Eyes on the Promise
Yesterday, I was sitting at George Howell Coffee on Washington Street in between meetings and a couple of young guys I did not recognize approached me. Charlie introduced himself and remarked that he has heard me preach at a Simeon Trust workshop in Cambridge a couple of years back. While we reflected on that time, Grisha joined us. Both Charlie and Grisha are doing an internship with the Navigators in Boston for the summer. I told them to pull up a chair and we had a good chat. The Navigators is a para-church ministry concerned with getting the gospel out, whether it’s on college campuses, in prisons, in the inner city, on military bases, and many other contexts. The conversation turned on a question Charlie asked me: “How do you keep from being discouraged in your evangelism?” It’s great question, especially as many of our Tremont Temple family will be joining together this Sunday to share the gospel on Boston Common. Here’s a summary of what I said in response to Charlie’s question:
One of the difficult things about the Christian ministry and evangelism in particular is that we are not often permitted to see the fruit of our labors. God may give us a glance—but that’s not a given. I quoted the evangelical Anglican Charles Bridges who wrote a wonderful book called “The Christian Ministry” a couple hundred years ago. Commenting on ministerial success, he wrote: “The seed may lie under the clods till we lie there, and then spring up.” In other words, we may be dead before our labors in the gospel ministry are revealed. We sow the seed—God decides when those seeds germinate and then punch up through the dirt into the open air.
When it comes to evangelism, our success isn’t the number of converts, despite what you may have heard from so-called ministry experts and denominational leaders. The measure of fruitfulness is faithfulness. But faithfulness to do what? To preach the gospel. That’s God’s yardstick. We should be more concerned with making sure we get the message right and get it across. The results are up to God. As Jonah 2:9 says, “Salvation is of the Lord.”
And so, how do I stay encouraged in evangelism? I fix my eyes on the promise, not the product. Acts 13:48 reflects the promise that it’s God who saves: “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” God appoints…and they believe. It’s true—have a part to play here. We are God’s ambassadors, telling everyone the king’s message. We can lay our heads down peacefully on the pillow of God’s sovereign grace knowing that the Great Commission is a work of God and not of us. Sure, we’re to strive and labor for the salvation of others—meaning that we are to speak the gospel. But the rest is up to God. Eyeing the promise that God is the one who appoints and saves puts the trust where it belongs—in God and not in ourselves.
