Tag Archives: Spreading the Gospel

Marine and Wife Become National Witness For Christ

They didn’t realize a moment of obedience and placing God first would turn them into witnesses for Christ on the national stage.

Marine Cpl. Caleb Earwood was due to marry the love of his life Maggie in Asheville, North Carolina last Saturday.  He wanted to make sure that their marriage began in the way a marriage should begin: dedicating all to the Lord.

So he asked his friends and family to arrange a way for him to pray with his wife-to-be without violating the marriage tradition of the groom not seeing the bride before the wedding.

“They hid me in a room and he stepped up on the stairwell and he stuck his hand out and I grabbed his hand,” Maggie Earwood told ABC News.

The couple held hands around a corner and prayed.  A picture was taken and shared on social media.

And then it blew up all over the world.  The photo appeared in magazines like US Weekly and even had the couple make an appearance on NBC’s Today show.

“We were about to take our first steps in life together, and we didn’t want to take a step without it being in God’s will,” Caleb, 21, told TODAY.com. “I prayed to God for my beautiful and intelligent wife that he blessed me with and the amazing family I was marrying into.”

Maggie said it was a great relief for her on her wedding day to know the person she was about to vow to spend the rest of her life with felt the same way about God as her.

What many didn’t know about the wedding is that Caleb almost didn’t make it.  He had emergency surgery the week prior for kidney stones and had to work to keep up his strength for the big day.

Now, the couple is thankful their picture is blessing others and showing the importance of placing God first.

“We’re thankful that our picture is able to bless so many people and touch that many hearts,” said Caleb.

Witch Comes To Christ Through Jesus Movie

The leaders of the Jesus film are celebrating the fact a witch has renounced their previous life and came to Christ because of the movie.

Alex Mbewe was showing the movie to a village in Zambia.  A witch came into the event, furious that they were showing the movie to the residents.  Witnesses say that she summoned a demon that flipped over the table holding the film equipment and terrified the audience.

Alex and his group wouldn’t be swayed by the witch.

“Lord, You own all the creation in heaven and on earth. Everything on earth belongs to You, and we believe this ground also belongs to You. We are very confident that the show tomorrow will be the source of salvation for many in this area,” Alex and his team prayed.

The group played the movie the next day.

The witch showed up.

And the witch was one of 600 people who accepted Christ as Lord.

The witch told the Jesus team that over the last few nights she had been taunted in her dreams but a beast that would drag her toward a pool of fire.  As the beast went to throw her in, he said she was going to hell because she didn’t respond to the message of truth in the village.

She joined a church with 83 members that was planted in the village.  She recently passed away so she accepted Christ before it was too late.

Study Showing Less Christians Could Be “Good News” For Church Says Moore

The President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention says that the Pew report showing a raise in people who claim no religious affiliation could be “good news” for the church.

Russell Moore focused on the “increasing strangeness” of Christianity.

“Christianity isn’t normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it’s good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline traditions plummet, evangelical churches are remaining remarkably steady,” Moore said in a statement.

Moore said that people are rejecting the forms of Christianity that throw away the truth of the Scriptures to fit in with the whims of the secular society.

“The churches that are thriving are the vibrant, countercultural congregations that aren’t afraid to not be seen as normal to the surrounding culture. This report actually leaves me hopeful. The Bible Belt may fall. So be it,” he continued.

“Christianity emerged from a Roman Empire hostile to the core to the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. We’ve been on the wrong side of history since Rome, and it was enough to turn the world upside down.”

Moore said in a posting on his personal blog that he sees many people refusing to call themselves Christians because of society.

“In the Bible Belt of, say, the 1940s, there were people who didn’t, for example, divorce, even though they wanted out of their marriages. In many of these cases, the motive wasn’t obedience to Jesus’ command on marriage but instead because they knew that a divorce would marginalize them from their communities. In that sense, their ‘traditional family values’ were motivated by the same thing that motivated the religious leaders who rejected Jesus—fear of being ‘put out of the synagogue,'” Moore offered.

“Secularization in America means that we have fewer incognito atheists. Those who don’t believe can say so—and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of ‘Christianity’ that is a means to an end—even if that end is ‘traditional family values’—is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called ‘liberalism,’ and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.”

Over 900 Students Commit To Christ At RUSH Event

Over 900 youths are now spending eternity with Christ after the RUSH event in Meansville, Georgia.

RUSH, which stands for Reaching Unchurched Students for Him, hosted the conference featuring speaker Sadie Robertson from Duck Dynasty & Dancing With The Stars along with music from Christian rapper Lecrae.

Up to 7,000 people attended the event with 925 accepting Christ according to staffers.

“The nature of [the] event, whether it be concerts, celebrities, games, or other things that we do, are all aimed at getting those kids in the community, or in the world if you will, not in the church necessarily, but to get the church friends to bring the students that may never walk into a church,” RUSH Ministries’ co-founder Marc Pritchett explained to The Christian Post.

2015 is the 11th year that Thomaston, Georgia based RUSH Ministries has hosted events.

“They realize not only is being a Christian fun, not only is it cool, but also, eternal hope is sandwiched within all that stuff,” said Pritchett. “I think that’s probably the reason why we see so many kids come to Christ rather than at a Christian festival — we reach them first, if that makes sense. Then we present the Gospel. They let their guard down a little bit, and when the Gospel is preached, it does what it does. No one can take credit for that except certainly Jesus. We speak that out and it goes out and is received.”

