1. Play just three rounds okay!!! 
2. One person from the group has to go out of the room. 
3. Form a circle with the rest of the group. 
4. Designate one person to be the leader.
5. Start doing a particular action, scratching your chin etc.
6. Invite the poor soul back into the room.
7. Finally leader gets to change the action as he or she pleases.
8. The poor soul has to stand in the centre and catch the leader.

Three Reasons We Should Share This Gospel:

Reason 1: A Desire to Be Obedient to God’s Commands

The risen Lord Christ commanded his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. That is exactly what the early disciples did. Paul spoke of a compulsion to share the gospel. To evangelize is to obey. Don’t wait for your affections. Work at them, but don’t wait for them.

In Acts 8:4, we see that those who had been scattered preached the gospel wherever they went. One of the clearest examples of evangelism being commanded is in 1 Peter 3, where Peter commands believers to “always be…prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”

Paul’s own self-giving challenges us. Think about what would be inconvenient for you, and try to love in those kinds of ways.

We need to realize that we should be challenged by the opening verses of Romans 9. Paul sees the obligation that he has. That is a clear call to us. Our silence is not a matter of neutrality. You need to tell yourself that. Our silence is a matter of guilt and sin. Obedience is definitely a biblical reason to evangelize.

Reason 2: A Love for the Lost

It almost sounds quaint to use the word “lost.” One half of one percent of Americans said that there is the slightest chance that they’ll end up in hell. Although it’s not felt very deeply in our time, is there any more serious business? Preachers, we have got to stop skipping or avoiding this topic. Jesus spoke of God’s wrath remaining on those who don’t believe on him. Richard Sibbes said that, outside of Christ, God is terrible. He wasn’t morally evaluating God. He was saying that God will cause terror in us if we appear before him apart from Christ.

Apart from God’s grace, the sinner will never stop sinning. God’s judgment will never end. Their rejection of God never ends. We all know God’s law and break it. When I was giving an evangelistic address, I was talking with a student leader who was thinking a lot about annihilationism. He liked the idea because it made God seem more humane. I said, “Can you think of any reason why we would want God’s judgment to seem less terrible to sinners? Do you want to make sinners feel better about their rebellion?”

The experience of hell will be worse than any abuse any of us has ever felt in our lives. Heaven is lost. The conscience is awakened. Remorse and regret are given rule, as desires run free in our lives that remain unsatisfied. God will inflict extreme and unnatural pain on them forever. I am at a loss to describe how horrible hell will be. As preachers of the gospel, we have no business making God seem more humane to sinners who are in rebellion against him. Tell unbelievers how horrible it is. Think about if hell were unleashed on you forever. Paul in Philippians 3 describes the non Christian in the present as those whose “end is destruction,…[whose] god is their belly,…[who] glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” God is truly and forever good. All of those wrongs no one else has ever noticed, God notices. God is good, and we by ourselves are not. We are fallen in Adam.

Jesus himself at least implies that the pains of the damned will endure as long as the joys of the redeemed.

Ours is an age that is sensitive to human suffering. Connie and I were talking about how Calvin suffered horribly physically. The suffering we are sensitive to is physical suffering and it will end. But the lost will be tormented as long as God is good.

Paul says to the Thessalonians that unbelievers will “suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

Jesus said things like in Mark 9 (about their worm not dying) to do what, at least in some seminaries, we’ve been taught not to do: alarm our hearers. Jesus did not preach a “don’t worry” Christianity. When you are in God’s universe, the most important thing is to know how God feels about you.

My non-Christian friends know none of the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Spurgeon encouraged his people to meditate on the condition of unbelievers.

Meditate with deep solemnity upon the fate of the lost sinner, and, like Abraham, when you get up early to go to the place where you commune with God, cast an eye toward Sodom and see the smoke thereof going up like the smoke of a furnace.  Shun all views of future punishment which would make it appear less terrible, and so take off the edge of your anxiety to save immortals from the quenchless flame. (from Lectures to my Students)

The Puritan minister Daniel Burgess said, “My father in all his letters to me used to write, ‘O, child, better never born than not new-born.’”

