This changed the course of the rest of my life. Since then, I’ve not only come across books on evangelism, but resources and people specifically with a similar passion. Specifically, “One Thing You can’t do in Heaven” by Mark Cahill has lit a fire in my belly for the lost and has also given me many practical tools to share my faith. Now that I’ve become equipped and have realized that evangelism is largely missing from the body of Christ as a spiritual discipline, I’ve made it the course of my life to want to equip people to share their faith.

But, this has been a tough journey, full of disappointment and discouragement as I’ve ran into apathy from other believers, lots of excuses about just being called to show christ’s love and “if necessary use words”, and plain heresy that only certain people are called to do “evangelism”.

So, I’m hoping for your help, whomever may read this blog, because God wants to raise up leaders to stand up for His Truth in the Sciptures and the clear call and command for all Christians to both live and speak the Gospel.

About Mark Cahill

Mark Cahill has a business degree from Auburn University, where he was an honorable mention Academic All-American in basketball. After spending a few years in the business world, he surrendered his heart to Jesus Christ and asked God to place him where he could touch as many lives as possible. Within a year, he was teaching school. Although Mark planned to teach for the rest of his life, God moved him from teaching at a Christian high school to devoting a year to full-time evangelism. He then embarked on a speaking career. Mark speaks to over 25,000 people per year at churches, retreats, conferences, camps, etc., equipping and challenging the saved to go out and reach the lost. As one of his students noted, he’s still teaching, but in a much bigger classroom.
His true vocation is witnessing, whether at malls, music and art festivals, beaches, sporting events, bar sections of towns—wherever the lost can be found. Mark is the author of One Thing You Can’t Do in Heaven which has been translated into Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Romanian and is being translated into Nepalese, and One Heartbeat Away. Mark lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Read it here yourself to be both encouraged and challenged:
LET THE NATIONS BE GLAD

“My soul was this day, at turns, sweetly set on God: I
longed to be “with him” that I might “behold his glory.” . . . Oh, that his
kingdom might come in the world; that they might all love and glorify
him for what he is in himself; and that the blessed Redeemer might “see
of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.” Oh, “come, Lord Jesus, come
quickly! Amen.” -David Brainerd, the missionary to the Indians in New Jersey in the
1740s

“As we seek to find out why, with such millions of Christians, the real
army of God that is fighting the hosts of darkness is so small, the only
answer is—lack of heart. The enthusiasm of the kingdom is missing.
And that is because there is so little enthusiasm for the King.” -Andrew Murray’s Key to the Missionary Problem

Peter Beyerhaus also sees it clearly and calls us to put the glory of God at the center of our life and mission:
“We are called and sent to glorify the reign of God and to manifest His
saving work before the whole world. . . . Today it is extremely important
to emphasize the priority of this doxological aim before all other aims
of mission. Our one-sided concern with man and his society threatens
to pervert mission and make it a secular or even a quasi-atheistic undertaking.
We are living in an age of apostasy where man arrogantly makes
himself the measuring rod of all things. Therefore, it is a part of our
missionary task courageously to confess before all enemies of the cross
that the earth belongs to God and to His anointed. . . . Our task in mission
is to uphold the banner of the risen Lord before the whole world,
because it is his own.” -Peter Beyerhaus, Shaken Foundations: Theological Foundations for Missions

See the online presentation here: http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/2wtl/

There is a critique of this booklet on Pulpit Magazine’s blog here: http://www.sfpulpit.com/2007/02/16/two-ways-to-live/

About the Two ways to live summary of the gospel

“At the most basic level, Two Ways to Live is simply a memorable summary of the Christian gospel. Or to put it more accurately, it is the Christian gospel including some of its necessary presuppositions and background.

In the New Testament, the word ‘gospel’ usually refers to the proclamation of Jesus Christ crucified. It is the announcement that God’s kingdom has arrived in the person of his Son, the powerful Messiah, who inaugurates his worldwide reign by dying and rising again so that repentance and forgiveness can be preached to all nations. This Jesus Christ now rules at God’s right hand, from where he will come again to judge.

In other words, Jesus himself is the focus of the Christian message or ‘gospel’. However, Jesus does not arrive in a vacuum. He arrives as the culmination of God’s plans, and their outworking in history. He comes and dies and rises, “according to the Scriptures”. He arrives in the context of all that God has already revealed about himself and humanity.

All this is part of the background or ‘worldview’ that the biblical authors took for granted, but which many modern (or postmodern) people do not share. If we are to know and tell the gospel in a world where these basic assumptions about God and human guilt are no longer shared, or even common, then we need to fill in some of the rest of the story. We need to provide some of the background.

This is what Two Ways to Live seeks to do. It fills in some of the wider story of the Bible, some of the biblical theology, so that the message about Jesus makes sense.

If you are completely new to Two Ways to Live, you may like to pause at this point and read through the basic text of the outline, as found in the online presentation of Two ways to live. You will see that the six points not only provide a brief summary of the whole story of the Bible, but fit logically together as a coherent set of propositions.