Go Big Or Go Home

After turning my life over to God, I became OOOOONNNN FIRE for Jesus!   You know when you look at fire and its different colors?   Some of the hottest spots are the blue flames. That is where I was.  I felt like dynamite but I also realized that many things in my world would have to change. I went on a sabbatical for at least 6 months from my not so Jesus centered friends whom I love so much. I’m close with several of them to this day.  They truly respect me for my Christian beliefs and several of them have actually come to know the Lord since that time. Continue reading →

“I Met Messiah”

A new website is showing video testimonies of Jews who have received Jesus as Messiah.

The site, IMetMessiah.com, is aimed at bringing the good news of Christ to Jews who are interested in knowing more about Him.

“As Jewish people, most of us grow up without considering whether or not Yeshua is the Messiah expected by our people for millennia,” Eitan Bar, the site’s founder, explains in a video. “Yet, something happened in our lives that changed each of us and caused us to rethink the usual Jewish views about Jesus.”

“We offer these stories to you and hope that your relationship with God will deepen through meeting our storytellers,” Bar adds.

The site has over a dozen testimonies from Jewish businessmen and women who have discovered Jesus as Lord.

“I was frustrated,” Grant Berry recalled. “Here Maria was, this Christian girl that had a relationship with my God—the God of Abraham—and here I was, a Jew, trying to have a relationship with my God—the God of Abraham—and nothing. I was disconnected.”

Berry told his Christian friend about frustration with feeling that he was unable to reach God.

“I have been trying to tell you for six to eight months … You can’t have the Father without the Son,” Maria replied.

Iowa Churches To Distribute Bibles In Every Home In Their City

Saturday, April 11th will be the “Day of the Bible” in Marshalltown, Iowa.

On that day a group of churches will place a Bible at each one of the 12,000 homes in the city.

The pastor of First Baptist Church in Marshalltown said that the move is being done in response to a series of violent crimes in the city.  He first suggested the idea in a pastor’s meeting and the idea quickly blossomed into the city-wide event.

“What made the other churches want to join so quickly is that our prayer time had recently focused on what appeared to be a dark cloud of gloom hovering over our community,” Pastor Gerald Robison wrote in a press release.

“There had been a murder, an attempted murder, arson and a shooting death in our area,” he wrote. “With all the bad news around us, the pastors had been praying over the town and we saw this project as a way of delivering hope.”

The event is being called “Hope 4 You – Hope 4 Iowa.”  The project was to cost $18,000 and Robison said that they were able to raise that exact amount for the Bibles.

Hundreds of Christians from churches all over the city will be meeting to hand out the Bibles over a three-hour period.

“We agree on the important things—-and the most important is that we all agree Jesus is the source of real hope. And we want to share that with others who may need it the most,” Robison said of the diverse churches taking part in the effort. “And so, the local congregations, all willing, eager, faithful and ready to share, have worked hard to make ‘Hope 4 You—Hope 4 Iowa’ a reality.”

Operation Christmas Child Collects 10 Million Shoeboxes

Samaritan’s Purse has announced they exceeded their donation goal of 10 million gift-filled shoeboxes in 2014.

Operation Christmas Child collects boxes from the United States and 12 other Western nations.  The boxes are filled with small, age-appropriate gifts for children around the world who would not have a Christmas without the donations.

The organization said that 10.4 million shoeboxes came in for 2014, 8 million from the United States.  The boxes then are distributed in over 100 nations around the world.

“The 10 million shoeboxes are being distributed worldwide right now. We are sending these gifts to local churches in more than 110 countries around the globe this year,” Operation Christmas Child’s domestic director Randy Riddle told The Christian Post. “That was our worldwide goal and our global goal: collecting shoebox gifts in 13 countries and sending them around the world. We are very thankful to surpass our global 10 million goal.”

In addition to the gifts, each box contains information about Christ.

“This is many times the first time that these children have ever received a gift of any kind,” Riddle explained. “Working with our local church leaders, this platform allows us to share the Gospel with children who have never heard about Jesus before, or never had an experience like this before to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel.

“We have Gospel literature that is handed out alongside every shoebox gift and there is typically a verbal proclamation of Gospel with the shoebox gift,” Riddle continued. “It teaches these children that there is someone here on this Earth that loves them and cares about them and has not forgotten them and that there is a God in Heaven who loves them as well.”

NFL Players Give Away Bibles To Fans

Seven NFL players teamed up with Athletes for Charity to spread the truth of the Gospel during the Christmas season.

The Christian Post reports that Don Carey and Andre Fluellen of the Detroit Lions, Ryan Lindley of the Arizona Cardinals, Kawann Short of the Carolina Panthers, Kevin Pamphile and Alterraun Verner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Reggie Walker of the San Diego Chargers bought Bibles and gifted them to others for Christmas.

This is the third years of the Bible giving event.

The players focused on the purpose of the event when asked about their participation rather than themselves.

“I believe that nobody has a greater or lesser platform in the eyes of God. That man who works at a factory that witnesses to his coworker, or that woman who works at a salon who prays for her customers, is just as important as I am,” Fluellen told CP. “God has blessed me with a gift, just as God has blessed everyone with a gift. We are all responsible for using that gift to show God’s love to others.”

“God placed us here for a reason. Use the time you have on this platform to spread His Word,” Verner told CP. “Being saved isn’t supposed to be exclusive to just us. It’s our job to be disciples and spread the Word to others.”

The Cardinals’ Lindley summed up the definition of success of the event.

“As long as one soul is touched and changed by what we do this holiday season, I will view this as a success,” Lindley told the Christian Post.