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Adventures in Fishing for Men – A Humorous Satire of Evangelism

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

Adventures in Fishing for Men – A Humorous Satire of Evangelism
http://media.blubrry.com/one_verse/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/458457336-redeeminggod-122-adventures-in-fishing-for-men-a-humorous-satire-of-evangelism.mp3

Don’t tell one more person about Jesus until you read my new book. Don’t attempt any more evangelism until you read it.

Seriously.

Most Christians are doing more harm than good with how they attempt to “share Jesus” with others.

Many of the modern “evangelistic” efforts of Christians only do harm to the cause of Christ and the message of the gospel.

If you want to see what I mean, I “explain” it all in parable form through my new book, (#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men.

This book is an allegory, or parable, about evangelism. In it, a nameless man (Is it you? Is it me?) attempts to become a world-famous fisherman … all without ever catching any fish.

The book is funny, hilarious, entertaining, and most of all, insightful and instructional.

Here is what some others are saying about (#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men.

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

(#AmazonAdLink) Adventures in Fishing for Men

Adventures in Fishing for Men

This book was originally published back in 2012, but it has been significantly revised and expanded. It contains 50% new material, and also has a set of Discussion Questions to go along with each chapter.

These discussion questions will help you use this book for your small group class or Bible study. And since this book is humorous, if you use it for your small group Bible study or discussion group, it will be unlike any other study you have done. You will still learn, but through story and humor instead!

Did you want to learn about evangelism through humor?

Adventures in Fishing for MenJoin my discipleship group and take the course which is related to this book. When you take this course, you will also gain background information about each chapter in the book, as well as some discussion questions to help you think through the content of the chapters. If you just want to buy the book, you can get it on Amazon here.

God is Featured, Redeeming Church, Redeeming God, z Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Writing, evangelism, Fishing for Men, missions, One Verse Podcast

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How you can reach 54,000 people with the Gospel

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

How you can reach 54,000 people with the Gospel

Did you know I recently started a membership area on my website?

Well, I did.

But it definitely wasn’t so that I could charge you for my teachings. Frankly, if I could give away for free everything I write and teach, I would.

No, the actual reason I started a membership area was so that I can hopefully continue to write and teach on this site. Recently I have been wondering if I should just shut it all down. The membership area is my attempt to say “Open.”

Let me explain …

I am a Missionary

global missionsThough you may not realize it, I am a “missionary” to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Every month, about 250,000 people read articles from my website, and a large percentage of those people are from Africa and Asia. In North America and Europe, a large percentage of the people who read my site are High School and College students.

Many of these people are hearing for the very first time about God’s love, grace, and forgiveness for them. People around the world send me scores of personal emails every single week about sins they have committed and questions about whether not God can forgive them and still love them. My online “mission” work allows me to share the good news with them about God’s grace, love, and forgiveness as found in Jesus Christ.

But all of this work I do is not without expense. Everything I do online costs me about $500 each month.

My Missionary Expenses are $500 per Month

My hosting fees, email company, software licenses, and audio file storage fees average about $500 each month. I do not take a salary or pay myself for my time. This website is not my job. The 30 hours per week I devote to this website are my donation to the mission of the site. But I don’t make enough from my regular day job to also cover all the expenses of running this site.

In the past, I have tired to cover the costs of running this website through book sales and advertising, but my revenue from these only cover about 60%-80% of my expenses. Somehow, I need to make up that deficit of $100-$200 each month.

Last year, I put out a call for donations. Several people generously donated, allowing me to operate “in the black” for a few months.

But I hate asking people for money. I hate asking for people to give to me their hard-earned income. Asking people to donate money makes me feel queasy.

So this year, I decided to start a membership area on my site. This allows people like you to support the work I am doing around the world, while at the same time, it allows me to give something valuable and beneficial back to you. The membership area of my site allows me to say “Thank you” in a big way to those who choose to support my writing and teaching.

support a missionary

So would you please consider joining me in this way?

If you think about it, I am reaching 250,000 people per month for only $500. That’s five people per penny. If you join my “Hope” Membership level at $9 per month, you are helping reach 4,500 people per month with the truth about God’s love and grace. That’s 54,000 a year! I challenge you to find another mission or ministry which can do that.

And guess what? Right now, I only need 15-20 people to make up the deficit in my monthly budget. Would you consider being one of those 15-20 people? I would really, really appreciate it, and so will the millions of people of Africa and Asia and the high school and college students who will visit my website this coming year. Go here to join now.

