Characteristics of a healthy church - Part 7

Before I forget it, let me share with you that being healthy is a continual process. We don't become a healthy church in a point of time and then stand back and pat ourselves on the back because we have "worked out" and now are back in shape.

It's a day-by-day, week-by-week, process of working toward and keeping ourselves spiritually and relationally healthy.

Part of that process is looking outside of ourselves and resisting the temptation to only focus on our needs, our wants, our desires to a planet that needs God as well.

Jesus said it this way in Luke 19:10, "for the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

Here's what I know. The people I come across on a daily basis are divine appointments orchestrated by God.

So the question becomes, "how receivable am I to the people God places in my life?" "Is my life marked by the love of Christ that overflows into the hearts and lives of others who don't follow Christ around me?"

I'm not really connected to the word "evangelism." To me it connotates the idea of dropping a thousand pounds of tracts off of a plane at 10,000 feet in order to "bring the pagans to God." Or someone standing on a street corner with a cross yelling out, "you're going to hell."

Let's reframe our thinking and our terminology and begin to think in terms of a word I would like to add to the mix: OVERFLOW.

You and I should be and can be so full of joy about our relationship with Jesus that it overflows into the lives of others in the same way a bathtub overflows with water if not turned off.

It's a spontaneous kind of thing.

Paul reminds the Christians at Thessalonia that "our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with (Plarophoria) much confident overflow." I Thessalonians 1:5

If we as a collective church family would spontaneously and corporately take advantages of divine appointments that God sends our way with sharing the overflow of our inner walk with God I would suspect that our church would look much different that it does today.

One formula that I recently read about puts it like this:

We take followers of Christ who desire to make a different, plus being open to the divine appointments that God sends our way, plus a clear, sane communication of the gospel message, mix that all together and what you have is an impact in the lives of those who don't follow Christ.

Again, it comes back to the fact that I can't give what I don't have. How can the joy of the Lord overflow in my life if I am not full of His joy in the first place?

Here are some quick tools in sharing your faith:

1. Rely upon the Holy Spirit
2. Soak yourself and the situation in prayer
3. Understand the process of sharing your faith
4. Share your personal story. Nothing is more powerful than your own personal story.
5. Find your own personal style of sharing your faith. Don't be somebody you are not.

We must continue to be aggressively connective with the world around us!

Lord, make us instruments of your peace!