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The GO Zone:Beyond the Great Commission
by Dave Weiss (Dave's bio)
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Ask a person about a Biblical passage on evangelism and his thoughts will automatically be drawn to the Great Commission. It makes sense, it is probably the preeminent passage, but if we are willing to dig a little deeper, I believe we can find at least the directive for evangelism in the Great Commandment:
"Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself" Matthew 22: 37-39 (NIV)
Think about it. If we truly love the Lord with all of our heart, soul and mind, He will become our passion and our reason for living. That passion will be all consuming. Think about a person you know who has a great passion for something. It is all he can talk about, all he thinks about and he will talk about it with anyone, any place, any time at the drop of a hat. If we were that passionate about our Lord and the Good News, evangelism would be a natural extension of everything we did. Oh if only. . .
Jesus doesn't stop there. You see while we must have an all consuming love for the Lord, He wants us to love our neighbor, too. Our neighbor is also His child after all and Jesus is very concerned about his well being too. He tells us we must love that neighbor as we love ourselves. He just threw looking out for number one right out the window. We must love our neighbor and not just a little, we must love him as much as we love ourselves. His well being is our well being. If this is true, if we really do love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, when we hear a verse like John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life, NO ONE (emphasis mine) comes to the Father except through me," we will stop to think. If we truly love our neighbor as ourselves and we know that that person's eternal soul is in grave danger without Jesus, evangelism will become second nature to us. We will share our faith because the fate faced by someone who dies without Jesus will be more than we can bear. This is called conviction. It is as if the Holy Spirit poses the question, "How can you say you love your neighbor and then not care whether or not he spends eternity in Hell?" If we can't tell our neighbor how to be saved, do we really care at all?
Love your God. Love your neighbor. Love him with all your heart. Prove that your love is sincere by sharing the love of Jesus. What are you waiting for? GO!
Copyright 2002, Dave Weiss. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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About Dave Weiss: Dave Weiss is a youth leader, speaker, writer and licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren and resides in Mohrsville, PA. He is a member of the Write Group for Interlinc's Youth Leader's Only, a youth ministry resource. He has written "Interlinc's Festival Survival Guide." For more on Dave's Ministry go to http://www.radicallyreal.com
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