Now, what happens if I get more than 20 people to help support my work? The answer is that I will start making scholarship memberships available to those who need it most.

Since I started the membership area on my site, I have received dozens of requests from people around the world for free memberships. People from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines, and Indonesia, as well as several people here in the United States have emailed asking if there are scholarships available to my site. They want to take the courses and learn about the Gospels, but they don’t make enough money to afford the $9 per month. I understand. In many places in Africa and Asia, $9 per month is A LOT of money.

If I end up getting more support than I need to cover my expenses, I will start giving away free membership scholarships to people who need and want them, but who cannot afford them. My long-term goals include a certification process so that we can train and send out local missionaries in Africa and Asia. But that is getting way ahead of ourselves…

So if you want to help me reach 54,000 people with the Gospel this coming year, would you become a “Hope” or “Love” member of RedeemingGod.com? The “Hope” Membership costs $9 per month, and the “Love” Membership is only $89 per year. Both get full access to all my online theology courses, as well as several free eBooks and other benefits. Most of all, those membership fees help this site stay up and running, and enable me to keep writing and teaching so that others around the world can hear about the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ.

Would you join my Membership area this year and in so doing, let me become one of the missionaries you support? Thank you so much.

God is Redeeming Church, Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: gospel, missionaries, missions

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How Christians Perform Magic with Salt Water

By Jeremy Myers
29 Comments

How Christians Perform Magic with Salt Water

Have you heard that Christians practice magic with salt water?

It is the most remarkable thing to observe. The magic of salt water turns an ordinary, everyday Christian into some sort of super-apostle of the Gospel.

If you have been feeling that something is missing in your Christian walk, I suggest you look into having the magical rite of salt water performed on you.

And I know it works. I have seen it done with my own eyes on multiple occasions during the past few years.

salt water magic

Here is how the magic of salt water works:

Step 1: Find a person who is relatively ineffectual in living out the Gospel in their hometown.

They probably attend church quite regularly, and have numerous friends and acquaintances at church, but have hardly any meaningful relationships with neighbors, coworkers, or acquaintances outside of church.

It really doesn’t matter what kind of home life they have. If it’s a man, he might be a great husband and father, but he also might ignore his children and neglect his wife.

It doesn’t matter if the person has a job. They could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or they could be permanently “unemployed.”

Personal diet and discipline don’t matter either. Nor do Bible knowledge or theological understanding.

The magic of salt water works on all kinds of people from all different backgrounds.

The main type of person it works on though, is the person who is at the church building every time the front doors are open (Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, at a minimum), but because they are at church so much, they don’t have enough time to build quality relationships with anyone outside the church.

Now, take this person, and watch the magic of salt water do its thing:

Step 2: Send this person overseas (that’s the salt water).

If you take the person described above, and send them across an ocean, they magically go from being an ordinary Christian to a person who is to be praised and glorified.

It also helps if you call this person a “missionary.”

overseas missions

The Salt Water Transformation

It is shocking to observe the transformation that takes places in how this person is viewed by those who remain behind.

The person suddenly is elevated in the eyes and minds of other Christians to a near god-like status. Everything they say and do is now more holy and biblical. Every trial in life they experience (which is normal life for you and me) becomes a direct attack from the devil to stop them from doing “the Lord’s work.”

Most shocking of all, the average Christian in the pew now gets the overwhelming urge to throw obscene amounts of money at this person. While the person may have been living on $50k here in the United States, they now get people to give them $100k or more per year so they can go live in a country where the average annual per capita income is less than $5k. (That’s equivalent to making $1 million here in the States.)

Now that they are living like kings in this foreign country, they are able to hire servants and maids to do their shopping, cooking, cleaning, yard work, and child-rearing. They can afford to put their children in the best schools. And to top it all off, they don’t have the normal, everyday expenses that you and I have. No, they get cars, vacations, and medical treatment all paid for by supporters.

And all of this miraculously happens because they crossed a body of salt water!

Do not Misunderstand! I Love Missionaries!

Please, do not misunderstand. I really do love missionaries. My sister is a well known missionary. I have many good friends who are missionaries. They like to bring their cooler from Survival Cooking List of Best Coolers when they go on their missions.

But here is my only point: Christianity doesn’t need celebrities, whether they are in a pulpit or overseas.

Every Christian is a missionary, which means that no missionary (whether at home or across an ocean) should get special status, privileges, or recognition.

Peter wrote about the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:5), and I think that if he were writing today, he would write about the missionaryhood of all believers.

