Preaching the Gospel
I’m not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation to those who believe.
Romans 1:16
You don’t have to be perfect to preach. You get perfected as you preach. If we all waited until we are good preachers, no one would be able to preach. I was not born a preacher. But I made a decision that I would not let the parade of history pass me by. I began to preach on planes, sidewalks, gas stations, inside supermarkets. Anyone that was alive and breathing were my targets. They were my audience. I didn’t need a pulpit to preach. The world was my pulpit.
Too many of us never tap into the exhilarating experience of being fearless, because we are held back by fear. The only way to get delivered from fear is to confront it and breakthrough the fear. A side effect of public speaking is that it delivers you from the fear of man. When you get over your fears and preach in the public, you tap into the unlimited resources of heaven. Public preaching is a highly spiritual activity. It must be empowered by the Holy Spirit. Without His help, our words will not cut through the lies and land on hearts to bring about lasting change.
It’s difficult to understand the wisdom behind public proclamation until you try it yourself. John Wesley was hesitant to preach out in the open until George Whitfield encouraged him to the point that John Wesley finally decided to preach and once he started, he was hooked. He began to ride on horse back and began a movement, in which Francis Asbury continued, crisscrossing America preaching the gospel and raising up others who would ride on horse back taking the gospel to the highways and the byways.
Satan has done a great job at muzzling the mouths of believers. We can become so politically correct that we’ve forgotten to be biblically correct. We’ve adopted such a comfortable Christianity that when we read texts of prophets, apostles and Jesus himself getting killed for being to public, we simply read it as a good piece of literature, not the Words of God to be applied and practiced.
I believe that we must have a war-time mentality that we must do whatever it takes to save as many souls as possible. I believe that it’s time for the church to grow a backbone and stand up for what they believe in. No longer can we waver before two opinions.
When Elijah was faced with the 900 false prophets, he stood his ground and fire fell on the alter and all of Israel worshiped the one true God. The message of the prophets was repentance and forgiveness. Jesus gives commentary on the central theme of the prophets and it was repentance and forgiveness to the nations. We have the opportunity to continue this legacy. Many have been called, but few have said yes. We are hobbling around two opinions and we’ve been lukewarm in our efforts to following Jesus. Now God is awakening us to becoming a prophetic voice in our generation.
God is looking for those who wouldn’t simply read the word of God for a nice quiet time, but they would read if they are very words of God. When we take the word of God at face value, it is very clear what God wants us to do. He wants us to go public with the gospel and continue in the legacy left by the prophets, apostles and Jesus. While Adam was passive and got us into a mess. The Second Adam, Jesus Christ, was passionate and came to get out of our mess.
There is a strongman of passivity in our generation that needs to be broken. This passive spirit has infiltrated our generation and so many are under that captivity and we need to get set free. Too many have fallen for Satan’s old bag of tricks and have allowed him to stop their mouths from going public with the gospel. We need to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and get delivered from the grip of fear.
Fear is a spirit that needs to be conquered. Unconquered fear will cause us to be fearful and passive for the rest of our lives.
Too many dreams have been unfulfilled, because people have chosen fear over faith. Faith is what accesses heaven. Fear accesses demons. Fear is one of the primary ways Satan has kept the church at bay not engaging in the Great Commission. Fear is what causes us to live in safety with a stable job, earning a salary and achieving the American dream, rather than living the divine dream. Out of fear of the future, we’ve lost ourselves and our families to the process. We go through life never having won a soul, casted out demons and raised the dead, because we opted the “safer, stable, steady” life when that was not what God had called us to.
Jesus said, if anyone wants to come after me, they must deny themselves, pick up their crosses and follow him. Instead, we’ve denied God, left the cross to Jesus and rejected following Him. We’ve followed the path of wealth, no the path of the cross and therefore, we will never experience what it’s like to experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit wasn’t about goosebumps and good vibes, it was given to us to make us witnesses!
The original Greek for witness is Martus. Martyr is derived from the word Martus. It’s siginifant that the English language has chosen the word Martus to create the word Martyr, because when we choose to be a witness for Jesus, we must come to terms that we might be imprisoned, persecuted or even killed for being a witness of Jesus. More than 140,000 christians get martyred for their faith every year.
The reality is that the moment we were saved, we went AWOL and transferred out from the Kingdom of Darkness in to the Kingdom of God’s Son. We used to be on Satan’s side until we received forgiveness and cross over into the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately, we came out of Hell, but the Hell never came out of us.
Public preaching is daunting, but it’s the quickest way to get delivered from fear. Bonfoeffer said, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” There is nothing more dangerous than a dead man. When one is dead to the world, a man is able to access heaven.
Whether you’re in a persecuted nation, or a politically correct nation, fearless preaching of the gospel is a mandate to every born again believer. In both contexts, you will be tested. You will have to get over your fears. Preaching therefore will catapult you into the ministry of the gospel in any context, deliver you from fear and set you on the path of being a watchman for your generation.
Preaching is prophetic in nature - it gives divine instruction. Those who heed it will live and prosper, those who do not listen will perish.
