Mike’s November Update

by Alex

November 2018

Evangelism in the Market

We have been having conversations with Muslims at the market lately. The discussion always seems to go back to works salvation as opposed to salvation by grace through faith in Christ. Muslims, along with all people from all religions, feel that we must earn sal­vation by good works. This is what people have alwaysbelieved in every religion including ones that no longer ex­ist. It is the most natural viewpoint for us to come to. People could never make up what the Bible teaches. It is so out of the realm of human thought. People have universally assumed we earn eternal life by good works. The only way we could come to salvation by faith alone in Christ is through revelation. I think salvation by faith in Christ alone is evidence that it came from God. No man would ever come to that conclusion. They would come to the conclusion every­one else has come to, unaided by revelation.

They feel that salvation by faith alone would encourage one to live in sin. I always point out that people from all religions do good works to earn salvation. I do good works because I am saved. I do what I do out of gratitude. Doing good works to earn your salvation is selfish and is not God-oriented. Doing our good works out of grat­itude for the salvation we have in Christ is a much more pow­erful motivation to obey God. Obedience for the selfish reasons of saving your own skin is not real obedience.

I use the illustration of loving parents. If we have loving par­ents, we are motivated to honor them and not treat them badly. Gratitude is the more natural response we have when our parents have loved us and cared for us our whole lives. The Muslims are family-oriented and tend to relate to this illustration.

Discipleship

Our fellowship has very godly and mature women. We did not have men in our fellowship for many years. We praise God for the men we do have, but they are not on the spiritual level of the women in our church. My goal is to appoint elders for our church, who will take over the leadership. We are not there yet, but I do enjoy our men’s Bible study. I do praise God for the progress that they have made thus far. I need to be patient and wait on God as He works in their hearts.

De Ontmoeting

We are still studying the book of Genesis on Sunday mornings. We just finished the life of Abraham. One of the things I found encouraging was Genesis 20:13: “And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is your kindness that you should do for me: in every place, wher­ever we go, say of me, “He is my brother.’” This is the second time that Abraham lied about Sarah being his sister. When asked by Abimelech why he lied, Abraham says that he thought there was no fear of God in this place and that someone would kill him for his wife. He said she is his sis­ter in that they have the same father, and then he said what is in v. 13. According to v. 13 Abraham and Sarah had been saying this all over Kanaan. In other words, they had told this lie more than twice, apparent­ly many more times.

Abraham and Sarah are ex­amples of faith (Hebrews 11:8-19). They were examples in trusting God in going to Ka­naan, dwelling in the land, Sarah for having a baby when she was 90, Abraham for being willing to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice. From this we might conclude that Abraham trusted God in all things. But we see in 20:13 that Abraham was not an example in trusting God with his own life. In fact, we do not know if he ever had victory over this. He was 99 in Genesis 20.

What I found encouraging from this is that this is just how we are. We have areas in our lives where we do trust God but other areas that we struggle in trusting God. Abra­ham was a hero of the faith, but he was also human like the rest of us. God does not say Abraham was an example of trusting God with his own life, be­cause he was not. It en­cour­aged me to ask the Lord to show areas of my life in which I am not trusting Him.

Alex