Evans: Serve God in your generation

Christians are too caught up in living life?school, job, family, retirement, leaving an inheritance?that they give little thought, much less effort, toward what they are sending on ahead of them.

“It’s important to know what you’re here for,” said Evans, pastor of the 6,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, Dallas. “We are so busy doing other things that God only gets a glance on Sunday.”

He said the reason Christians are not taken home to heaven at the moment of salvation is because God has a purpose for their lives. Evans used the epitaph of David in Acts 13:36?”For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep”?to show that God expects those who bear his name to live this life for eternal purposes.

Evans related a Christian’s impact on society with the influence of a store-front “dummy.” The owners, he said, dress up the dummies in the windows of downtown New York department stores. The dummies are well dressed and good-looking.

“Dummies are making you stop” and sometimes lure you into the store to make a purchase.

“On your best day, you’re a dummy,” he told the crowd. “Everything you have is a gift from the owner ? and given to you to attract people into ‘the store.'”

Too often, he said, Christians use what God has given them for their own selfish gain.

God’s purpose is for each Christian is to impact society just as David did.

“Your job,” Evans said, “is to impact this generation. ? If you do not do that you become a spiritual leech. There is a generation out there that desperately needs hope and help.”

Evans challenged those at the luncheon?which included members of the weekly Prestonwood Power Lunch Bible study?to consider the approach of their death. He said people either have death facing them or the imminent return of Christ. “One day they’re going to close the box on you ? The question won’t be what you left behind but what did you forward ahead?”

What will happen when a Christian stands before God and has nothing to show for the life and possessions God gave him? In his closing prayer, Evans asked on behalf of all Christians, “Show me [God] why you left me here.”