This is the nature of the gospel. Those who are humble before God and accept the grace that flows from the cross can be under God’s covering, but those who do not humble themselves and seek their own ways, have chosen to live under a different Kingdom.
God is a good Father who has done everything to reveal His transcendent love. Those who decide to receive His forgiveness and follow Jesus, will receive the blessings of the immeasurable love of God and immortality in and through Jesus. But those who reject this free gift have chosen to live separated from God forever.
There’s a fascinating story about Elisha and King Joash. Israel was under attack by a confederation of nations and king Joash needed divine counsel. Elisha was old and was on his sickbed. The king sought instruction from the prophet.
The prophet tells the the king to grab a bow and arrow, open the east window and instructs him to shoot the arrow. When the king launches the arrow, the prophet gave a prophetic word saying, “The LORD’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria! For you shall fight the Syrians in Aphek until you have made an end of them.” (2 Kings 13:17)
When God gives a command, He gives it to us for our good and gives prophetic instruction for our victory. After that command, Elisha told the king to take the arrows and strike the ground. The king struck the ground three times and stopped. Then the prophet was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times.” (2 Kings 13:19)
The king stopped short concerning the Word God gave through Elisha and as a result, he was unable to claim the full victory that he needed to save His nation. When God gives a word, He doesn’t give them in dark sayings. His Word is pristine clear on what He wants us to do and the outcome. God has done His part, and He invites us to do our part. When we follow His divine instructions, we get divine results.
King Joash was a man of unhealthy patterns of wickedness following after his fathers, who walked in the sins of his fathers. Sin has a way of clouding our vision and paralyzing us from wholeheartedly pursuing the Lord. God gave the king an opportunity of a lifetime, but he didn’t seize it and faced the consequences of his passive approach to the word of God.
When we preach the gospel, we give prophetic instruction to a society that is decaying and being destroyed by demonic deception. If there’s ever a time for the church to rise up and preach the gospel, it is now.
Jesus said that the majority of people, including christians, will not enter into heaven. He said, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
He also said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (7:21)
He finished the sermon with these words of warning and instruction: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (7:24-27)
Christians are not exempt. You can have the outward appearance of godliness - saying all the right words and exhibiting righteous behavior, but if our hearts were far from God and we mixed our allegiance to God with worldly temptations, God will not recognize us when we cross that line of eternity.
The Bible is not an archaic, ancient book that can be compared with other books. It stands alone, because it contains the eternal words of God. People might say that its a confusing book, however, it’s one of the clearest books. There is nothing more clear than the instructions God gives in order to live a successful life in the eyes of God. Our flesh is at war with the things of the Spirit, therefore, as a unconverted, unrepentant person, it is impossible to truly grasp and receive His Word.
God has commanded us to “go and make disciples of nations.” Are we doing it? The Great Commission is a mission that binds and falls on every believer of Jesus Christ, yet, it is rare to find a church that wholeheartedly gives their time and energy to reaching the nations with the gospel.
May we not become like the first generation of Israelites who did not make it into the Promised Land, because of disobedience. May their story catalyze us into action like never before to see world evangelization in our generation. He’s given us divine instructions for life and what to deliver to the masses.
The Greatest Awakening will be like that if the first and second where public preachers will rise up and give divine instruction to those who are lost and lied to by culture and the media.
The influx of public preaching is going to be one of the markers of the Greatest Awakening in America.
Watchmen would stand on the city walls in watch for enemy intrusions and would blow the trumpet to warn the entire city of any attacks. God has raised me up to expose satanic deception not only for unbelievers, but also for the church in the West who live without any sense of what the enemy is doing.
We must be fearless in this hour and continue to contend for the the greatest awakening to come to this country.
7 Marks of a Watchman:
1. Full of the Holy Spirit (Ezek 2:2)
2. No fear of man/death (2:6-7)
3. Righteous (2:8)
4. Hears from God (2:8)
5. Speaks up for God (3:1)
6. Feeds on all of the Word of God (3:1-3)
7. Deep sense of responsibility for the lost and compromised (3:16-21)
Will you become a watchman for your generation? When we hear the voice from heaven, we will become a voice for our generation.
Some practicals on public preaching:
Keep your message Christocentric. Many preachers can fall into the trap of becoming Hell-centric or Sin-centric. The goal at the end of the day is to cause people to fall in love with Jesus. If we orient our message around people’s sin and not around Christ, it will only reinforce people’s guilt, shame and condemnation. However, if our message is “Christ and Him crucified,” it causes people to look to Jesus, not introspectively and fall into worldly sorrow. We want godly sorrow, where they encounter the love of God to the point that they will come to their senses and start walking towards their Father in heaven, who will come running to embrace them and love on them.
Use the 5 overarching themes in the Bible - Creation, Sin, Christ, Our Response, Eternity/Second Coming
Offering prayer for healing is one of the best ways to set up for a message, because it addresses people’s immediate physical needs that will open up their hearts. When a person is willing to receive prayer and they get healed, that will also be a great testimony to those presence on the power of God and the validity of your message.
At the end of every message, give them a chance to respond - Repent, Believe, Be Baptized, Receive the Holy Spirit