Ross Upset the World

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951227-09-8
Verlag: Gateway Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Following Jesus is not a safe course of action. If you've come into a relationship with Jesus, it's because you've had your world upset by Him. And once He's upset your life, He'll ask you to upset others. So how do you do that? A random act of kindness. An unexpected encounter. What do these have in common? They upset people, break down barriers, and build relationships. This is the key to everyday evangelism. Tim Ross teaches you how to: Create a new way of relating to others Practice listening to and obeying the Holy Spirit's voice Do everyday evangelism Love everybody (even people who are hard to love) Change the way people think about Christianity Our assignment is simple: to turn the world upside down with the message, love, and hope of Jesus Christ.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ross, Tim

Leseproben

God, upset me. Amen. My parents were vocational pastors at God’s Way of Holiness Fellowship just outside of Los Angeles. Growing up, my brothers and I were at church all the time. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Friday night prayer. If the doors were open, we were there. After I graduated from high school, hanging out with my friends and going out to the clubs became my life. I was a regional performer … okay, I was a rapper … and I performed almost every Friday and Saturday night around different parts of Los Angeles. I would still go to church, but it was more out of habit or obligation than relationship. After the service was over, my friends would come to pick me up, and we’d go out. It was the same routine every single weekend. They’d show up as soon as church was over, and we’d go straight to Venice Beach. After Venice Beach, we would go eat at M&M Soul Food or Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, and after that we’d cruise Crenshaw Boulevard until two or three in the morning. Wash, rinse, repeat. Then, on Sunday night, January 14, 1996, everything changed. I came into church, I sat in the back, and the Holy Spirit convicted me of my sins. Without a sermon or an altar call, I gave my life to Jesus. My life was completely and irrefutably upset. As usual, my friends came to pick me up after the service. They had it timed out and knew exactly when to pick me up to go to Venice Beach. When they got there, my friend Steve came up to me, and I gave him a hug. Then I turned to my brother, Myles, who had skipped church that day, and gave him a hug. After we hugged, he looked at me and said, “Oh no! You didn’t? Did you?” The minute I hugged him he knew something had changed. When I told them what happened, Myles looked at me and said, “Oh man! You know what? I respect that. But, uh, we need to go. We’ll see you later.” And he shot back to the car with Steve, and they went to the beach without me. Over the next 24 hours, my best friends became my parents, my Bible, and my PlayStation. Almost immediately, my “old” friends left me. I was completely alone. They were only around me for a few minutes, yet they knew something was different about me, and it was upsetting them. They weren’t ready to change, so the way they dealt with it was to leave me alone. They weren’t being disrespectful; quite the contrary. They were actually respecting the decision I had made. I had fallen in love, and the moment I fell in love, everything changed. My life was turned upside down. I immediately stopped going to the clubs and partying. I stopped performing. I stopped cruising around with my friends. There were some things I continued to struggle with, but something immediately started changing on the inside of me. I began saying to God, “Lord, I’m in love with You. If that means I don’t have any friends, it’s okay! I just want to pursue You.” Love will make you change. If you come into a relationship with Jesus Christ but nothing about you changes, then you probably didn’t really meet Him. When you fall in love and have your heart transformed, you’re not relying on your will anymore; you’re relying on Someone else’s will. It’s then that your life is completely upset. And I had been upset in the best possible way. “ If you come into a relationship with Jesus Christ but nothing about you changes, then you probably didn’t really meet Him. WHY BE UPSET?
If you’re a Christian, it’s because you’ve made a commitment to have your life turned upside down. The way you were living before you came into a relationship with Jesus Christ is not the same after a revelation came to you that this is not the way you should be living. Through reading Scripture and gaining an understanding of what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you found out what more than two billion people already know: your life should not be lived the way you want to live it but the way God wants you to live it. This throws the way you’ve been living your whole life into total chaos and disorder. It completely upsets your world. Having a relationship with Jesus means changing your lifestyle, making different choices, replacing old habits with new ones, hanging out at new places, and, possibly, changing the people in your life. A relationship with Jesus is so completely upsetting because when He comes into your life, He completely changes you—upside down and inside out. You might be reading this and thinking, If a relationship with Jesus means my life and what I enjoy doing has to change, then maybe I’m not really into that type of relationship. If you’re wondering why you should give permission to God to come in and turn your life upside down, it’s because He is madly in love with you. John 3:16 says, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” God is madly in love you, so much so that He sent His only Son to die so that you could live. This may seem like Christianity 101, but it’s so important for us to begin this journey with an understanding of how much God loves us. If you don’t know God loves you, the way you live your life for Him will be for all the wrong reasons. If you haven’t chosen to have a relationship with Him out of love, then you probably chose Him out of fear. If you’re living your life this way, you’ll do what God says, but you’ll be doing it because you’re afraid you’ll go to hell if you don’t obey. God is not a God of fear; He is a God of love, and He loves us in a way that is so profound it causes us to be upset. Ephesians 1:4 says, “Even before He made the world, God loved us.” This verse should make you want to have a party! Take a minute and think about this phrase: “even before He made the world, He loved you.” Before He said, “Let there be light,” He loved you. Before He parted the waters, He loved you. Before He created man or woman, He loved you. Before you did anything that would disqualify you from a relationship with Him, He was already in love with you. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure (Ephesians 1:5). God is so completely and totally in love with you that He went through great lengths to prove it. Jesus didn’t wait to see if you would choose Him; He chose you first. The good news of the gospel is before you even knew to ask the question, Christ decided to die for your sins. It’s the most upsetting thing that’s ever happened in all of human history. Why should you be upset? Because Jesus died for you, and He meant to do it. JESUS CAME TO UPSET THE WORLD
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it like this, but Jesus upset the whole world. He upset it so much that we’re still talking about it 2,019 years later. This man’s life was so upsetting that our calendar is split before Him and after Him. It’s absolutely amazing when you come to the realization that Jesus’s sole purpose for coming to earth was to upset the enemy’s plans for us completely. He came to bring us freedom, restoration, deliverance, healing, and power. We read about Him in the Bible, and we sing songs about Him, proclaiming His power, love, beauty, grace, and majesty. Here’s the thing that’s so amazing: He’s given each one of us all of these same characteristics so we can upset the world. And the reason we can do it is that it happened in our own lives as well. It’s because we have been upset first. Once your life has been upset, you’re going to start upsetting the world. It’s going to happen naturally. Think about a time you fell in love with someone. You wanted to tell everyone, because when you’re in love, it’s hard to hide. It’s hard for me to hide the fact that I’m married, and it’s equally as hard for me to hide my relationship with the Lord. There are times I want to shout about it from the rooftops! The truth is people won’t be able to stay around you for long without getting their worlds upset. It’s not because you’re a “holy roller” or an obnoxious religious person. It’s because your life has been so overturned by what Jesus has done in you that there is no way anyone can stay around you without finding themselves being turned around and completely upset by His love. In fact, upsetting people is not just something we should do; it’s a mandate. And the good news is we don’t have to figure out how to do it alone. The person who came to upset us is also the One who shows us how to upset the world. “ The person who came to upset us is also the One who shows us how to upset the world. JESUS UPSETS SAUL
Before Saul, which was Paul’s name before he became a believer, could ever upset the world, he had to be upset first. He was born a Benjamite and was a zealous Jew who had made it his purpose in life to put an end to Christianity. And his way of accomplishing this goal was to kill as many Christians as possible. He was filled with rage and anger because so many Jews had started following Jesus, and it was threatening his religion. He was blinded by a religious spirit. (We’ll talk more about “religion” in Chapter 7.) Saul’s mission in life was to put a stop to Christianity, and he was willing to...