How to Maintain Zeal Q UESTIONS & OBJECTIONS LESSON. No man who preaches the gospel without zeal is sent from God to preach at all.

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1 99 LESSON 99 How to Maintain Zeal No man who preaches the gospel without zeal is sent from God to preach at all. CHARLES SPURGEON Kirk s Comment Oh, how I long to be interested not in what people think of me, but only in who God wants me to be and what He wants me to do. I must live for an audience of One or I m wasting so much precious time. Q UESTIONS & OBJECTIONS How can I witness to family members? This advice may save you a great deal of grief. As a new Christian, I did almost irreparable damage by acting like a wild bull in a crystal showroom. I bullied my mom, my dad, and many of my friends into making a decision for Christ. I was sincere, zealous, loving, kind, and stupid. I didn t understand that salvation doesn t come through making a decision, but through repentance, and repentance is God-given (2 Timothy 2:25). The Bible teaches that no one can come to the Son unless the Father draws him (John 6:44). If you are able to get a decision but the person has no conviction of sin, you will almost certainly end up with a stillborn on your hands. 684

2 LESSON 99 HOW TO MAINTAIN ZEAL In my zeal without knowledge I actually inoculated the very ones I was so desperately trying to reach. There is nothing more important to you than the salvation of your loved ones, and you don t want to blow it. If you do, you may find that you don t have a second chance. Fervently pray for them, asking God for their salvation. Let them see your faith. Let them feel your kindness, your genuine love, and your gentleness. Buy gifts for no reason. Do chores when you are not asked to. Go the extra mile. Put yourself in their position. You know that you have found everlasting life death has lost its sting! Your joy is unspeakable. But as far as they are concerned, you ve been brainwashed and have become part of a weird sect. So your loving actions will speak more loudly than ten thousand eloquent sermons. For this reason you should avoid verbal confrontation until you have knowledge that will guide your zeal. Pray for wisdom and sensitivity to God s timing. You may have only one shot, so make it count. Keep your cool. If you don t, you may end up with a lifetime of regret. Believe me. It is better to hear a loved one or a close friend say, Tell me about your faith in Jesus Christ, rather than you saying, Sit down. I want to talk to you. Continue to persevere in prayer for them, that God would open their eyes to the truth. w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m w o t m A zeal for God should be the norm in the Christian life. As Charles Spurgeon stated, If you never have sleepless hours, if you never have weeping eyes, if your hearts never swell as if they would burst, you need not anticipate that you will be called zealous. You do not know the beginning of true zeal, for the foundation of Christian zeal lies in the heart. The heart must be heavy with grief and yet must beat high with holy ardor. The heart must be vehement in desire, panting continually for God s glory, or else we shall never attain to anything like the zeal which God would have us know. Where does this zeal come from? In Acts 20:22 24 the apostle Paul, who was the picture of zeal, reveals that he was warned about what God had in store for him. This is what he said: 685

3 SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL EVANGELISM And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: save that the Holy Spirit witnesses in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. He was told his future held nothing but bonds and afflictions. Yet Paul responded with a courageous attitude of joyful resignation to the will of God. How could Paul despise the suffering that he was about to face? It would seem that he did so in light of the cross of Calvary. He said, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14). As far as Paul was concerned, he was already dead to the world and all its pleasures. He lived only for the will of the One who laid down His life for him. Paul had sat at the feet of Gamaliel (the great teacher of the Law), and had seen the depth of his own sinful heart in light of the Law of a holy God. He had caught a glimpse of the exceedingly sinful nature of sin, and in doing so, he also glimpsed the depth of the love of God. There is an amazing irony in the Christian faith. The more we see ourselves as hell-deserving sinners, the more we appreciate the fact that we are heading for an undeserved heaven. Few know that there is a goldmine of joy at the foot of the cross, and it is the Law that unearths that great treasure. From the lowly position of a humble heart, an enlightened sinner can see nothing but love in the blood-sodden soil of Calvary. From such a position comes an explosion of returned love, gratitude, and zeal for God that has the potential to swallow our fears. That was the apostle Paul s wonderful key. Love toward God for the cross unlocks the prison of fear. Instead of being concerned about what man may do, it frees Christians to be concerned about what God wants us to do. We love Him because He first loved us, and 1 John 4:18 tells us, There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love. 686

