Everyday Evangelism - People Need to Wrestle with God

     Here is my evangelism thought for today. People need to wrestle with God. The problem with modern evangelism is that we have the idea that everything should be easy for us. We try to make the Gospel easy for people to understand. When we see people start to wrestle with God, we try to stop it. We mistakenly think that people are rejecting God when they are in wrestling mode. We make false assumptions because of our misunderstanding. We think because they are wrestling, that the Gospel is too hard for them to accept. So then we water the Gospel down to make it easier for them to grasp. In doing that, we have taken out the workings of God in their hearts. I think the reason we fail in this area is because we don't understand the power and greatness of God. We think that a person is credited with righteousness if they have a good understanding of the Gospel. We give more credit to a person than we should. Salvation is of the Lord and we need to be careful to not stop the work of God in their hearts.
   When people are afraid of going to hell, do we help them understand why people end up there in the first place, or do we try to give them a false comfort leading them to believe that they won't go there because they are afraid. How many times have we seen something like that. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved..." or "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.."? Don't get me wrong, those Bible verses are effective in their context. But when a person begins to wrestle with the things of God, how easy it is for us to just pop a verse and try to solve a person's problem. Let's take time and talk over things with people, instead of just trying to give them an answer that will make them calm. Every time God works in a heart, there will be conflict. That is good. It is kind of like pouring peroxide on an open wound. When there are bubbles, that means the peroxide is working. Pouring peroxide on a wound is painful. Be prepared for discomfort if you try it! But teaching the word of God to people has a similar effect. People will feel pain and struggle. That is a normal reaction of God's working. As God begins to work, and people begin to feel growing pains, that is good. Don't interrupt that with trying to make the person feel good. Help them by applying the Gospel to their hearts. It will be amazing to see what God does in a heart that wrestles with Him.