Praise the Missionaries All Around You

missionary superheroNext time you are tempted to think more highly of someone because they crossed a body of salt water to serve Jesus, first take a look around in your own town and your own community to praise because rather than crossing the sea to serve Jesus, they crossed the asphalt in their neighborhood to love others like Jesus.

Maybe it will be a pastor who has made the hard decision to stay in a small and struggling church for 23 years and faithfully teach and disciple the people in that church even though he could have made more money and earned more praise elsewhere. (I know someone like this. He’s my father.)

Maybe it will be a man who doesn’t “attend” church at all, but who goes out to the “least of these” in his city on a regular basis to the homeless and hand out cups of cold water on hot days and warm jackets and hot soup on cold days. (I know someone like this. He’s my friend, Sam Riviera.)

Maybe it will be a neighbor who was forced to choose between attending church on Sunday or staying home to care for his shut-in wife, and chose the latter, even though his pastor said such a decision would displease God. (I know someone like this. He’s my neighbor, Leroy.)

Maybe it will be the mother of several young children who sacrifices all of her time, energy, and personal desires to do what is so rare and so difficult these days: to raise up her children so that they love God and love others. (I know several women like this, among whom are my wife and my mother.)

I could go on and on about the many heroic missionaries I know who have never been called a “missionary” because they never crossed a sea, but who will, I believe, be praised by Jesus when they stand before Him, for accomplishing more in His Kingdom than many of those who currently receive praise, honor, and glory for being “missionaries.”

missionary heroThese people … my father, my friend, my neighbor, my wife, and my mother … have understood the mission to which God called them, and they selflessly carry out this mission year in and year out, and for that, they are “missionaries” just as much as those who have gone overseas.

More impressive still, they carry out their mission with no recognition or praise or banquets or fundraising efforts or conferences or special speaking engagements or book deals or radio interviews or plaques or awards or prayer newsletters or any such thing. They carry out their mission without a paycheck, without support letters, and without donors.

To me, this makes their service in God’s Kingdom that much more impressive and praiseworthy.

If you are a “Missionary”

If you are an overseas missionary, please don’t take anything I have said as a slam on you. I honor and praise what you are doing. Truly I do. I know you have made sacrifices of your own which people who stay in their home countries cannot fully understand. But also please consider that God has called every one of His children to be a missionary, and being a missionary does not require a person to cross the sea. And some people are fantastic missionaries right in their home, their neighborhood, their work places.

And maybe next time you are called to speak at a missions conference, rather than talk about everything you are doing for Jesus overseas, you could take some time to praise the people in the pews for everything they are doing for Jesus on this side of the sea. Tell them there is no magic in salt water. Tell them that they are missionaries too. Tell them that it often takes more courage and boldness to cross the street than it does to cross the sea.

If You Plan a Mission’s Conference

And if you are a pastor of a church or are on the planning committee for a mission’s conference, maybe this year, instead of inviting the overseas missionary to speak, you could invite up the mother who is raising her children at home. Maybe she will share with your congregation how the very first missionary front is the home front, and how the entire world would have been converted by now if parents had just brought up their children at home to love God and love others.

Or maybe you could bring in the pastor of a small local congregation to praise him for how he faithfully served God without giving in to the lure of a larger congregation and a larger salary elsewhere. He could tell you about the pain and struggles and heartache and loneliness of being a small-church pastor in a mega-church world.

Or maybe you could bring in that person who no longer attends your church, but is reaching those in your community (who will never attend church) better than a church-attender ever could. He could tell you about why people leave the church, and how outsiders view the church, and what you and I can do to be the church in the world.

Salt Water has No Magic

If you are feeling that something is missing in your relationship with God, don’t be tempted to think that to be effective in His Kingdom, you need to cross a body of salt water. You don’t.

In fact, it could easily be argued that there are people within 10 feet of you right now who have a greater need for the love of Jesus than anybody you could possibly reach 1000 miles away.

The people God wants you to love are the people who are near you right now. Until the church understands this, we will always fail to understand how the Kingdom of God works and how the Kingdom of God spreads upon the earth.

God is Redeeming Church Bible & Theology Topics: 1 Peter 2:5, Discipleship, evangelism, missionary, missions, money

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Stop Calling Yourself a Christian

By Jeremy Myers
87 Comments

Stop Calling Yourself a Christian

love like JesusI think all of us “Christians” should stop referring to ourselves as “Christians.”

Nor should we ask other people if they are a “Christian.”

I have two lines of reasoning for why we should stop saying we’re Christians.