4 LESSON 99 HOW TO MAINTAIN ZEAL All fear is vanquished by perfect love, which is a mature love for God. Such love is as deep as the ocean and can swallow fear when it rains on the Christian. Have you seen your sin in light of the Law of God? Do you understand in your heart of hearts that if every secret sin is manifest on the Day of Wrath and if justice had its way, you would fall like lightning into hell? Have you fallen prostrate in the blood-soaked earth at the foot of the cross? Have you pictured Jesus Christ crucified? Have you seen the precious blood pouring from His hands and His feet, and cried, For me He dies? If you have, horror mingled with unspeakable gratitude will drive you to your knees, and you will whisper, Oh, God, because You did that for me, I will do anything for You! This zeal for God will produce in you a zeal for the lost. Remember that whispered prayer of surrender the next time you fear hollers at you as you hand someone a tract. Q UESTIONS 1. How did Charles Spurgeon describe zeal? 2. What awaited Paul in every city he was about to visit? 3. How would this make you feel if that were God s plan for your life? 687

5 SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL EVANGELISM 4. What was Paul s attitude toward what he was about to face? 5. Do you count your life dear to you? (Give this deep thought before you answer.) 6. How can we develop a zeal for God? 688 W ORDS OF C OMFORT I have no trouble believing the teaching of the Bible that we live in a fallen creation. This has not only been confirmed in my mind, when a piglike snort has woken me from a deep sleep and I was the only one in the room, but it has been corroborated by life s experience. When I was a child, I remember finding that my guinea pigs had gone stiff in a heavy frost. It was either the freezing cold, or the rhubarb leaves I fed them the night before that caused their demise (rhubarb leaves, I learned, are poisonous). My dog was killed on the road, our cat and another dog vanished into thin air, and my frog croaked. When Sue and I were first married, I purchased a goat that I named Abraham. I thought he would keep the grass down. Its name should have been Skunk. We kept it for only a day. Later on in life, I bought two white mice for our children. One day Sue found only one, rather fat mouse in the cage. All that was left of the other was a tail with a little blood on one end. It seemed that one mouse fancied the other for lunch. We threw the cannibal over the fence into an empty lot.

6 LESSON 99 HOW TO MAINTAIN ZEAL When a lovable little duckling that waddled into our yard was apparently handled too much by our kids, it went to that great lake in the sky. One of our hens followed hard on its heels, after nearly turning itself inside out while straining to lay an egg. Around that time, I visited a bird aviary and found to my horror that the owner was about to have a mass execution. There were three birds on death row, and their only crimes were that one was too fat, one was blind, and the other had only one leg. I successfully obtained a stay of execution, gained custody, and found myself with an aviary that depicted the kingdom of God, containing the rejects of society: the oppressed, the lame, and the blind. We named the birds Big Bird, Peg-leg, and Bartimaeus. However, it wasn t long until I found the sorry sight of Peg-leg lying on his back with his one and only leg reaching for the sky. Big Bird soon followed. Bartimaeus turned a blind eye to the goings-on and laid an egg, which meant that he had a quick name change to Bartimaette. A father parakeet viciously pecked his six offspring to death, which put us off parakeets, so we turned our energies to canaries. Things were humming for a time, especially when a number of our canary moms laid and hatched eggs twenty-six of them. Twenty-three of the chicks died. The mothers for some reason gave up feeding their babies just as they were beginning to mature. They would fly to the other side of the cage, ignore their parental responsibilities, and sit in the sun and preen. I fostered the offspring and tried feeding them with an eyedropper, but somehow air would get in and explode mushy food onto the chicks. Sadly, a number of birds left the land of the living stiffly encased in concrete bird food. It got to a point where I would tell Sue that another egg had hatched and she would say, Okay... I ll dig another hole. Memory Verse Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of your tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. PSALM 51:1,2 Last Words Louis XVII (1795) left this last word: I have something to tell you. 689