Building the Kingdom by Building Relationships

 I’m sure that most of you have seen the hilarious Johnson automotive commercials… you know, the ones with the badger. Well, I saw this one yesterday and it just made me laugh. 

 It also made me think about evangelism.

Sometimes we as Christians are afraid to share our faith with those who don’t know Jesus. Now to be quite frank, this is in direct violation of Christ’s command to us to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:18-20). But we can also be in error on the opposite extreme. Sometimes we can view people who don’t know Christ as just another fish to get on the hook, and we forget that every lost person in the world is created in the image of God. This is not what Jesus meant when he called his disciples to be fishers of men! We should not try to present the gospel to the lost around us and then attempt to “close the deal.” Instead, we need to get to know them as a person by building a meaningful relationship with them.

 Pastor Steven has given us practical advice on where we can do this…

1. At the table – This is in your family – both immediate and extended.

2. At the mailbox – This is in your neighborhood.

3. At the watercooler – This is at your workplace.

4. At the checkout – This is in the marketplace.

5. At the stadium - This is in the places you go for entertainment and enjoyment. Examples would be at the movie theatre or at the Little League ball park.

The important thing that I want us to think about today is that we will have little success sharing the gospel if we act like the badger here – seeing people as only a “sale”. We need to see people as those for whom Christ shed his blood. Christ “desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), and we should as well. We are not salesmen for Christ; we are ambassadors for Christ. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 

 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,  not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

May we be Christ’s ambassadors today and build God’s kingdom by building relationships.