Oh my friends, we are loaded with countless church activities, while the real work of the church, that of evangelizing and winning the lost is almost entirely neglected.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the contrast between the many activities of the church and the essential mission of evangelism, which is often overlooked.
Oswald J. Smith's quote emphasizes the tendency of religious organizations to focus on numerous activities and programs, while the fundamental purpose of the church—spreading the message of faith and reaching out to those who have not yet embraced it—remains largely ignored. This statement serves as a reminder to prioritize genuine outreach and mission work over mere routine and tradition.
In practice
During a sermon, to encourage the congregation to focus on outreach activities.
God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him; He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.
Let me say that it is not a question of us getting more of the Holy Spirit, but rather of the Holy Spirit getting more of us.
Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice, before everyone has heard it once?
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.
If I could relive my life, I would devote my entire ministry to reaching children for God!
None of it gets to be 'old stuff', for it is Christ in print, the Living Word. We wouldn't think of rising in the morning without a facewash, but we often neglect that purgative cleansing of the Word of the Lord. It wakes us up to our responsibility
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching - where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus.
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