Last night, I was a little discouraged, thinking about a friend who has been around the gospel for a long time and still resists Jesus on account of pride.I've had several conversations with him throughout the past couple of years, as have other brothers, but his heart is continually hardened against submitting to Christ as his Savior and King.
Enter: "Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God".
I just finished reading this little book earlier today, and in it, Packer has a great overarching message that no matter what we do, the most important thing we could ever do in evangelism is to first recognize that God is sovereign to save whom He will.
When we start to get our arms around that truth is when we finally realize that our charge as beleivers, as Packer summarizes in the final pages, is "not only to preach, but also to pray; not only to talk to men about God, but also to talk to God about men."
What a challenge to pray for the lost. How much of my evangelistic effort is devoted to prayer and how much of my prayer life is devoted to pleading for the lost?
Finally, here's a quote that stuck out to me about the particular friend who has had the gospel presented crystal clear over and over but still rises up in his heart of hearts and rejects Christ to choose rather to live in pride and arrogance toward the King of Heaven.
However clear and cogent we may be in presenting the gospel, we have no hope of convincing or converting anyone. Can you or I by our earnest talking break the power of Satan over a man's life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead? No. Can we hope to convince sinners of the truth of the gospel by patient explanation? No. Can we hope to move men to obey the gospel by any words of entreaty that we may utter? No. Our approach to evangelism is not realistic till we have faced this shattering fact (of our natural resistance toward the gospel), and let it make its proper impact on us ... Regarded as a human enterprise, evangelism is a hopeless task.
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