Unashamed: Living in the Power of the Gospel
There is a moment most of us recognize. You are sitting in a room full of people, and you sense an opportunity to say something about your faith, to acknowledge what you believe, to let someone see who you really are. And then the moment passes. You stayed quiet. You blended in. You told yourself there would be another time.
That quiet retreat is something worth examining. Because the question of whether we are willing to live openly in the power of the gospel is not a small one. It touches the very heart of what it means to follow Christ.
The Core Mission
It is easy for any community of faith to drift from its central purpose. Good things can quietly replace the most important thing. Teaching Scripture, meeting practical needs, building programs, serving the community -- all of these matter. But none of them, on their own, represent the core mission of the church.
The mission is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything else exists to create opportunities to share it.
The Great Commission, found in Matthew 28, calls believers to go into all the world, make disciples, and baptize. But that commission is carried out through the Great Commandment, found in Matthew 22, which calls us to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we genuinely love God first, we find ourselves capable of loving people who are difficult to love. And when we love those people, we find natural, honest opportunities to point them toward Christ.
This is not a complicated formula. It is a way of life.
An Open Invitation
One of the most misunderstood aspects of the gospel is the question of who it is for. The parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22 offers a compelling picture. A king prepares a magnificent feast and sends servants out to invite guests. Some are too busy to come. Some reject the invitation outright. Others treat the messengers with hostility. And yet the king does not close the doors. Instead, he sends his servants out again, this time into the roads and lanes, with instructions to bring in anyone who will come -- both the good and the evil.
This is the economy of grace. The invitation is not reserved for a select few who have already cleaned themselves up. It goes out to everyone. The feast is prepared. The doors are open.
What determines whether someone enters is not their worthiness. It is their willingness. Those who come, come. Those who turn away, turn away. And the servants -- the ones sent out into the roads -- are the believers who carry that invitation to the people around them every single day.
Choosing Him
Receiving the promise of salvation requires a real, willful choice. It is not passive. It is not inherited. It is not earned through good behavior or religious activity. It is a moment of turning -- turning away from living for self and turning toward Christ as Savior and Lord.
And here is something important to understand about that turning. It does not require perfection before you begin. The honest prayer is simply this: I know I am broken. I do not know how to fix it. But I want a relationship with you.
What follows that prayer is a process called sanctification -- the gradual, ongoing work of the Holy Spirit transforming a person to look more and more like Christ over time. No one becomes a mature follower of Jesus overnight. But there should be movement. There should be growth. The direction of a believer's life should be away from sin, not toward it -- not because of fear or obligation, but because Christ has become the king of that life rather than sin.
The difference between someone who does not know Christ and someone who does is not that one never fails. It is that one is no longer chasing sin and the other is no longer a slave to it.
The Compulsion to Speak
Here is where it gets personal.
If you genuinely believe that sin separates people from God, and you genuinely believe that Christ paid the price to remove that separation, and you genuinely believe that the people around you are living without that hope -- how do you stay quiet?
There are two honest answers. The first is that perhaps the belief is not as settled as it seems. The second is fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of awkwardness. Fear of being seen as strange or pushy or out of touch.
But consider this. You are not responsible for how someone responds to the gospel. You are responsible for whether you share it. The outcome belongs to God. The obedience belongs to you.
And the way you share it matters enormously. There is a world of difference between pointing at someone's sin and pointing at your shared need for a Savior. One pushes people away. The other opens a door. Saying "I was broken, and Christ changed me, and he could change you too" is a very different conversation than one that leads with condemnation.
The witness that changes people is not the loudest one. It is the most genuine one. It is the life that looks different. It is the person who prays quietly before a meal in a school cafeteria. It is the neighbor who invites someone to come along on a Wednesday night. It is the coworker who says, simply and honestly, that their faith is the reason they have peace.
The Invitation Still Stands
Revelation, Romans, and the Gospel of John all point to the same truth: God is not willing that anyone would perish. He desires that all would come to repentance. As 2 Peter 3:9 reminds us, the Lord is patient, not wanting anyone to be lost but for all to come to him.
That patience is a gift. But it is not without limit. Today is the day of salvation. The feast is prepared. The invitation has gone out.
The only question left is whether you will receive it -- and whether, having received it, you will spend the rest of your life making sure others hear it too.
Want to hear more? See the whole sermon here: https://www.youtube.com/live/B54NCPopZwo?si=lay0wy4r5sg-6jjY
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