Day 102: Edifying Evangelism

"As I urged you when I went into Macedonia —remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith." 1 Timothy 1:3-4

This is a good admonishment that we don't hear enough.

We need to bring our evangelism back to the basics: the proclamation of the Gospel.  There are times when we allow for different things to get in the way of proclaiming the Gospel.  Jesus gave us some very good examples of how to proclaim, especially with the use of parables (and even explaining some of them to us in simple terms).  But we can also become obsessed with different things.

One thing that I think of is how we might become obsessed with that one Bible verse and try to figure out how we can make that Bible verse our own.  The truth of the matter is that we want to start making the entire evangelization to be something that glorifies ourselves rather than God.  When we show that we have so much knowledge about a certain matter, we can start to distance ourselves from those we are trying to reach.

Instead, we should remember that evangelism involves godly edification.  Rather than argue with others about minutia, we should be edifying one another, especially those who are new to Christ.  Jesus spent his entire ministry building up his disciples, and he is also edifying us each time we communicate with him through our prayers, worship, and reading.  Therefore, we must continue this tradition to our own students.  We must continue to build them up rather than tear them down.