1. They were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26)

When the term “Christian” was first invented, it was coined by an outside group of “pagans” who observed the way Jesus-followers behaved and recognized the similarity between what they were doing and what Jesus did. And so they called these Jesus followers “Christians.”

In other words, the first “Christians” did not take this title for themselves; it was given to them.

The term means “little Christ,” and while some scholars think that it was maybe intended to be a derogatory term (sort of like Yankee Doodle), I do not think so. I think the people of Antioch noticed how “Christ-like” the people were who claimed to follow Him, and so they started to referring to this Christ-like followers of Jesus as “Christians.” It was a way to identify them and talk about them.

they will know you are christians by your loveThe Christians of Antioch were not known for their hate, venom, judgmentalism, or religious pride, or even for their good theology, pious life, and vast Bible knowledge. Instead, They were knowing for looking and acting and behaving like Jesus Christ, and as a result, they were “called Christians” by those who were not Christians.

If the watching world started giving titles and nicknames to those who proclaim to follow Jesus today, what sort of titles do you think they would give us?

I am not sure I want to know … but I doubt it would be “Christian.”

But this leads me to the second line of reasoning for why we should stop calling ourselves “Christians.”

you keep calling yourself a Christian

2. They will know you are Christians by your love (John 13:35)

If you truly are a “Christian” you don’t have to tell people. They will know it. How? By your love.

Those who truly act like a “Christian” do not have to tell people they are a “Christian” because people already know it. They know it by your love.

I follow Jesus t-shirtI walked by two guys in the store the other day who were both wearing Christian t-shirts. One was saying to the other, “Yeah, they all hate me at work, but that’s okay, because I’m standing up for Christ.”

Now, I cannot say for sure, but I imagine that since I heard this about five days after the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, that this man’s idea of “standing up for Christ” consisted of telling his coworkers that LGBT people were headed for hell, were destroying our country, and were signs of the collapse of modern society and traditional marriage.

Some religious people think that “standing up for Christ” in today’s culture means telling others that God hates gays. Just check out some of the comments on my post from two days ago.

Look, I don’t know where you stand on the gay marriage issue. I don’t care. What I do know, however, is that wherever you stand on gay marriage, the proper response to gay people is love.

The same goes for other groups of people some Christians love to hate. Like Muslims. Whatever you may think about the Muslim religion, the proper way to treat a Muslim is with love.

Love is the proper (and only) response to ALL people, no matter what they believe or do, if we are followers of Jesus.

If you want to represent Jesus to people, don’t do it by hating or condemning them. (And don’t use the line about how you “Love the sinner, but hate the sin.”)

Anyway, back to the conversation I heard in the store, I wanted to tell this guy who was proud of his “stand for Christ” that just because people hate you for what you say doesn’t mean that you are standing for Christ.

In fact, in the Gospels, the only people who really hated Jesus were the religious people. Those who were condemned and judged by the religious people loved Jesus and hung out with Him and were accepted by Him.

So if the world hates you but religious people love you, you might not be following Jesus.

Also, if, like this guy in the store, you have to tell people you are a Christian by broadcasting it on your t-shirt, you’re doing it wrong.

If we want to tell people we are followers of Jesus, we do it by loving them. Just as He loves us. Unconditionally. That’s what Godly love is.

I am convinced that the person who loves others unconditionally but doesn’t claim to follow Jesus is closer to the Kingdom of God than those who claim to follow Jesus but doesn’t love others unconditionally.

love is of GodIf love is of God, and everybody who loves is born of God and knows God because God is love (1 John 4:7-8), then it only makes sense that love will be the prevailing characteristic of one who is born of God and know God!

It is not a person’s words that make him or her a Christian, or what they post on Facebook or wear on their t-shirts, or even how many Bible verses they can quote, or how often they attend church and Bible studies, or whether they can “take a stand for Christ.”

They will know we are Christians by our love, and if you have not love, they will never know you are a Christian, no matter how much you tell them you are.

Or maybe I should put it this way: If you have not love, you can never properly act like a Christian, no matter how much you tell people you are one.

The REAL Question We Should be Asking Ourselves (and others)

So the question we should be asking is not “Am I a Christian?” but rather, “Am I Christ-like?”

“Do my words sound like words Jesus might say?”

“Do my actions look like things Jesus might do?”

“Do I love unconditionally, forgive freely, serve sacrificially, and accept all?”

“Do I challenge the religious status-quo for setting up barriers to God and creating groups of us vs. them?”

