Evangelism must be simple. The Reformed Presbyterians have become too educated and too intellectual. Everything we articulated has becomes too complex that no one can understand. If Jesus were to use his divine language to preach the good news, no one would have understood. In fact, maybe we have become semi-intellectual, or not really intellectual enough, because the highest intellectual person is able to convey the complex thoughts in the simplest way.  Jesus used the simplest language and analogies to convey the most complex spiritual message that even the farmers, the homeless, and the prostitutes could understand.

Something's wrong with our evangelism.  We have become too tongue-tied by our knowledge and theology.  Evangelism must be simple because it is just an introduction.  But today, the Presbyterians would write an introduction like a doctoral thesis.  I am back to my good old Bill Bright's method, using the Four Spiritual Laws.

More about this later.

The following is an interesting article by Dave Ramsey, related to Obama's tax plan, that gives me some food for thought.

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Butt Scratching and Bass Fishing
By Dave Ramsey

A couple of weeks ago, I worked late like I sometimes need to do to run my business. It was a nice Tennessee summer evening, and I was enjoying the drive home. About 7:30, as I pulled to a stop light a few blocks from my office, I noticed a light on in the corner office of a friend’s office building. Through the twilight I could make out my friend’s silhouette as he bent over his desk. Being a fellow entrepreneur, I knew what he was doing.

He was looking over some receivables. Some turkey hadn’t paid him, and he was trying to make his accounts balance so he would have the cash to make it another day. In that instant, I had a flashback to some of the ridiculous statements I’ve been hearing on the talking-head news channels and from some individuals during this political year. And I’ll be honest—I instantly felt the heat of anger flow through my body.

This morning's devotional reading from Spurgeon's Morning and Evening: Daily Readings strikes a chord with my heart.  Amen!  Amen!

“He that watereth shall be watered also himself.”
— Proverbs 11:25

We are here taught the great lesson, that to get, we must give; that to accumulate, we must scatter; that to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy; and that in order to become spiritually vigorous, we must seek the spiritual good of others. In watering others, we are ourselves watered. How? Our efforts to be useful, bring out our powers for usefulness. We have latent talents and dormant faculties, which are brought to light by exercise. Our strength for labour is hidden even from ourselves, until we venture forth to fight the Lord’s battles, or to climb the mountains of difficulty.

If the love of money is the root of all evil, reductionism comes next. In a nutshell, reductionism can be defined as “making part of the truth the whole truth,” or “reducing a complex reality to a simple statement that covers only part of the whole reality.” There is reductionism in science, politics, and religions.

When people from the religious right commit this fallacy, we call them fundamentalists. When the liberals do so, we usually don’t have a term for it. Some people just call them “far left,” and others add, “far left loons.” The term “reductionists” should cover them all, no matter which side or sector of the society they are subject to.

Many Americans today believe that the world hates America and, of course, that belief mostly came from the mainstream media. Does the world really hate America, or is it just an idea made up by some American’s to support their own hatred against the government? Sometimes we see, hear, or read about interviews with foreigners who express their anti-American sentiments. Do those interviews truly represent the real grassroots view? Here is my outside-in view of the issue.

Growing up under a totalitarian government that controlled the media for its own benefit, most Burmese yearned for journalism freedom that would keep the government, as well as the entire nation, transparent. During my college years, I remember reading a book, in Burmese, on the Watergate scandal, and learned how the journalists diligently brought the case to the surface. It was probably the first in human history and the greatest example of how the freedom of press could help up-build a nation and keep America straight on the course of freedom.

It was a very awkward question to be asked when you are lying on a hospital bed.  “Of course I want to be healed and that’s why I am here!” is the obvious answer. But, Jesus asked this question to a sick man waiting to be healed.  It was recorded in the Bible this way:

 

“Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.  One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” John 5:6