Preaching the Gospel Requires Confrontation!

When was the last time you confronted someone with the gospel?

Today, I’d like to share two recent stories of God’s power moving miraculously through a confrontational sharing of the gospel. As I shared in The Mechanics of Miracles, many New Testament scriptures make it clear that the gospel must be shared with power. In fact, Romans 1:16 says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Salvation brings people out of darkness and into God’s light, breaking chains of oppression such as addictions, demonization, and sickness. One of the greatest keys I’ve learned to praying with power is that we pray based on what Jesus did. We pray because God loves that person and Jesus paid the highest price for their redemption. Our prayer is that Jesus would receive what he paid for.

You can watch the YouTube video here, or continue reading the blog post below.

There is a war for people’s souls, and wherever there is war, we have a confrontation. We pray and speak aggressively. The gospel is confrontational. With God’s word, we attack what is holding people in bondage. Consider Peter’s confrontational gospel presentation in Acts:

Acts 3:13-26 (ESV) The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

“And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

In Acts chapter 4:10-12, Peter again says, “God has glorified Jesus who you crucified and rejected, and he is the only way you can be saved!” Stephen spoke the same way in Acts chapter 7. In Acts 17:30, Paul told the Athenians, “God now commands people everywhere to repent.” He was giving an order from heaven!

One of the hardest things about sharing the gospel is that it requires a confrontation and saying, “You’re wrong.” We can only do that effectively when empowered by the Holy Spirit and God’s love for the person.

Challenging Self-Righteousness and Unforgiveness

On one of my visits to a men’s recovery house, they asked me to pray for a new guy. He’d been stabbed in the leg before he arrived. I was about to pray for him, but I paused and asked, “Are you ready to forgive the guy who did this to you?” He replied, “No way! I want that **BLANK** to get what he deserves! I want justice!”

I looked at him, said, “Then God won’t forgive you,” and paused to let it sink in.

I continued, “Jesus said that if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive them, your Father won’t forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

He replied, “I’ve done wrong things, but nothing like what he did. I never shed blood.”

I asked, “Do you believe Jesus shed his blood for you? Do you believe Jesus died for you?”

“Yes, of course, Jesus is the best, yes, he gave his life for us.”

“Then you can’t say your sin is any less serious. Your sin was so serious that Jesus had to shed his blood and die a torturous death to redeem you from it. You can’t say you’re free from the guilt of bloodshed. You deserve death, but Jesus died to give you life. Jesus, on the cross, looked at his torturers, loved them, and said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.’ (Luke 23:34) God loves you, and he’ll heal your leg. But he also wants to save and deliver the man who did this to you. He was blind and didn’t know what he was doing. Will you forgive him?”

He agreed and prayed together with me, from the heart, to bless the man who stabbed him.

Please understand, I didn’t do this as a formula for how to get him healed. I just felt the need for him to forgive the man. God cares about everything, including people’s healing and repentance. It’s not about one thing or another. We want people to receive the whole package.

Then I prayed for him. He had a lot of pain in his back and leg. The whole side of his body went under anesthesia, and he felt the muscles moving in his leg as we prayed. Remember, when I say, “prayed,” it’s not a passive request but an aggressive agreement with God and a rebuke of whatever would resist God’s purposes. “Jesus carried his pains and sicknesses, so all pain get out and everything be now on earth as it is in heaven! Be healed now, as if you were never stabbed!”

In a little while, all the pain was gone from his back. We prayed more, and his leg no longer hurt. Then I said, “I see God’s glory on your left ear. Is there anything with this ear?” He answered, “This ear is almost deaf. I can barely hear on this side.” We prayed, I whispered in both ears, and he heard the same volume on both sides. It happened quickly. His hearing was completely restored the first time we prayed.

I had him walk, and we prayed some more. He was still limping, but had no pain and could hear again! In such a case, we thank God for continuing to work.

Challenging Accusation and Condemnation

Last Saturday, I was with friends doing evangelism in the park. When we finished and were on our way to leave, a homeless guy was on the side of our path with his arm in a sling. I stopped, looked in his eyes, and greeted him by raising my arm and grabbing his good hand. Anyone who saw it would’ve assumed we knew each other well, but I’d never seen him before!

We’d split into two groups for the evangelistic outreach, and it turned out that the other group had already talked to him and prayed for him. But I didn’t want to see him leave still injured, so I started sharing the gospel and said, “God wants to heal your arm. Let me pray for you.” He said he’d been run over by a car and had lots of pain in his arm and back.