“Do I break down the walls of religion by eating with the so-called ‘tax-collectors and sinners’?”

If so, then keep living in love and looking like Jesus, and maybe, just maybe, someone might call you a “Christian.”

God is Redeeming Church, Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: 1 John 4:7-8, Acts 11:26, Christian, Discipleship, evangelism, hate, John 13:35, looks like Jesus, love, love like Jesus, missions

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What REALLY controls and guides Christians: Fear and Guilt

By Jeremy Myers
34 Comments

What REALLY controls and guides Christians: Fear and Guilt

Christians like to claim that we are guided by Scripture and controlled by the Holy Spirit.

But I was recently talking to my insanely wise and beautiful wife, Wendy, and she pointed out that the two things which seem to guide and control Christians are actually fear and guilt.

We are guided by fear and controlled by guilt.

fear and guilt

My wife used the example of a typical church-missionary relationship. When raising support, some missionaries use guilt to get others to support them. They shows pictures of starving children, or tell stories about how people without the gospel are headed for hell. But then, when they are on the missionary field, and not much is happening through their ministry, they feel compelled to embellish what they are doing so that it the money which people are spending on them is well-spent. They are afraid that if they “tell it like it is,” the money will stop.

But when they send glowing reports of all that God is doing on the mission field back home, those in the pews feel even more guilty because they don’t see God “working” in their own life in the same miraculous ways. They feel guilty that they are not following Jesus overseas.

The missionaries also get put up on a pedestal so that when they return home on furlough, they have to conform to a certain standard of holy behavior which matches the pedestal that has been built for them. Furthermore, even though the missionary may be exhausted from working overseas, they feel compelled to visit people in their homes and go speak in a myriad of churches just so that they can maintain their financial support.

And on and on it goes, in an endless cycle of fear and guilt.

Fear and Guilt in Church

Of course, this cycle goes beyond just the relationship between churches and the missionaries they support. Guilt and fear are at the heart of preaching, of doing what our pastor says, of attending church regularly, and of putting on the smiley face for Sunday services.

The pastor wants to prove that he is worthy of his pay (even though he is afraid he is not), and so must use manipulative practices to keep people coming to church and giving their money. He fears that if he does not keep this up, he will lose his job. He also fears that his sermons are not as good as the ones the pastor down the street preaches, and fears he will lose his people to that other church. The pastor, robbed of life by fear and guilt, uses fear and guilt to control others.

People fear displeasing their pastor, since his is “the man of God,” and so often do what he says without question, because he speaks for God and knows what God wants better than they do themselves. The people, living under fear and guilt of what will happen if they do not obey, do not have the freedom to follow Jesus for themselves.

People are afraid to miss a Sunday service because of what others will think or say about them. Fear and guilt keep us returning to situations where only more fear and guilt get piled upon us.

People are afraid to let others know about their sins, temptations, struggles, and doubts, and so put on a smiley face for church services and Bible studies. Since everybody is doing this, nobody realizes that everybody is afraid that others will discover who they really are, and feel guilty that they seem to deal with issues and temptations that nobody else faces. Fear and guilt keep us from being honest and from opening up to others about our struggles.

fear and guilt

What’s the solution?

I think we all struggle with fear and guilt in numerous ways. We experience fear and guilt in our jobs, our marriages, our families, and our finances.

But I also believe that Jesus wants to free us from both. I do not think we were meant to live life wrapped in the chains of fear and guilt.

How do we break free?

We follow Jesus.

He will lead us into freedom. The journey is long, but it is a journey worth taking. As we walk with Jesus, we will discover that the one person who knows everything about us is also the one person who loves and accepts us completely. When we come to that realization, the fear and guilt begin to wash away, and we are able to begin to live in freedom with other people as well.

If you are struggling with fear and guilt, let me recommend three things.

First, don’t become fearful or guilty about struggling with fear and guilt. Just recognize the fear and the guilt.

Second, let Jesus know that you want to be led by Him instead. Just tell Him. And keep telling Him.

Finally, trust that Jesus will lead you. Over the course of the next couple years, as you learn to live in recognition of your fear and guilt, and as you learn to trust that Jesus is leading you to where He wants, you will look back over your life and see how much more liberated and free you have become. You will be shocked at how much more forgiven, loved, and accepted you feel.

Do you struggle with fear and guilt? Do you even know that you struggle with it? Do you use it to control others? What sort of strategies have you found helpful in seeking to liberate yourself and others from fear and guilt? Please share below!

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: church, Discipleship, evangelism, fear, guilt, missions

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