Starting Down The Roman Road

Tonight is the coldest this season yet, it was 15 above when I was in town a few minutes ago and the wind is blowing from the northwest. Throw in some snow flurries and you can see what kind of evening it is out here. There is no snow on the ground around these parts yet and today with things freezing down I was inspired to clean out a rather large cattle lot that since the beginning of october has been nothing but a mud hole. The mud was freezing up this morning so we hooked up the dump wagon and loaded it up with the skidsteer loader, over twenty loads of mud chunks, and took them out to a pasture. There I backed up the tractor and wagon into the cow humps and dumped the stuff. Later, possibly next spring the way its freezing up fast around here, we’ll level the dirt off with the Bobcat and the grass will come by itself and that area of the pasture will be tamed down. Kinda like reclaiming some pasture land from them bumping cowhumps to a level lush pasture. Anyway, that’s the theory I have anyhow! Its worked well before, it’ll work again. This wasn’t really manure,mostly dirt mixed with manure, plus allot of small rocks in it. Thus I didn’t want to put it in the manure spreader. Mighta caused a bit of trouble.

Tomorrow evening is the Christmas program at our little church. None of this family is involved with it, but we’ll go anyhow. There’s probably going to be a good sized crowd there and if there is and seating is limited we’ll go out to the doublewide trailer along side the church till its over with. A good way for outreach in a small town is a program in church every once in a while. I figure if its full I don’t want to be hogging a seat while someone who hardly ever, if not ever goes to church, comes in and has a hard time finding a seat. Time for church members to get out of the way I figure.

As winter starts to set in around here and the nights are long, (especially without TV), there comes a desire to do the Lord’s work. Its dark out around 5 PM and that leaves allot of hours till bedtime. At our country church there was given a challenge and that is to go and spread the Gospel to someone in the month of December. There’s no training or anything like that, because quite simply a believer, if they really believe, should have no problem spreading the Good News. This separates out the pew warmers from the Spirit Filled. I’ve long said that if being a Christian was just going to church and acting the act that I’d rather be a heathen. Quite simply because I don’t like play acting and if a person just going to church for a social reason I’d rather be an adulterer and drunk. At least I’d be real and not a fake. But such is not the case when a person longs to serve an awesome God.

This is one of my favorite subjects tonight. Evangelism! And basically the approach I take is quite different than the mainstream. Over and over I have heard the phrases that we don’t want to see folks go to hell because we didn’t evangelize them. Sounds good eh, but you won’t find that in the Bible. In the Bible they went and spread the Good News because Jesus was Lord and He commands it. And if a person loves Christ, a person obeys Christ. See, priorities. First commandment is to love God. Obey Him. Second is to love your neighbor. When witnessing is done because of a person’s love for Christ the Holy Ghost backs everything up. When a person evangelizes with the person most in mind, or the hell bound consequences of that person in mind, when we say we don’t want to see them go to hell, a strange thing happens. Humanism.

God first, the Cross first, not the person. When things are in order, things flow. When a person chases God with everything they got, God dwells in them and gives them power to witness.  Not formula witnessing, but Spirit witnessing. That is Biblical! I get excited about this! To go after the prize, to go after Christ! To not look one way or another, just go after Him. Not worrying about what the world will say. Not worrying about rejection. Not worrying about people being hostile to the Word because your only looking to Christ! To be like Stephen, to be like Paul. They weren’t worried about if folks were going to hell, they declared the Word of God in some pretty hostile places. They had the love of Christ in them. They did it because they knew, they knew that Jesus died for every sinner and everyone should hear the Gospel, because Christ is worthy! Christ died for them.

Today while hauling that semi frozen mud, I drive down a private road about a quarter mile, our own road, made and maintained by us. While driving, load after load on a cloudy, windy,snow flurry day I started thinking about the Roman Road. The Way to the Cross. So tonight I’ll put down the first couple verses of the Roman Road because of it.

Romans 3:10 (New King James Version)

¹⁰ As it is written:
“ There is none righteous, no, not one;

Romans 3:11

¹¹ There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.

I love this! Showing the state of all humanity, every single one. The hopelessness of it all. The fact there is nothing we can do to get to God. Not one thing we do could be called worthy. A fallen world with no hope at all. Salvation, the gift from God to all of humanity, such a mystery. Why would He do it? Why would He do it for me, a person in such a fallen state?

There is nothing we could ever do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we could ever do to make God love us less. Oh, how He wants us to just give up our stubborn wills and give it all to Him. Give Him our problems and worries. To give Him our lives so He can make something out of them. Something that glorifies Him! Nothing, nothing could be better than that! Oh to shed these worldly desires and serve the King that hung on a Cross, taking our sins and washing them away with His precious Blood. This is Christianity, to become like Christ, to shed this evil world, to live an abundant life full of Him!

I get more excited every day, this is the Gospel. Not playing church, but giving Jesus Christs our lives. A sacrifice, sacrificing ourselves to Him!