"I Can't Believe in a God Who..."

                            

     

     

    I'm sure you've heard the sentence," I can't believe in a God who would send people to Hell who haven't ever heard of Him". I've thought about that sentence long and hard, plenty of times. In fact, I made my roommate ask me this question while I was getting my tattoo ( philosophical questions distract me from pain ). 

   I was at church Wednesday night sitting with my friends. I had thought the message    was going to be about prayer, but, by the time I realized it was about evangelism it was too late to run out! 

Prayer- O.K
Reading the Bible- O.K
Spreading the "Good News"- Uhhh...I'll just slip out the back...
      When It comes down to it, I just suck at evangelism! It's not really that I suck, I just care too much about what people think (Hey, I said this was honesty year). Fear literally overwhelms me. Instead of the powerful news of the Gospel coming out, a weak, apologetic, ho-hum, mumble of a suggestion seeps through.
 Sad. I know. 
Back to the story.
     So, while I'm sitting in church service the pastor addresses the lingering question " How can we believe in a God that sends people to Hell who have never heard His name?" 
Well, let me rephrase it to give you a clearer perspective on this question. It should sound like this :
 "I can't believe that the church would let people who have never heard Jesus' name, go to Hell without ever hearing the Gospel."
      That should punch you right in the guts. I know it punches me in the guts! Why don't we let it for a second if that's what we need.  Wow. 
    No one likes to talk about Hell. No one wants to believe that people will actually go there one day. But, the fact is that no one is blameless. Even the nicest of people have hurt others and themselves. Its our nature. 
If I am to call myself a Christian, then I cannot ignore that there is a real Heaven and a real Hell. Therefore, I don't get off on shrugging off the Gospel. I don't get to say "that's not my job"...because it is.
     As you can imagine, I needed a confidence booster after that service. So I dusted off my Bible  (it didn't have dust, but lets just say I haven't opened it enough lately) and turned to Ezekiel 33. I turned there because there is a story that relates directly to the message.Most of the chapter can be boiled down to this verse:

"If the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood."

      What a sad day it will be when we see people that we know going to Hell and we could have saved them by just opening our mouths?  The Gospel requires word and deed. Our words are what separate humanitarians and Christians. I do not want to be accountable for not sounding the trumpet just because I cared too much about what people thought. 
Ezekiel 34 even goes further in saying,
" My sheep were scattered over the whole earth and no one searched or looked for them.... because my shepherds cared for themselves rather than my flock" 
OUCH! That was a pimp slap in the face! 
If God is serious about the lost, then so should I be. The urgency is greater now than ever. I need to get a fire under my tail like, 5 minutes ago! I hope this post ,if anything, is sobering. Pray for courage. I guess I can't chicken out now that I posted this blog! 
(sorry for the rough ending...)