Surrendered EvangelismParaugs

Hopscotch By The Gates Of Hell 

Here’s today’s reading in The Passion Translation :

Don’t you realize that grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully, for you surrender yourself to become a servant—bound to the one you choose to obey. If you choose to love sin, it will become your master, and it will own you and reward you with death. But if you choose to love and obey God, He will lead you into perfect righteousness.
 

Our lives are surrendered in servanthood (slavery) to somebody or something this verse explains. And though we could trot out a grocery list of possible choices to be your master (things like money, pride, pleasure, music, sports, food, and much more),  the apostle Paul covers all the options with his umbrella term "Sin." 

And if you choose sin in any form, it will be your master, “and it will own you and reward you with death.”

That sounds terrible!

The other option, of course, is to love and obey God. And the prospects are so much better if we surrender our lives in this choice.

And note the context of this whole verse – grace. It is God’s grace that allows us all this choice. God allows us to choose against Him, including the consequences of our choice. Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 10:39 (TPT): “All who seek to live apart from Me will lose it all. But those who let go of their lives for My sake and surrender it all to Me will discover true life!”

You may have run into ‘fence-sitters’ while evangelizing. These are folk who play hopscotch by the gates of hell, trying to keep one foot at all times in the Kingdom of God as if to secure their place in heaven, while at the same time tap dancing with the other foot in the fleeting pleasures of the kingdom of hell. Of course, this doesn’t work. It can’t. You can’t ‘have’ both. You have to choose. 

And this is a key lack in much evangelizing. We properly love the person we’re evangelizing. We pray for them. We accurately present the truths of the crucifixion and resurrection. We explain the requirements of repentance and faith. And we leave it at that.

But Paul doesn’t. He urges us to ‘choose’. And to ‘choose carefully’. 

The consequences of each choice are starkly presented. And the choice is clear in James 4:7 (TPT): “So then, surrender to God. Stand up to the devil and resist him and he will turn and run away from you.”