Why Are We Losing Ground?

According to Barna Research Americans constitute the weakest part of the body of Christ worldwide. When compared to Christians in third world countries, American Christians are shallow and superficial.

Why is that? Very few of us have had to suffer or pay a price to follow Jesus. My first mentor after I became a Christian said, “If your Christianity didn’t cost anything it isn’t worth anything.” It stands to reason that we will take far better care of something we paid a lot of money for, like a new car, than something we paid almost nothing for, like a $200 dollar rust bucket.

Did your Christianity cost you anything? Were you ridiculed by your old gang when you made a stand for Christ? Did you ever lose a job for being honest? In third world countries, often Christians are persecuted for their faith. Sometimes, they even receive death threats or are killed for their faith.

The biggest reason by far, is probably materialism. In America, at least the middle and upper classes have so much. We are always buying things. It can become a full time job to take care of what we own. Materialism tends to put us to sleep. We become unaware of those around us, who are headed for an eternal hell because they don’t know Jesus, nor do we care. Personal evangelism, sharing your faith with another individual is just about dead in America. The vast majority of “pew warmers” never share their faith, nor do they know how.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:21 (NKJV), “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” For most American Christians, our treasure is all the “stuff” that we own. Our heart represents our affections and our focus.

What is your focus in life? Where are you going? For most American Christians, it is to the shopping mall.

Such a life style puts us totally out of sync with the heart of God. So what is the heart of God, you ask? What is His top priority?

God shows us what His heart is in 1 Timothy 2:1-4 (NKJV):

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

The word “men” appears twice in the passage. In the first case we are to pray for all men, or all people (when the Bible uses the word men in this way, it is referring to all people), because God wants all men (all people) to be saved. Saved means to cross over from spiritual death, which is our natural state of how we were born into the world, to eternal life by believing on Jesus.

This is the job of every Christian. Every Christian is to be busy at the task of bringing unbelievers to Jesus. Charles Finney, often referred to as America’s most successful evangelist, took it a step further. He stated that the sole reason Christians are on the earth is to lead others to Christ.

A Christian Radio personality, I don’t remember who, stated that it will take us 10,000 years to evangelize the world the way we are presently doing it. However, if each Christian would win and disciple one new believer every year, it would take only 36 years to evangelize the world.

At the present rate that we are winning people to Jesus in America, we are not keeping up with the population growth. In other words, we are losing ground.

 

Log in next week, for the next installment, posted right here!

 

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine