Jude 1:20-23
By Rev. Justin Westmoreland

"But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.  And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh." (Jude 1:20-23)

Recently, my family moved into a new home on a Friday. The next Monday, my wife was unpacking in the boys room and believed she smelled smoke coming from our attic. At her call, I ran upstairs to investigate. We could not locate a fire or its cause, but we knew that smell was foreign to our home and it was dangerous and it was highly important to solve the mystery. Faced with this unsolvable, urgent problem, I dialed 9-1-1 and asked for a fire truck to be sent to our home. The firefighters discovered a smoking bird’s nest in the light fixture of a ceiling fan on our back porch. Had we not called for help and they not discovered it and called the NFD, our new home would have burned to the ground.

C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Christianity is either true and of infinite importance or not true and of absolutely no importance, but one thing Christianity can never be is moderately important.”

Our current cultural moment demands that the ARPC be filled with churches who share this valid inference from studying Scripture with everyone they encounter. As a pastor, and now a man who has been a Christian longer than I was an unbeliever, I am thoroughly convinced of this truth. My actions, however, do not always present Christianity as if it is of infinite importance. Many other urgent and even mundane matters give my neighbors the false perception that I only believe that Christianity is moderately important. Many people in Norman, OK wrongly affirm that it doesn’t matter what one believes, as long as he or she believes sincerely and doesn’t take others to task if he or she disagrees.

Friends, we live in communities filled with homes with smoking bird nests threatening to ignite. Our first task is to open the attic filled with smoke—something stinks. Our second task is to lead them to call for help by calling upon the one name under heaven through which mankind may be saved: Jesus Christ.

Romans 1:16
By Lee Shelnutt

When we share the gospel, we herald Jesus! We are royal heralds of the King of Kings! What is there to fear if he is our King? The Apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, heralded a subversive message: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)

When are we tempted to be ashamed of the gospel? Isn’t it when we think we might face opposition, ridicule, or even persecution?

On his desired trip to Spain, Paul wanted to stop at Rome to minister in the church to which he wrote. Where? Rome, the very seat of the most powerful ruler in the world of that day, the Roman Caesar - Nero!

The official titles of the Caesars included, “Son of God.” The birthdays of Caesars were heralded as “Good News.” The Caesars demanded loyalty and would even demand to be worshiped.

Into that context, Paul is unashamed of the gospel - Jesus is the true Caesar. It is Jesus who is the true Son of God and it is Jesus who has true power - the power over sin and death, for Jesus is the resurrected One who has ascended to the highest throne. One day every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord!

Do you see how much of a challenge the gospel was to the earthly powers of that day? Do you see how gloriously subversive it was? You know what? It still is! May the true Lord give us grace never to forget this--- and faith not to fear, for we know our King is truly King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

John 3:16
By Rev. Mark Bolhofner

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Say what Jesus said. Use his words in John 3:16 to share the gospel. And as you do, help the person to whom you are speaking relate to what you’re saying by adding some of your own connection to what Jesus said.

Jesus says a Christian is someone who does not perish, but has eternal life. Can you recall not knowing what it was like to know you had eternal life? Or maybe the way knowing you have eternal life has really given you hope in a difficult time? Share that.

Jesus says God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Can you recall when you first grasped that Jesus died for you? When it became personal to you? Can you recall how knowing Jesus paid for your sin has helped you when you’ve felt burdened by some sin you committed? Put that into words.

Jesus says whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Can you recall when you trusted in Christ instead of anything you might do for a relationship with God? Can you recall the peace that brought, or some way it immediately changed your life? Can you recall how being “saved by faith, and not by works” has reassured you in life? Describe that.

Say what Jesus said, and make it personal, relate it to your life.

Haggai 1:13
By Rev. Don Watkins

According to the authors of Way of the Master evangelism training program, the greatest obstacle to believers sharing their faith is fear. Fear of people and how they will react to the message and more significantly, react to them.

We can learn from an Old Testament prophet, Haggai, how to motivate ourselves and others to share the gospel. The key factor is not letting our fears control us-- fear of rejection, fear of embarrassing ourselves, fear of not knowing what to say. In Haggai 1:13 we read, “Then Haggai, the LORD’S messenger, spoke the LORD”S message to the people, saying ‘I am with you, says the LORD.’” Isn’t that what we are, messengers of the Lord? The Great Commission in Matthew 28 confers messenger status on all of us: “Go therefore…” And the message is the message of the gospel, the life, death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The good news that God has come to save sinners who will place their trust in him and what he has done on their behalf.

We read in Haggai 1:12 that “the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people feared the presence of the LORD.” The returned exiles had plenty to be afraid of. They had returned 20 years earlier and started rebuilding the temple, but the project had been stalled for at least 16 years due to various parties who opposed them. The key to the returnees facing down their fears was to have a greater fear of God. And the key to overcoming our fears of people and how they might react when we tell them about Jesus is to have a greater fear of God.

John Donne, seventeenth century pastor of St. Paul’s in London, found himself apparently afflicted by the same deadly plague that was afflicting many in London. He wrote that he was afraid of everything during that time. He prayed that God would give him a “fear of which he was not afraid.” That is the fear of God. He found that when he was not fearing God he feared everything, and when he feared God he feared nothing. May the Lord give us a greater fear of Him than the fear we have of sharing the gospel message he has given us, his messengers, to share.

Matthew 5:13-16
By Rev. Nathan Scholl


It has been a hot summer. Thus, my kids like to play in water. One of their favorite ways to play in water is to get out the little plastic pool and fill it with water in the front yard. What fun! But I am always careful to move the pool back to the rocks the same day that the kids brought it out. Why? Because if I don’t, the grass underneath the pool will wither and die. The grass needs light. Light is indispensible to the health, growth and life of my yard. This same principle was true in daily life in Biblical times when it came to salt. Salt was indispensible to the health, growth and life of people. It preserved, it purified, and it fertilized.

Sometimes we like to think God may not want or need us to accomplish his purposes on this earth. But that is not the message of Matthew 5:13-16. Our witness as disciples of Jesus Christ is of vital importance to the world!

Our witness to the world starts with the gracious activity of God. God the Father knows and seeks us, God the Holy Spirit works in and through us, and God the Son died for us and gives us a new life. And with this new life comes a new identity. This new identity is truly a powerful force at work in this harsh and dark world.

We are given the same identity as the first disciples in Matthew 5. We are the salt and the light of the earth. This is a big deal. The mission is to see the world glorify our Father in heaven, and we have been given a key role in that process. We are, every one of us, of vital importance for the accomplishment of God’s purpose in the world. We constitute the salt and light without which the earth cannot survive and remains in darkness. This mission of God is accomplished in the words and deeds of our daily existence. What a privilege!

When people taste and see the Kingdom at work in our words and our lives:  They are amazed and curious. They want more. For this, this is real life and real love and real hope found in Jesus Christ alone.

1 Thessalonians 1:7-8
By Rev. David Vance

“From you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything.” (1 Thess. 1:7-8)

Paul and his fellow missionaries rejoiced that the Thessalonian church had already made their labors unnecessary in that region! This is how Christianity became a major world religion in the first three centuries, though it was illegal and persecuted for most of that time.

Church historian Philip Schaff gives this wonderful summary:  “It is a remarkable fact that after the days of the Apostles no names of great missionaries are mentioned till the opening of the middle ages, when the conversion of nations was effected or introduced by a few individuals as St. Patrick in Ireland…. There were no missionary societies, no missionary institutions, no organized efforts in the ante-Nicene age; and yet in less than 300 years from the death of St. John the whole population of the Roman empire which then represented the civilized world was nominally Christianized. To understand this astonishing fact, we must remember that … while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ to convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch, and by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, ‘were scattered abroad and went about preaching the Word." 1  

Celsus, the second-century pagan critic of Christianity, scorns the gospel as a message spread abroad by women at the laundry, weavers, and cobblers. Origen, in the early third century, describes how the city churches sent their members to herald the gospel in surrounding villages. May the church today regain this joyful ambition to become a great and glorious gospel army advancing under the banner of their gracious King, every congregation a missionary society, and every member a missionary.

  1   Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976) 2:1:6.

Hebrews 4:9-10
By Rev. Andrew Savill

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.” (Hebrews 4:9-10)

Presbyterians have held, based on Hebrews 4 and other passages, that God’s rest was a type witnessing to the joys of eternal life with Him. As we keep Sabbath, we witness to the world in word (read, preached, and spoken to others) and deed (resting and worshiping for a day) that there is eternal life and rest beyond the toil and misery of the fall through faith in Jesus Christ. We also will have many opportunities to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and thus to do the important work of personal evangelism.

Recently, my three oldest children (9,8,7) were invited to a birthday party on Sunday afternoon. Oh no, I thought, we’ve wanted to share the gospel with this single mother and this isn’t going to help.

A few days later, I was outside and saw her. I told her that the children would not be able to go Sunday afternoon because we kept the Sabbath as a whole day to the Lord. I explained that we didn’t keep Sabbath to earn our salvation, as we believe we are sinners forgiven and given eternal life and rest as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But, we believe that God calls us to rest and worship Him for a whole day that we might honor Him, commune with Him, and be instructed and encouraged in our faith and hope.  

Her response was, “That’s really beautiful” and then asked about coming to church. I gave her the information and her and her son for ice cream at our house the next week to celebrate his birthday, which she did.

Why was I worried? I had forgotten that the Lord’s Day is a witness to eternal life, and that keeping it is therefore a significant step towards fulfilling our calling to the important work of personal evangelism.

2 Corinthians 4:1-7
By Rev. Alan Avera


In yesterday’s devotion, we saw that a supernatural work is required for someone to put their faith in Christ as savior. That supernatural work is an opening of blind eyes so that they see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is described in verse 6, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

But God gives us a part to play in the process. Our part is to proclaim and to serve. Look at verse 5, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

What we proclaim is Jesus Christ as Lord. It’s not about us, but about his authority and his glory. We don’t have to put a spin on the gospel to try to make it more attractive. Verse 2 tells us, “We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”

That’s one reason the Christianity Explored course uses the Gospel of Mark to present the gospel. We believe the power is in the Word of God. God has given us four books that tell us about his son. Any one of them is a great place to start.

We not only proclaim, we also serve. We serve others for Jesus’s sake. Serving begins by noticing. As Mary Schaller and John Crilly of Qplace Ministries put it, “Jesus was a noticer.”  A first step in serving people for Jesus sake is to notice people like Jesus notices them. Jesus noticed people because he came to seek and to save them.

2 Corinthians 4:1-7
By Rev. Alan Avera

While there is a pain line we have to cross in being a witness for Christ, we sometimes make it more difficult on ourselves by trying to do too much. The pain line we have to cross is fear of how people will respond. We never know when we open our mouth to speak of Christ whether we will face hunger or hostility. But we can make the task even more difficult if we try to do the work of the Holy Spirit.

In 2 Corinthians 4, the Holy Spirit teaches us through the Apostle Paul that evangelism is supernatural work. It is supernatural work because of the diagnosis of why unbelievers are unbelievers. The diagnosis, verse 4, is that “the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

If Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers, then a supernatural work is required to overcome the work of Satan. Who opens blind eyes? Not us. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. No amount of persuasion, apologetics, or clever argument will work unless God does the prior work of opening blind eyes. Verse 6 says, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  Evangelism begins with prayer for the Holy Spirit to open blind eyes. We can’t cause that to happen, God does.

So what is our role? Verse 5 tells us. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”  Our role is to proclaim Christ and to serve people for Jesus’ sake.

1 Peter 3:15-16
By Ali

“But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” (1 Peter 3:15)

Taken by itself, verse 15 could well be speaking generally of apologetics. The context reveals it is about our Christian response to persecution.

Much has been made, and rightly so, of the suffering of our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters at the hands of ISIS. One of Scripture’s messages to them, and to us, is that when we are reviled for our faith in Christ, it is an opportunity to explain why we are people of such great hope, rather than people paralyzed by fear and anxiety. 1 Peter 3:15-16 is an exhortation to boldness about the gospel in the face of maltreatment by people whose eyes are blinded to God’s grace. Evangelism in the context of persecution is proclaiming our inner hope to those who have no hope.

As with everything else the Lord lifts us to, our Christian calling with regard to evangelism is a very high calling. There is no prideful defense, no haughty claiming of our rights to better treatment. Instead, Peter tells us our attitude is to be gentle and respectful, consistent with our unassailable character reflecting Christ.

Peter’s words shine brightly in our troubled times, when it is no longer difficult to imagine the stripping away of our religious freedoms resulting in our own suffering for Christ. Let us prayerfully prepare our hearts and our lives for the defense of the hope that God has placed inside us.