The other day I saw an advertisement for a church that had a picture of the pastor with a caption that said, “Don’t make me beg?” I think it was referring to, “Don’t make me beg you to come to my church?”
My first thought was to laugh, but then I was struck by how sad it was. This is what we have stooped to when it comes to the gospel, “Don’t make me beg?”
When we look at a broken world, filled with people who walk through life with no point, empty, lonely, unsure about who they are and if God exists and if He has a purpose for their lives and all we have is, “Don’t make me beg?” How about, the only thing that will fill that place of emptiness and loneliness is the gospel. The only thing that will take that loneliness away and give you purpose is the hope of the resurrection.
For me, I look at an empty cross and an empty grave and we throw our hands up and say, “Don’t make me beg.” As if that is the only power we have. Jesus did say in Acts 1:8 that the Holy Spirit would come upon us, we would have his power and we would be his witnesses and take over the planet. In Matthew 18, Jesus said we are to load up our super soakers and storm the gates of hell and they wouldn’t be able to stop us. And we say, “Don’t make me beg.”
I think often, as Christians and churches, we treat evangelism and the gospel like an 8th grade boy staring at the ground asking a girl to a dance. “Uh, if you, um, are, you know, free, or, uh, um, not doing anything, and, uh, if nothing better, you know, comes up, there is Jesus. What, uh, do you, you know, think?”
The next time you get nervous or scared about sharing your faith or inviting someone to church, just remember that as a follower of Jesus the power that raised Jesus from the grave is the same power that is in you.
