Power Evangelism
The heart of this month is to equip you to be ready to spread the Gospel as the Lord leads you. We are not doing this to grow Revive, we are doing this to grow the Kingdom of God. When we are evangelizing one of the things we will encounter is other religions and ideologies. We might not be equipped in terms of knowledge, but we are equipped when it comes to the power available to us. We have God, the creator of the Heavens and Earth, in us to confirm His words. Power Evangelism is our joker card; because of the power available to us, we can cut through all the jargon that we will face when we are evangelizing.
Mark 16:14-18, “Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Jesus promises us that when we preach His gospel, He will confirm His words with signs and wonders. Our job is to believe in His words and then the signs and wonders will follow those who believe. A lot of young adults today are hungry for truth. They are looking for it everywhere. We the church have the truth, and when we step out and believe in it, Jesus who is the truth will confirm His truth in the young adult’s heart.
Unbelief:
The biggest opposition to power evangelism is unbelief. You see in verse 14 that Jesus rebuked the disciples for their unbelief. Not just unbelief, but hardness of heart. The disciples fell into unbelief because they were afraid of being caught. Fear leads us into unbelief and hardness of the heart. Why did Peter reject Jesus? Because he was afraid. We are afraid that if we step out in faith, we will embarrass ourselves and fail miserably.
Mark 9:23-24, “Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
When you choose to believe God, all things are possible; but we all have the same struggles as this father in the excerpt of scripture above. I personally identify with the struggle of the father. I believe God can do it, but I am afraid I will fail. I believe that God is telling me to go and speak to that person, but I am afraid I won’t know what to say. This is something that we all struggle with. This is the answer that you do not hear a lot.
Unbelief is always lurking; you will never ever get rid of it. What you must do is choose to believe. What you must do is meditate on scriptures that help you believe; you must surround yourself with people that believe. Unbelief is only a thought away. Whatever you saturate your mind with is what you will believe: if you saturate your mind with God’s word, then you will believe His words, if you saturate your mind with doubt then you will not believe.
We have God with us:
Some might say, “I believe now, but that still doesn’t fix the problem of knowing what to say.” This is another big hurdle that we must jump. The answer is that we have God Holy Spirit with us. Before I talk about having Holy Spirit with us, I want to share something with you.
2 Timothy 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, is encouraging Timothy and us here today to be students of the word. That does not mean having a seminary degree or reading apologetics, that means knowing the word yourself. I am not talking about memorizing the whole Bible either; I am talking about reading the scriptures yourself. You do not need to have the whole Bible memorized, but do not be scripture illiterate. This is why I encourage you to make a point to read your Bible consistently. But whether we know a lot of scriptures or not, remember we have Holy Spirit with us.
Mark 13:11, “But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.”
God Holy Spirit is the best evangelist ever. He knows His scriptures very well and He knows our hearts very well. That is why we previously learned how to hear His voice, because we need to be confident that He got our backs. When I am evangelizing, I have one ear listening to Holy Spirit and the other ear listening to the person. Because I know for me to be effective, I need to hear what He is telling me. You must remember that you are a vessel, and what makes a vessel valuable is what is inside of it. The vessel isn’t valuable, but the jewel inside is. God Holy Spirit is inside of you, and He is the one that they will be attracted to. He is the one that will change their hearts and point them to Jesus. Stephen the Martyr is the best example. He knew the scriptures very well but that is not why they killed him.
Acts 6:8-10, “And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then there arose some from what is called the Synagogue of the Freedmen (Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Ciliciaand Asia), disputing with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.”
Look at verse 10, the presence of Holy Spirit on his life is what made them kill him. Not the scriptures that he knew, but the One he knew. God used Stephen to do miracles and look at how they described Him.
Acts 6:5, “And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit…”
He was full of faith and full of Holy Spirit. You do not get to be full of Holy Spirit without knowing Him intimately. For you to be used mightily by God, you must be full of faith and full of Holy Spirit. We get full of faith by studying the word and believing the word. We get full of Holy Spirit by spending time with Him and knowing Him intimately.
