One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven, Part 1
09 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Books
I’ve mentioned the book One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven before. This book, along with Heaven by Randy Alcorn, has changed my perspective and challenged me to the core more than any other book besides the Bible; and yet no matter how much I agree with it and love it, I can’t seem to live it. So I’ve decided to read it and re-read it until I can actually do what it says, which is quite simply telling people the good news of Jesus.
Why is that so hard? For example, he says that according to a survey by Christianity Today, only 1 percent of their readership had witnessed to someone “recently”, which obviously implies that 99 percent have not. My prayer and hope is that the 1 percent would become 99 percent.
My reasons for blogging about this book are to try to discover and conquer my own fears as well as note some great insights from this book about what keeps us from sharing our faith and the best ways to go about it. I hope you find it as challenging and helpful as I have. Jesus’ final words to his disciples in the books of Matthew and Mark were to preach the Gospel in all the world.
Now onto Part 1.
The author, Mark Cahill, has witnessed to thousands of people, so the book is founded on his real conversations and experiences. The vast majority of the time, the people he has talked to are interested in the conversation. Even if they don’t agree with everything he says, many of them thank him for an interesting, meaningful, insightful conversation. We typically think that people don’t want to talk about eternity or Jesus, but that’s simply not true. Inside every person is an awareness of God’s truth (Romans 1:20). Below are some insights from the first few chapters.
- It’s not that we’ve “got to” witness – we get to!
- Every single person is valuable to God. Do we view the people around us that way (even the ones we don’t particularly like)?
- There are three possible outcomes when we share our faith:
1) The person can accept Jesus;
2) The person can reject Jesus;
3) We can plant a seed
Most people would consider either outcome #1 or #3 a success, but they would view outcome #2 as a failure. The biggest fear most people have about sharing Jesus is that they will get rejected. However, 1 Peter 4:14 says, “If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” Also, Jesus said in Luke 6:22-23:
Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.
When we get rejected in the name of Jesus, God actually has “great” rewards waiting for us in Heaven that are worthy of rejoicing and leaping for joy! So even though at first glance it might seem like only 2 of the 3 outcomes are positive, all 3 of them are actually a winning situation. We can’t lose when we share our faith! The only time we lose when it comes to witnessing is when we don’t share our faith.
