"You Can't Lockdown the Gospel"

"Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you:" II Thessalonians 3:1

Preaching in Kurdistan

I pray my posting of this sounds more challenging to your spirit than simply another preachers' rant. I don't often feel led to write a blog that sounds motivated by frustration with those who serve in ministry. I guess I may suffer from "Covid19 Lingerings". This is likely because I have heard what seems the whole of society blame anything that fails on the pandemic for the last 18 months. If you lose your job, blame it on Covid. If your children fail in elementary school, it was Covid. People aren't getting saved at church, Covid. Noone is tithing, Covid. Buses are still parked in the garage on Sunday, Pastor is preaching online after one year, Choir loft is half full, Wednesday night prayer is cancelled. It is all the unfortuante results of this unending coronavirus, Covid!!! 

Seems like noone wants to take ownership of their lives anymore when we all have the enjoyable excuse of "Playing the Covid Card", Nowhere is this more ripe to me as when it comes to the matter of World Evangelism and Missions. I have met numbers of missionaries that have spent the last nearly two years in a ministerial hiatus. "We can't go back to our field because of Covid". Churches and pastors even here in the US are still pondering whether it is safe to begin the "outreaches" and "soulwinning" endeavors they once deemed essential. The testing and vaccintation requirements have all but stifled the Great Commission worldwide. But it doesn't have to be be that way. I spent the entire12 months of 2021 trying to prove to myself that the Gospel can still preached agressively on foreign soil even during an unprecedented crisis. 

Ministering to School Kids in Nigeria

I decided early last year that the Lord helping me, I would not roll over and play dead to this struggle that we face. The millions of souls persihing at an all-time high deserve to have a Gospel Witness. God wants and needs voices to "cry aloud" in these end times. While apathetc evangelists, missionaries, pastors, and laymen continue to hunker down from the fear of man and disease, the Lord longs for His Word to have "free course". The Gospel is the most powerful message on earth and can change the heart disease of any reviled sinner. However, truth can "fall in the street" when we do not procalim it. Truth can be unprofiable when it is not lived. 

So early on in 2021 I made a conscious decsion that I would not remain a part of the sidelined crowd that watched a world die without Jesus while they isolated themselves behind masks and international borders. God in His grace allowed me to preach the gospel on the streets of my hometown of Middleburg, Florida while also travelling abroad  seven times into thirteen various countries during the LOCKDOWN and see the salvation of 7058 souls. These were souls saved in Honduras, Panama, Guatemala, Peru, Liberia. Nigeria, Iraq, Brazil, Guyana, Finland, Russia, Estonia, and Uganda. I don't mean that people from our church or people I know went to these places.. I mean in a span of ten months I travelled to each of these locations and preached, witnessed, baptized, showed Jesus Films, ministered in schools, all during a worldwide pandemic in which others determined to STAY HOME. To be sure, I have been Covid19 tested with painful swabs more than I want to remember. I have taken the vaccination, though I have natural immunities from being positive with the virus one year ago. I have jumped through what seems a thousand hoops to get in/out of nations and public venues showing my vaccination card, heatlh declaration, passport, and every other form of documentation to health officials in these LOCKED DOWN Covid hotspots. But I would gladly do so again and again for this purpose, that the Word of God might have "free course".

Sunday Service in Panama

People need Jesus more than ever. Preacher, stop playing defense! Stop hiding in the barracks. Stop excusing the pandemics of laziness and cowardice. Say like the Apostle Paul did from prison, "I can do all things through Christ". The lost world needs us in the game. Lockdown the governments, schools, businesses, and industries, but never let it be said that the Church of Jesus Christ was LOCKED DOWN. You can't LOCKDOWN the Gospel. Let's storm the gates of hell in 2022 and rescue the perishing,