their driveways, had to be reminded of the loss and the bleakness of their potential future.

Why share this story?  Simply put, I have found people may look put together on the outside but are so messed up by their own choices and the choices of others that they don’t know where to turn. They may be broken but they have learned to cover up the pain and sadness. If the average Christian would reach out to these lost souls they might respond much differently than we expected……maybe hundreds would come to Christ.

When you think of the Christmas story we have so “Sanitized” it and made it look and smell far different from the reality of what it truly was.  Joseph and Mary had to travel on foot to a distant town with Mary being nearly nine months pregnant. They didn’t have a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn to stay at or a Mac Donalds to eat at along the way. The roads were dirt and littered with horse and donkey waste that they had to smell and walk through.  They get to the town of Bethlehem and all the inns were full.  No hospital to go into a maternity ward that was clean and brightly painted with pictures of cute animals painted as well. Mary had to lay down in what was probably a carved out cave in a rock area to get out of the weather. You can’t imagine the animal smell or the lack of clean places to lay down in. They just had to make do with what was there. All this to bring mankind’s Savior into the world.

To even imagine what was going through Mary or Joseph’s mind as to why they were asked to usher the baby Jesus into the world in such deplorable conditions must have been mind-blowing. Yet, each step of the way they were trusting that His plan would work if they would just have faith.  They didn’t try to “Reason” it out, they just responded to God’s instruction and became the heroes in the story of the birth of the baby Jesus.

When my wife and I and small handful of believers felt God calling us to plant a church in Upstate New York back in 1986 we had nothing to start our journey except the voice of God to go on. Inside our hearts we had planted the command of God in Matthew 28 and were ready to see God move on our behalf to see life happen.

Matthew 28:19-20                                                                                                                                                            

 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

So, we started the church with nothing and took up an offering to buy a used overhead projector and a used screen to sing songs with on Sunday morning. We were not welcomed into the nice facility or given a welcoming party.  In fact, nobody knew or cared that we existed.  The only place we found available to rent on a Sunday morning was a bar!  So the journey seemed to hit a speed bump but we knew we had the message of God for a lost and broken world. We knew that if we could just love people like Jesus did and share the gospel message people would be saved and on the road to finding healing in their souls.

We started in the summer of 1986 and when Christmas came along we had added a few to our numbers, but were still only a handful of people. We asked God for a plan and the Holy Spirit spoke to us about singing Christmas carols on the streets of Saratoga Springs, our new city. No one knew us or seemed to care to know. We got out a few weeks before Christmas and it was bitter cold, around 10 degrees at best, with the wind blowing. We set up a hot chocolate table and handed out cups to pedestrians.  We sang until our voice got so horse we couldn’t speak. We did this year after year until our church had grown to be one of the largest non-denominational churches in the city. The city asked us to sing every Christmas season to crowds of upwards of 20,000 on a special night the city’s leaders wanted to create a yearly tradition. Our influence grew because we dared to believe that the gospel was worth sharing even when the circumstances were less than desirable. Like Joseph and Mary, we believed God uses people to speak the story of Christ through people just like you and me.  Let me close with the words of the apostle Paul when he spoke to people living in the city of Corinth about what he relied on in sharing Christ with the world.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5                                                                                                                                                           

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. [2] For I determined to know nothing among you accept Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. [3] I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, [4] and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, [5] so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

As we approach the month of December, don’t be so focused on being happy and comfortable. Think more about God’s command to all those who call themselves believers. Bring God into the world and share the love of God with those who are perishing.

Questions:

1) Have you considered God’s command to share your faith? If not, why not?

2) Are you willing to be used by God this Christmas season? Pray for God to fill your heart with love.

In Part Two on this topic about Christmas, I will be identifying reasons we find it hard to share the gospel.

Pastor Dale