Edward Payson finished his powerful sermon on hell with these words of application:

I cannot, must not, however, conclude, without addressing a word, my professing friends, to you.  And I hope you will bear with me, if, in view of such a subject as this, I address you with apparent severity.  

An apostle teaches ministers, that they must sometimes rebuke professing Christians sharply; but I trust my sharpness will be the sharpness of love; and I know that I shall say nothing to you, half so severe as the reproaches which I have directed against myself, while preparing this discourse.  

We all deserve perdition, a thousand times, for our stupid insensibility to the situation of those, who are perishing around us.  We profess to believe the word of God; but can you all prove that you believe it?  Do you all act, as if you believed it?  What, believe that many of your acquaintances, your children, are in danger of the fate, which has now been described!  

Dare you go to God, and say, Lord, I believe thy word, I believe that all thy threatenings will be fulfilled, and then turn away, and coolly pursue your worldly business, without uttering one agonizing cry for those, who are exposed to these threatenings?  Dare you go and claim relationship to Christ, and profess to have his Spirit, without which you are none of his, and then make no effort, or only a few faint efforts, to save those, for whom he shed not tears only, but blood? O, if you can do this, where are the bowels, I will not say of a Christian, but of a man?  

Go, I may say to such, go, inconsistent, cruel, hard-hearted professors; go, slumber over the ruin of immortal souls; wrap yourself up in your selfish temporal interests, and say, I have no time to spare for rescuing others from everlasting burnings.  Go, wear out your life in acquiring property for your children, and leave their souls to perish in the fire that never shall be quenched.  Go, adorn their bodies, and banish from them, if possible, the seeds of disease; but leave in their bosoms that immortal worm, which will gnaw them forever.  And when God asks, where is thy child? thy brother? thy friend? Reply, with impious Cain, I know not, I care not: am I his keeper?

But I cannot proceed further in this strain.  I would rather beseech, and melt, and win you by tenderness.  

Say, then, Christian, dost thou believe that Christ died to save thee from the misery, which has been imperfectly described?  Dost thou believe, that if he had not loved thee and given himself for thee, the gnawing worm and the unquenchable fire would have been thy portion forever?  O then, where is thy gratitude, thy love? (from The Complete Works of Edward Payson)

Christians are motivated by a love to others. Hudson Taylor said he would have never thought of going to China if he didn’t believe that they were lost. It’s people who are this lost, who have this fate awaiting them, that we are aiming to convert.

We have to understand what conversion is. Biblically, while we are to persuade, our first duty is to be faithful to present the same good news that God has given to us. God’s Spirit will convert. We can’t make conversions. I think knowing this will make us better evangelists. Some people think that Calvinism makes bad evangelists. I think that is true, but I think Arminians are bad evangelists. We are all bad evangelists because we don’t want to offend people.

I think we can confidently tell people the basic message of the gospel and trust that God’s Spirit will faithfully pick up our message and use it to convert people.

Reason 3: A Love for God.

We want to see God glorified. We want to see the truth about him told in creation. The desire to see God glorified was the motivation for all Jesus’ actions.

Everything exists for God’s glory (Romans 11:36). Our salvation is “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6). God does everything he does for his own glory, and we should do all we do for the glory of God. God is glorified in the gospel. Is there a more amazing message? To tell the truth about some people is not to honor them, but to tell the truth about God is to honor him.

The call to evangelism is a call to turn our lives outward from focusing on ourselves and our own needs to focusing on God, to focusing on those others made in his image. We bring glory to God in this way. This is our one special privilege on this earth. We can bring glory to God in this way in a way we won’t be able to do in heaven.

·         Pray for the more than 160 small groups (adult and youths) they embark on ETOT.

·         Pray for everyone involved to be able to focus completely on what God has for them.

·         Pray that God will empower every small group leader to lead his / her members well.

·         Pray for God’s wisdom and strength on the preachers as they prepare to preach God’s Word to God’s people.