The Gospel is Bigger than that!

By Pastor Dave Stimers

I was recently reading about Ed McMahon. He was a well known entertainer, side-kick to Johnny Carson, and pitchman. One of the things that he was most famous for was being the face of the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes. In essence he would show up at some unsuspecting person’s house and proclaim to them that they had a won a pile of money. For a whole generation of North Americans he was the face of financial prosperity, a picture of the hope that anyone could strike it rich in a moment. What most people didn’t realize is that Ed struggled with his own finances to the point where, before he died he was constantly fighting to keep his house and stay out of bankruptcy.

Unfortunately there are enough parallels between Mr. McMahon and the North American church to make me uncomfortable about the gospel that we claim to preach. On the one hand, there seems to be just as much zeal to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ as ever. On the other, it seems that thousands upon thousands of people want to herald the richness of life with Christ, and yet lead spiritually bankrupt lives. I’m not saying that people do it on purpose…It’s actually quite easy to be lulled into a life of spiritual complacency in our society. There is certainly enough entertainment, comfort, and distraction to make us believe that we are doing OK. Furthermore, often the ‘gospel’ that has been preached to us is that we have only got to say a prayer and expect that one day we’ll die and show up in heaven. Christianity ends up being fire insurance, a ticket out of hell and into heaven.

There is, however, good news about the good news…

Jesus taught His disciples to pray like this, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” He made it clear that we should pray for, anticipate and expect God to make earth like heaven – a place that is characterized by love, peace, equality, joy, and a place where He rules with love and faithfulness. Let me assure you that I believe a true prayer of faith can save people into a future that includes living in heaven forever with God. But I also believe that we are saved into living a Spirit-filled life that will require us sacrificing our entire life in order to commit to working to bring God’s love to this world. This means we may be called upon to sacrifice (all of) our money, our time, our comfort, our right to pick a career, place to live or physical safety. What we’ll find, though, is that the Spirit of God will work in our world to reveal the glory of God through the sacrifice of His servants. We’ll see God work in ways that we never would have imagined. We’ll discover that the richness of life with Christ far exceeds the comforts of this world.

So. I dare you to ask God to use you for His kingdom today. You might find that He asks you to give up something that you don’t want to give up, He might require you to do something uncomfortable in order to bring more of His character to someone’s life. He may ask you to rely on Him for more than a ticket to heaven, but that’s OK because the gospel is bigger than that.