Sharing the Gospel has always given me an anxiety attack. But once I simplified it and understood it, sharing the gospel became so much easier – let me show you how.
Growing up in the church it seemed like evangelism was a simple 2 step plan.
Step 1: share the gospel story (making sure to emphasize heaven and hell was always a plus).
Step 2: pray the sinner’s prayer.
When I became a mom, this is still the view I had of evangelism. However, I quickly learned that this is not reality… or at least not my reality. My kids needed to be discipled to salvation. My kids needed me to show them the gospel in my daily living and share the gospel story with them multiple times before they were ever ready to say a prayer. Sharing the gospel with your kids won’t happen in one day, it takes consistency over time. And it takes modeling the gospel in everything.
The word “Gospel,” literally translated, means “good news.” More specifically it is the good news of the kingdom of God and the salvation of Christ. It’s the salvation that we receive by grace through faith. Sharing the gospel starts with an understanding of what it is – how can you share the news that you don’t understand? So for the purpose of this blog post, I’ve laid out 4 parts of the gospel. All you have to do is remember 4 words to jump-start your memory to the rest of the gospel. These 4 words are:
- God
- Sin
- Death
- Life
Too often we start sharing the gospel at point #4 – life. We ask, “do you know where you are going when you die? While this may have been an effective tool for evangelism in the ’90s and early 2000’s, I’d steer clear of starting at the end. Let’s start at the beginning of the gospel with God Himself.
1. God
To understand what sin is and why it’s a problem, we need to understand who God is – who is it we’re “sinning” against?
God is Love. Since God is love, He gets to define what that looks like. God’s love is perfect. But as a parent who disciplines their child because of their love, God will not sit idly by while we hurt one another or sin against Him.
God is Holy. He is righteous and set apart. God is not on our level spiritually – He’s always above. Our life and righteousness come through Him.
God is pure. God is absolutely and totally pure, there is no fault in Him. He is the only one who has never and will never sin. We can know what sin is by looking at His purity. When we look at Him, we see the standard we must live up to in order to live in His presence.
There are many other things we can say about who God is. I’d encourage you to talk to your kids about who God is – talk about how He is the creator when you’re out on a walk. Talk about how He is powerful when your kids are scared. Help your children understand who God is.
2. Sin
A mistake we often make in sharing the gospel is talking about God’s love so much that we never talk about sin. Yes, God is love and He loves us despite our sins. If sin doesn’t matter, why do we need to be saved from our sin? If God is love and wants to forgive us, why did He send Jesus to die on a cross? God’s love is what compelled Him to offer salvation through His Son, but His love alone is not the gospel. As uncomfortable as it may be, our children need to know that no one, absolutely no one (other than Jesus) is good. The Apostle Paul puts it like this:
“…none is righteous no, not one…no one does good, not even one.”
(Romans 3:10-12, ESV)
Growing up everyone always answered the question, “what is sin?” with this answer: “sin is missing the mark.” Often adding illustrations of targets and arrows. But that was never helpful for me. Despite asking multiple times, I never really understood what the “mark” was that I was apparently missing.
When it comes to talking with our young children about sin we usually say that sin is everything we do that hurts God. What are some examples? It hurts God when we don’t believe in Him. It hurts God when we are mean to others, hurt others, or disobey.
3. Death
There are consequences of our sin. Because we have sinned and hurt the only one who is pure, there should be consequences. The Bible tells us that, “the wages [result or consequence] of sin is death (Romans 6:23, ESV, addition mine). Death from sin isn’t just physical death, it’s spiritual death – to be completely separated from the source of life – God.
We are not left hopeless in our sin, God loves us too much for that. Salvation is God’s ultimate show of love for us.
“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, ESV)
If the consequence of sin is death, how do we have life? We have life through Christ’s sacrifice. The consequence must be paid and it is paid for us by Jesus Christ – God’s son.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
(Romans 5:6, NIV)
Even when we were hurting God, He still loved us enough to save us and give us life. As a parent, God’s love astounds me now more than ever. I cannot imagine giving up one of my children to save someone, let alone someone who was actively hurting me. And yet God sent His own Son to die in our place so that we could be called children of God. I cannot think of anything more incredible than that, and yet the gospel message keeps getting better! We don’t have to pay God back for his salvation, it’s totally and completely free! Just like our children don’t have to earn our love, we don’t have to earn God’s love. He loves us no matter what.
As our children grow, part of our job as parents is to help our children understand consequences. While we do this, we can point to the gospel message. Here’s an example:
If my children have an attitude, we calmly take them aside, take a few deep belly breaths together, listen to what is going on, and talk about better options or solutions for whatever is bothering them. If they continue the attitude or are doing something unsafe (kicking/hitting, throwing toys, etc), they go sit in their bedroom for time out (based on age). When their time is up, either my husband or I will go upstairs and talk with them. We emphasize several things:
- We love them
- There are consequences for what we do (some we enjoy – if we’re nice we make new friends. Some we don’t enjoy – time outs, being separated from others).
- God loves them. And God loves them so much that He sent Jesus to take on consequence of the things we do that hurt God so that we can be in a relationship with God. Jesus died (the consequence of our sin), but God raised Him to life again, and His life is what gives us the power to try again, make better choices, and love others.
4. Life
Sharing the gospel shouldn’t end with leaving Jesus on the cross. The gospel continues through Jesus’ resurrection. It’s through His resurrection we are given life! Our children need to know that we can have a relationship with God and are no longer condemned by our sins (Romans 8:1). Since we are no longer condemned, we have access to God in prayer (Ephesians 2:18, 3:12). The power to live an eternal life, and a godly life, comes through His resurrection.
Salvation changes us. After we are saved, we can no longer live the way we used to. We live in Christ and Christ lives in us. This isn’t works-based salvation, rather this is sanctification (the process of being made holy) at work in us. Though I was saved in my childhood I am continually being made more holy day by day. I am more holy today than I was last week, last month, or last year. Sanctification happens through the resurrection power of Christ’s resurrection.
Our children need to see and hear us share the gospel in everything. When it comes to discipline, we can include the gospel. If our children are fighting and we intervene, we can talk about how Jesus loved us so much He laid His life down for us. When we respond to our children in a way that is not Christ-like (let’s face it we’ve all done it) we can go to our children and model the gospel and repentance – reminding our children that though no one is perfect God loves us so much he forgives us every time we say sorry and gives us the power and ability to try again. We (even as adults) are still being made more like Christ each day.
The Invitiation
Every time I lay out the gospel for my kids, I make sure to tell them that the Bible says that “anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). All we need to do to be saved is “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.” (Romans 10:9). I will usually say something like, “This is something we can do anytime, anywhere, would you like to do that now?”They won’t always say yes. But I will offer any time I can.
We can’t force our children to say a sinner’s prayer or to believe in God. Their salvation is a miracle that only God can do. All we can do is share the gospel (in our words, and in our actions) and pray for their hearts to turn to Christ.
So my challenge to you today is, how can you include the gospel in your parenting? Look for ways to share these parts of the gospel with your children as often as possible, trusting God to do the rest.
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