1. God the creator; humanity ruling under his authority.
2. Humanity rebels, wishing to run things its own way.
3. God judges (and will judge) humanity for this rebellion.
4. In his love, God sends Jesus to die as an atoning sacrifice.
5. In his power, God raises Jesus to life as ruler and judge.
6. This presents us with a challenge to repent and believe.

Notice that there is a clear and easy-to-follow movement through the six points, not only logically but historically. At one level it is a set of six ideas or propositions, one leading naturally and logically to the next. However, these propositions are not abstract or removed from history. They represent in miniature the whole history of the world.

In other words, for those in these postmodern times who share very little with us in terms of Christian assumptions, Two Ways to Live provides a simple way to tell the whole story, to communicate (in brief) the whole Christian worldview.

The drawings that accompany Two Ways to Live are designed to make this communication process easier. They serve at one level to help Christians learn and remember the Two Ways to Live gospel outline. At another level, they can also be useful in making the message clear and memorable as we share it with someone. The drawings may not be used in every circumstance, but they are an important part of the overall package.

Another advantage of the presentation is that it leads naturally to challenging someone to become a Christian, then and there. As the great American chess master Bobby Fischer always maintained: the first thing to learn about chess is how to get checkmate.”

“Evangelism is not only misunderstood, it is often unpracticed. Many Christians want to share the gospel with others, but because those Christians don’t grasp the fundamentals of witnessing, they feel intimidated and incapable of sharing the truth of the gospel.

Yet those believers fail to recognize that God has already established who and how we are to evangelize. In The Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Dr. Mark Dever seeks to answer the four basic questions about evangelism that many Christians ask: Who should we evangelize? How should we evangelize? What is evangelism? Why should we evangelize? In his answers Dever draws on New Testament truths and helps believers apply those truths in practical ways. As readers understand the fundamentals of evangelism, they will begin to develop a culture of evangelism in their lives and their local churches.”

“Mark Dever’s personal devotion to Scripture has led him to think deeply, read widely, preach clearly, and write simply to the great blessing of the body of Christ. Evangelism is the church’s mandate, and the one reason the redeemed are still on earth. Doing it effectively requires doing it biblically. Mark teaches us how to mobilize our churches to do just that.”
John MacArthur, Pastor-Teacher, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California

“For most of us, personal evangelism is the reverse of easy, and so it becomes a task we evade. Mark Dever writes to shake us up about this, clearing our heads as to just what evangelizing involves and motivating our hearts to go to it realistically and responsibly. This is a word in season that will surely do a great deal of good.”
J. I. Packer, Professor of Theology, Regent College

“At the heart of this book is a heart for the gospel. Mark Dever encourages, instructs, and challenges us to proclaim the gospel in all its fullness, grace, truth, goodness, and wonder.”
Randy Newman, author, Questioning Evangelism and Corner Conversations

“Mark Dever has done every Christian and pastor a tremendous favor. With great humility, Dever helps us to connect the dots of our hopes for seeing people saved with the truth about the gospel and evangelism itself. This little book searches our hearts, corrects our thinking, calls us to faithfulness, and encourages us with practical examples and exhortations.”
Thabiti M. Anyabwile, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman; author, The Faithful Preacher

To order the catalog specials please call and mention the special code.

Read this book online (1.3MB PDF).

Additional Resources

• Don’t Waste Your Life Study Guide (2.7MB PDF).
• “Don’t Waste Your Life” the audio message.
• Don’t Wase Your Life Gospel-Tract.

John Piper is the author of the book, Don’t Waste Your Life. He is preaching pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN.

Jesus said to them again, ’. . . As the Father has sent Me, I also send you’ —John 20:21

“A missionary is someone sent by Jesus Christ just as He was sent by God. The great controlling factor is not the needs of people, but the command of Jesus. The source of our inspiration in our service for God is behind us, not ahead of us. The tendency today is to put the inspiration out in front— to sweep everything together in front of us and make it conform to our definition of success. But in the New Testament the inspiration is put behind us, and is the Lord Jesus Himself. The goal is to be true to Him— to carry out His plans.

Personal attachment to the Lord Jesus and to His perspective is the one thing that must not be overlooked. In missionary work the great danger is that God’s call will be replaced by the needs of the people, to the point that human sympathy for those needs will absolutely overwhelm the meaning of being sent by Jesus. The needs are so enormous, and the conditions so difficult, that every power of the mind falters and fails. We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath all missionary work is not primarily the elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs, but is first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ— “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations . . .” ( Matthew 28:19 ).

When looking back on the lives of men and women of God, the tendency is to say, “What wonderfully keen and intelligent wisdom they had, and how perfectly they understood all that God wanted!” But the keen and intelligent mind behind them was the mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the divine guidance of God being exhibited through childlike people who were “foolish” enough to trust God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment.” -Oswald Chambers

See My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers