Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard someone make a promise that you doubted.
(Don’t raise your hand if if was you). Yes, with words we often commit to something with absolutely firm intentions to follow through. “FOREVER!” “There’s no stopping me from doing this!”
But what is “this”? A lot of people say we need to go do the Great Commission. And we do. We must. But preaching the gospel with words is not enough. There’s no record that Jesus preached that way and the early church (of which we are still a part) had the Word confirmed with signs. Wonders.
Why will someone believe that Jesus is Healer, even if we say it a hundred gazillion times if we are not producing the Father’s will that people “be” in health? If we only use words, how will people know that our Lord is the One true God, the Father is longing for us to be healthy, and their wholeness was bought with His stripes and their deliverance by His crucifixion?
We must have the life of God flowing through us if we’re to present the Father as Jesus did. How do we do that? We believe and act.
We believe that Jesus meant “Believers will lay hands on the sick and the sick will recover”. We act –we touch the sick. We tell them Jesus loves them and knows and cares about their struggles. Then we pay their rent, or buy their gas, or diapers or pay a light bill.
Now here’s the question…If we lack in ourselves the faith and the means to do what Jesus did …why should anyone believe us any more than they believe any other preachers of any other doctrine?
They won’t. If we don’t expect them to be made whole when we touch them, they won’t either. Did Jesus really get beaten beyond human recognition so we can walk by sick people and fail to give them health?
Did Jesus, in the crucifixion, become the curse of all things sin brought, (including lack), so we can ask God to help us barely get by?
Words, unless we are acting out HIS Word, the benefit of HIS stripes, the salvation through HIS crucifixion, are not enough.
If we are to bring people to Jesus, it will be us doing what He did, that shows them why they should come. John 14:12 says we will.
For His glory … to honor Jesus … let’s preach the gospel. By all means, let’s preach with words. After all, Jesus is the Word made flesh. The gospel has to be heard to bring confession that leads to salvation.
But words alone are not enough. If they were, the last thing Jesus said before He left would not have been words instructing us what to do in His name, (and in His authority, and strength by the Holy Spirit), but He told us also…what to do.
Let’s do that.
For His Glory 