My senior year of college my roommate and I got free tickets to a Tennessee Volunteers football game. You may be thinking, “Why were they free?” The answer is because they were Tennessee Volunteer football tickets. The game was the Saturday night of Thanksgiving break, so we left from Freed and headed to Knoxville. It was during this crazy stretched of my senior year where I had three twelve-page term papers due in three weeks. My roommate was a huge musical fan, so as we were driving, and I was working on my paper completely zoned out he was listening to Chicago radio on pandora. If you don’t know how pandora works you put in a song, album, or artist and it will play music similar to them. I’m not a big Chicago fan, but I wasn’t to upset because I was working, and I do like most musicals. Then all the sudden, one song fades out and we hear a doorbell rings followed by the word, “Hello.” The song continues to be a masterpiece of ridiculousness, a symphony of stupid, a plethora of…I can’t think of another word. We looked at each other and began laughing and so started an obsession.
The song we had just heard was the opening number to the musical, “The Book of Morman”. We went onto youtube and began listening to the whole show laughing more and more with every song. Until the second act. I wouldn’t suggest listening to the musical because it takes a very abrupt turn from funny to wildly inappropriate. However, the songs that are funny are also very good songs. So we continued to listen to them and that inspired us to learn as much as we could about the church of latter day saints.
Since that day I’ve had the opportunity to meet several mormans and ask them about what they believe. If you’ve never had any exposure to this religion, one of the more unique things about it is that every boy, after high school, has to spend two years as a missionary going wherever the “President of the Church” sends them. They work in pairs and I’m convinced they are put through the same training as Chick-fli-a puts their employees through because they are so incredibly nice! (For the record, I think they tie them up and beat them until they say, “my pleasure” every time they slap them). Last week I taught a class on the church of latter day saints and in my research I saw a place where I could order a Book or Mormon. I don’t have one, so I clicked the link and singed up for a free book. A few minutes later I got a text and a couple of guys set up a time to meet with me and I spent an hour and a half talking to them about what they believe.
If you do much research of these guys, they are a little bit out there on what they believe. However, what is so amazing about them is their willingness to live out the great commission. It is such a priority in their faith to evangelize that they make it a requirement. You could say similar things about Jehovah Witnesses. They are so dedicated to spreading the message that people get annoyed with them. I doubt either of these groups have a great deal of success in America, but I’m sure overseas they get a lot of responses.
One of the funniest “church jokes” I’ve ever heard was: “If the Baptists go through the door, we’re going through the window.” It really shows some peoples attitudes. Even if someone you disagree with is doing something very good, we refuse to try the same thing. I won’t for a minute try and argue that Jehovah Witnesses or Mormans have a good point in their doctrine or beliefs but take a minute to think about their dedication to spreading the Word. Are we even a quarter as dedicated? Would we be willing to talk to the people we know about God, much less knock on doors to talk to people about God?
God told us to spread the Gospel to every nation. Gospel means “good news.” He wanted us to spread the good news. Do we do that?
One of my biggest problems playing sports in high school is that before I ever got to the bench for the coach to tell me what I did wrong I had already told myself 100 times over and had chewed myself out enough for the both of us. I do my best not to scold people. I find that if you ask people to examine themselves, and they are honest, they scold themselves much more than I ever could. I think when it comes down to it we are all a lot like me in high school sports. We treat ourselves much worse than anyone else could.
Here the thing about this topic: Saying, “That’s just not my thing” Is unacceptable. God didn’t tell us, “if it’s your thing, spread the Gospel.” He just told us to do it. He didn’t say how, He just said do it. I’m not going to scold you about it. I’m simply going to ask that you be honest with yourself. Have you spread the Gospel? When you stand before God on the day of judgment can you say you’ve led someone to Christ? Will you try and say I did enough to get me here? You can lie to me, sometimes you can even lie to yourself, but you will never be able to lie to God