I prayed, but it was obvious he had little expectation. After praying the first time, I asked him to move, and he still felt pain. I asked, “Has it improved?” but it hurt just as much. He said something like, “God can do this if he wants to in his time,” and I said, “Did you know the Bible says now is the time of God’s favor? Twice in the New Testament, when they didn’t want Jesus to heal someone on the Sabbath, he said, “How can I wait until tomorrow? This person is suffering, and I have compassion! Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” Of course God wants to heal you now. Let’s pray again!

This wasn’t the first time that I’ve found myself arguing with someone’s unbelief and they ended up healed! I prayed again a few times, in spite of his reluctance, and he felt no improvement. The pain was the same.

He said, “God is giving me what I deserve. I’ve done so many terrible things, and now I’m suffering for it. My life is such a mess!”

I asked, “So, are you too hard a case for the Holy Spirit?”

What could he say! That something was too hard for God? Of course not. He replied, “No.” Something powerful happened as he answered.

I asked, “What do you think God is more impressed with? What you’ve done, or what Jesus has done?” He didn’t get what I was saying. I continued, “What do you think is more powerful? What you’ve done, or what Jesus has done? You’re right that you deserve this. We’ve all sinned, and the result of sin is death. But the Bible says Jesus carried our sins, our iniquities, our pains, and our sicknesses in his body on the cross, and the punishment for our peace was on him. Jesus paid the highest price for our redemption, so that we would be free from torment, have peace, and be healed. Do you really think it’s right for Jesus to suffer for your freedom and for you to be here like this, in torment, in pain, and with no peace? Shouldn’t Jesus get what he paid for?”

He agreed, “Yes.” I continued, “We’ve all sinned, but what Jesus has done to redeem us is greater than what we’ve done. The Bible says death entered through our sin, but life and redemption come through Jesus. (Romans 5) You being healed now isn’t really even about what you deserve. It’s about what Jesus deserves. He paid the price, and he deserves to receive what he paid for. How can we honor the high price that Jesus paid, if not by receiving everything he paid for?”

He was starting to agree as I spoke. He understood. I said, “Why don’t you lift your arm?”

He moved his body. No pain in his arm or back. I kept encouraging him and asking, “Is there any pain?” and he finally took his arm out of the sling and was raising it with no pain. My friends who were just about to leave after our evangelistic outreach were thrilled! He was healed, not as we prayed, but as we confronted Satan’s lies with the gospel message.

I’ve often spoken to homeless people and those in recovery in a similar way. God’s power is in the gospel!

There was a slight smell of alcohol on his breath when we first met him. I’m not sure, but I assume that he was drunk when he got run over by the car. That may have been why he said he was getting what he deserved. But God has poured out his mercy abundantly on us in Jesus Christ!

Receive The Full Package of Salvation!

People who lack a solid grounding in scripture are sometimes concerned that the first thing I offer someone in an evangelistic context is often healing ministry, as if it were a conflict of interest with the more important issue of their soul. One guy thought healing was distracting me when I should have been focused on getting them to repeat a salvation prayer with me!

I’ve seen various Christian groups visit recovery houses and ask everyone who wants to receive Jesus to raise their hand. Many people raise their hands, and then the church talks about how many salvations there were. However, many of the same people also raised their hands the last few times when other groups made the same invitation. I’ve heard that the number of converts reported in Pakistan exceeds the population of the entire country. If that’s true, it’s probably due to this dynamic in which the same people get counted multiple times.

I’m not interested in merely getting people to raise their hands or repeat a prayer. I want to see people come to faith in Christ and believe the gospel message, resulting in transformation. Although I’m not opposed to a “salvation prayer,” a person can believe the gospel, agree with it, and repent without repeating a prayer! In Acts chapter 10, the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles as they heard the gospel message and believed it! There was no invitation to “raise your hand and come up front if you want to go to heaven.” When our gospel presentation is weak, many people end up raising their hands and going up front with little understanding, no repentance, and no transformation.

The two men whose stories I’ve shared both heard, understood, and believed the gospel. Their stories illustrate that it’s not about a dichotomy between getting healed and receiving salvation of the soul. We present it all together, because Jesus paid for both. In both of the stories I just shared, healing ministry exposed the need for forgiveness and repentance. In Acts chapter 3, the healing of a lame man initiated a gospel confrontation with a call to faith and repentance. Healing demonstrates God’s forgiveness in Christ, by which grace reigns unto righteousness!

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