When I was a junior in high school, Mr. Bill came to Castle Rock, Colo., and became my new youth pastor at church. He took a group of 13 students, including myself, to a Dare2Share conference called Follow. While at the two day conference, we were equipped and challenged to evangelize to both our friends and strangers. We were asked if we are "All In" to be part of The Cause and given a white bracelet that says "All In" if we said yes. That night, I said "YES" to being "All In."
The last two years of high school, and my second year of college, I was "All In" to sharing the Gospel and living out my faith. I became very involved in our Legacy Student Ministry and helped lead our Fellowship of Christian Athletes. For the next four years, I attended the D2S conferences (Follow, Reverse, Fearless and Live it Up) and two of the Lead The Cause week long Gospel Advancing trainings at CCU.
But let me back up a little bit; once I left to college, something had changed. Not only were my eyes opened to things around me, but my mind was opened to other ideas and beliefs. I didn't ever stop being a Christian or stop believing in God, but I wasn't as bold in sharing my faith with others. I was cautious of my wording and timid in sharing what I believe because I was afraid of offending someone else and didn't want them to associate me with other "hypocrite Christians" or the "hypocritical church."
Complete side-note: if you are a Christian and say that you "Love God but hate the church," you might want to read the Bible and see how God feels about His Church. The church is described as Jesus' bride, which means God and the Church belong to each other. You can't love one and hate the other. He also talks about how he loves his people and his church. That doesn't mean the church is perfect and never does wrong. But the faults in the church and people show even more how good God is and how much he loves us as he showers us in grace and mercy.
Any way, I became cautious of the things I said because I didn't want to offend people and their beliefs. But the Gospel message is exciting news!! So why was I censoring what I said to others?
I am "All In" to live out The Cause of Jesus and I don't care if I offend you.
The good news of Jesus is far from offensive. If anything, we offend God all the time when we disobey and dishonor him. And if you don't know the good news of Jesus, let me share it with you! God created us to have a relationship with Him, BUT Adam and Eve sinned against God which separated us from Him eternally. Because of sin entering the world, we are all born with sin and separated from God. There was nothing we could do to allow us to live eternally with God in heaven no matter how hard we tried or how good of a person we are. So God had to make a sacrifice, where He sent His own son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins. He loved us so much and wanted to have a relationship with us that he let his son die and take on all of the pain for our sins. But the story gets better, three days after Jesus died, he rose again! And because he paid the price for our sins by dying on the cross and rising again, we now have full access to a relationship with God eternally. All you have to do is confess to God that you are a sinner and accept Him as your personal savior. It's literally that simple. It's a free gift and who wouldn't want a free gift?!
This gift is too good to not share with others! I would be so selfish not to share it with others! So if you are a Christian, I challenge you to be bold in your faith. I want to encourage you to share this good news that you have with others and not be afraid of offending them for talking about "religion." Because christianity isn't a "religion," it's a relationship with God and it is far from offensive.
If you are a non-believer and find this offensive, I don't really care. And I don't mean that in a rude, stuck up kind of way. I just mean that I would rather take the chance of "offending" you by sharing the good news of Jesus and giving you that opportunity to know him rather than not sharing with you at all. Because your eternity is on the line and how you want to spend eternity is your decision. But I would recommend spending it with Jesus because life is so much better with Him in it. ;)
If you want to know more about the Gospel, check out this awesome Spoken Word video:
