Unsaved Family Members

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Did I just call you crazy man?

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It sounded like it. You know, I mean, if, just completely out of context, yes. Did Neil Young sing a crazy man song?

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He sang Southern Man. I'm trying to think of all the man songs. Well, today you're listening to No Compromise Radio.

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Glad to have Pastor Steve back in the studio. I don't think we've recorded a show in quite some time, Steve. It's been about 14, 15 years.

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And what happened was you were sick, not for 14 or 15 years, but I actually read this morning in Luke, there was a woman who was hunched over, bent over with a disabling spirit for 18 years.

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With a disabling spirit. That's, and then Jesus on the Sabbath, of course, healed her and then everybody wigged out.

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That's what they did. My mom used to sell wigs. Did you know that? What does that mean, wigged? Eh, nevermind, that's a rabbit trail.

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Okay, today we are going to please the audience. And that is to say we've received emails over the years with a recurring request for a show.

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And that request is, how do we deal with unsaved family members? How do we talk to them?

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How do we witness to them? Do we put tracks in their sandwiches when they go off for work and school?

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And in general, what's our MO? So let's talk about that today, Steve. It's a big topic and a very important topic.

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Unsaved family members, what's our overall strategy? Well, you know, obviously our overall strategy is to, we'd like to win them to Christ.

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I think in the back of our minds, though, I don't know why I keep saying in the plural, but in the back of my mind, what

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I'm always thinking is I can't save them. And, you know, that's really,

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I know that's basic, but I think that's something that we really need to focus on. Because so often we can just kind of feel like it is our job to somehow convince them and get them to believe.

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And we need to tell them the truth. We need to give them the gospel. We need to point them to Christ.

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But if that's all we do 24 -7, you know, it's like, you know, if you're married to an unbeliever, if that's all you do 24 -7, you need to repent and believe.

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You need to repent and believe. After a while, people stop listening. Steve, when I consider evangelism, and we've been taught this, this is no new idea from No Compromise Radio, there's the right focus and the wrong focus.

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And of course, since God is invisible, or since Jesus is in the heavens as a visible God -man, but we can't see him here.

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It's hard to see him in your heart, isn't it? I have a real hard time.

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I've had X -rays and multiple tests, but they haven't been able to find him in my heart yet. It's how do

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I glorify God in this situation? So there's something more important than your loved one's salvation.

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Of course, we want them to go to heaven. Obviously, we want them to be forgiven, and we don't want them to be in perdition in the lake of fire and hell.

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Of course not, you know, God forbid. But if we get our eyes on the people and forget about the

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Lord, sometimes I think we do ourselves a disservice. So how can I glorify

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God with an unsaved family member? Isn't that the best starting point? Isn't that the initial consideration?

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I would agree with that, and in addition, I would say that we need to trust him. You know, and certainly that's part of glorifying him is to trust him.

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If I believe that God is sovereign in salvation, and yet I believe also that he uses means, well,

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I'm not going to lay awake at night fretting over, I mean, I'm going to pray, and there are going to be times at night where I'm going to pray fervently for the salvation of my loved ones, and even maybe, you know, kind of the wake up in the middle of the night sort of thing.

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But what I don't want to do is forget that God's in control. God will do what he wants to do.

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And you know what I do pray frequently is that I pray by whatever means necessary that God would save those people that I care about.

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And if it's not me, I'm okay with that. You know, if it's some random person on the street and they come home or, you know,

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I see them whenever it is, because it wouldn't be coming home, but whenever I see them and they say, you know what,

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I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'll go, well, why didn't you do that when

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I was telling you, you know? Why did you listen to the Arminian or the Charismatic who preached the gospel to you and you don't listen to me?

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Don't care. I'm just, you know, I'll be thankful to have a, you know, to just have a new brother or sister in Christ.

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And so that's, you know, sometimes I think we get so wrapped up and we have to be the person, or we think all the burden is on us.

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Well, it's not. We need to do the right thing. We need to tell them the truth, but we can't, it's not our responsibility to save them.

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It's our responsibility to tell the truth. Steve, I think what we're after early on is reminding people that God is sovereign and that you have a theology, hopefully that's biblical, which shows

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God on his throne, powerful, omniscient, sovereign, and that our methodology needs to reflect that to some degree.

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In other words, if you're a Calvinist in your theology, you believe God is sovereign in everything, including salvation, then you should be a

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Calvinist in your methodology. You should be Pauline in your methodology. That is, of course, trust in the

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Lord and pray and evangelize. But we need to realize there's nothing we can do to save our loved ones, not one single thing, because,

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Steve, if you could save your loved ones, would there be anything you wouldn't do? You'd go without sleep, you'd go without food, you'd do whatever.

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I mean, it would be nonstop, wall to wall, until you finally got them saved. I mean, if it took your very life, wouldn't you do that?

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And the answer is yes. I mean, if you would certainly give up your physical life to protect someone that you love, their physical life, wouldn't you give your physical life to save them spiritually if you could?

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The point is that that's not the way it works. How about the extreme,

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Steve? When people have unsaved loved ones, they're not regenerate, and so the spouse or the friend or the dad or the mom or the coworker, they'll say, you know,

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I've already preached some, and now I'm just going to live out my life. It's only friendship evangelism, it's only lifestyle evangelism, and they'll know we're

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Christians by our love, and so I don't really want to say anything because that's too divisive.

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I'm just going to live my life as a Christian person. There's some validity to live your

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Christian life, but what's a danger there? Well, I think the danger is if the power to save is in the word of God.

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If you just put that up on the shelf, if you go, well, you know, I did it once, I did it twice or whatever, you know, and now it's just, we'll just kind of wait and see what happens.

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I'm going to live it out in front of them and we'll just see if they eventually come to faith. Well, that isn't really being faithful, and, you know, on the other hand, you could just be nonstop preaching every time you see them, you know, repent or go to hell, you know, et cetera, et cetera, and eventually, guess what?

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They won't want to talk to you anymore, you know? Doesn't Jim Elliott write about his witness before other people and he'd already told them about who

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Jesus is and what Jesus did at Calvary? And then Jim Elliott said something to the effect that he wanted other people to see that there was a value to having

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God as your God and God as your Lord, and there's a benefit to serving this

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God, and he was going to show himself as an example of one who's been blessed by God, and he wanted other people to be jealous or envious or, well,

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I wish my God was like that. I wish my Lord was generous like he is to you. Is there some truth to these statements of Jim Elliott?

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Well, I think there is. I mean, certainly, whether it's in crucial situations, somebody in your family dies or whatever, well, how can you handle it this way?

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Or whatever the situation is, when the world would say you ought to feel this way or that way and you don't, or you handle things better than others, well, how can you do that?

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I think it's perfectly fine to say, well, it's by the grace of God. It's because I know who God is.

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I trust him. And all those kind of messages, that living out of your faith, as it were, makes

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God more, well, let me, it makes the gospel more credible. You know, when people see how it's transformed you, it makes the gospel more believable.

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Steve, if someone has an unbelieving spouse, let's talk about the strategy with that.

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And so we both have wives who are saved. Isn't that amazing? It is amazing.

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I'm very thankful for that. And so, yes, I don't have the experience, personally, of having an unsaved spouse, but I know lots of people who do.

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What I'm after, if I had a spouse that wasn't saved, I'd want to show them, of course,

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I'd want to preach to them and tell them, you know, here's forgiveness and here's what Jesus did on the cross, and please believe,

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I beg you to believe. You know, I would plead for their souls. But then

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I would say things like this on Sunday morning, or maybe Saturday night. Honey, I'm gonna be going to church in the morning.

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I love you very much, and I'd want you to go with me anytime you want to go. You're welcome to go, go have breakfast, and then go to church and come back.

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But I'm not gonna bug you about it. I'll be leaving at 8 .15 in the morning. And then right after service,

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I'll be home, and the rest of the day is yours. And what I would do as a man is I would come home after church.

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I would get the to -do list done. I would say to my wife, how can I serve you? How can I love you? What can

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I do for you? Because I'd want her to even think this way. Boy, when he comes home from church and worshiping

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Jesus, he sure is kinder. He sure is wonderful. I like that. There's a benefit for him going to church.

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As opposed to, you know, you come home grabby, or just like you do during the week from work, you know.

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Serve me. When you come home, griping about some of the things that happen at church. Yeah, so I wouldn't say, now

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I need to stay for Sunday school. I've got to go back for Sunday night. I'm going to be there for Tuesday night study,

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Wednesday night outreach, Thursday night prayer life. Saturday morning evangelism. Just burning the candle at both ends where your spouse goes, you know,

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I think I'm married. I got this ring on my finger. Well, let's flip it around. If you're a wife and your husband says, as an unbeliever, you can't go to church any day of the week, including

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Sunday, what should the wife say? The saved wife, and how should she say it?

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She should look him flat in the eye with a gleam or a glint.

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I guess glint is better. With her 44 strapped to her belt. Yeah, her hand on her hip.

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No, I think, you know, nicely, she needs to say something along the lines of, you know what,

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I love you. You're, you know, the center of my life as it were, but I can't disobey

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God. You know, I need to, I'm not going to, you know, do, there are a variety of things

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I could do, you know, with regard to church and other things, but I can't disobey him and not go to church on Sunday.

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So, you know, I don't know any other way around that. I mean, you can't just go, okay, honey,

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I just won't go to church. I'll forsake the assembling together of the saints so that I can be with you, the ain't.

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Right, and I think the way we say it is important. And so what you said is good,

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Steve. I love you. I want to honor you. I want to do what you say. You're the head of the household, but there's a higher authority and that's

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God. And he has called his believers to go worship the son on Sunday with other

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Christians. And so I have to go. I'll go to early service or late service. You make the call.

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I'll make sure the kids have, you know, all, you know, eaten breakfast and all that kind of stuff.

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And I'm going to take them with me and we'll be home right away after church. I won't sit and gab with everybody.

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So there's just the right way to say it. And it comes across that way versus don't you tell me what to do.

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Right, yeah, like I said, the glint in the eye. Right, how about, Steve, if you're an unsaved woman and you, what advice would you give an unsaved woman whose husband wants to go to church, but to a pagan,

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I'm glad waste management just drives by really loudly. So the husband's not saved.

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He goes to a super liberal church and it's some wacky Methodist deal or liberal

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Lutheran or PC USA. You, you. You, you.

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And so he said, well, no, we are going to church. Let's go to this church. But you, the saved woman, do you say no to that?

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What's our strategy there? What pastoral advice do you have for a saved woman whose husband wants to take her to a unbelieving church?

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Well, you know, again, I think it's very important how you say it and, you know, how you preface it, how you build up to it.

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And, you know, you need to say, I love you. I respect you. I want to honor you.

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And let me just say this, that the church that you're going to, I understand that it's very meaningful to you and everything, but the problem is they don't uphold the biblical standards of preaching the word.

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And, you know, the specific things that would identify a

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New Testament church, and I really need to be at a New Testament believing and teaching church, a

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Bible teaching church. How about if an unsaved spouse, let's say the woman again, because she's at a disadvantage since she is not the leader of the family according to the scriptures.

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She says, well, I'd like to give to the church. And so should a woman who's not the leader of the family, she's saved, feel bad that she can't give offerings to the church she goes to?

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Well, I think it's inevitable that she might feel bad. But I think on the other hand, and she could certainly ask her husband, you know, nicely if that would be okay and why she wants to do that.

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You know, she could even explain, not that this would be her motivation, but it might help her husband that there'd be certain tax advantages.

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I think it'd be fine to appeal to an unbeliever in that sense. But, you know, ultimately if he says no, you know, we're kind of back, okay, does she need to honor

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God or not? But I think if she doesn't have the say to do that, then I think she's just kind of stuck a little bit there.

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All right, let's change it up a little bit and talk about unsaved family members who are children. And so the husband and the wife are both

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Christians. God has saved them sovereignly. Now they have children. The children are getting a little bit older.

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Do we require children to go to the worship service with us? After all, Steve, unbelievers don't worship.

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They blaspheme. So do we have the kids sing? Do we have the kids pray? Do we have the kids listen to scripture?

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What's the strategy? Let's say the kids are 12 to 17. Do they have to go to church? Well, I don't want to tell them what to do.

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Yes, of course they go. I mean, it might - If you live in this household, you go to worship service with me and you're on time, bub.

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I mean, I can't even, I won't even say some of the things that I've said during the course of my life, you know, with regard to, you know, when you pay the bills, you can make that kind of decision.

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But that covers a variety of things, not just going to church, but it's so true.

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I mean, my house, my rules, and, you know, does it have to be drudgery and torture and all those kinds of things?

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No, and I mean, we used to have, I think, a lot of fun on the way to church and on the way home.

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And, you know, like I can remember when the kids were little, there used to be little slap boards in the backseat or whatever.

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And so I look back there and go, now, come on. You know, we don't behave like that on Sunday.

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You know, kind of the implication was the rest of the week would be just fine. And they thought it was, they actually thought it was funny, you know?

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So it's the whole, you know, making fun of the hypocrisy of having different behavior on Sunday and stuff like that.

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Well, when we used to go to Grace Church on Sunday nights and my kids were really little, well, it was dairy, no, it wasn't

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Dairy Queen. It was McDonald's 29 -cent beignet cones after the service.

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Mm, beignet. Uh -huh, and so we would all get ice cream cones after church. And so it was just some fun thing.

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And so I like your point about it wasn't drudgery. And of course, if parents like, oh, no, I gotta go back to church and what a drag and what a bummer.

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And so, no, I was excited about it. But when I have my kids sitting next to me, the

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Ebendroth's, we sing the hymns, we sing the praise choruses, we sing. Well, I don't wanna tell my kids what to do.

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Well, that's your problem because you're the parent and so parents parent. And so Ebendroth kids, you sing.

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That's a great point. I mean, parenting is a verb. You know what I mean? You gotta take action.

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Just as a side note, because this isn't a side note, if you think somehow that your kids are going to raise themselves or you think that they don't need your input on this or that or the other thing, then you don't understand the whole concept of parenting.

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That you exist, you exist to teach your kids and that's 24 seven.

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If they didn't need that, you wouldn't be here. Well, when we have unsafe family members and they're young and they're in the house, they just do what the parents do.

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And so we expect you go to church. I can't force you to be a believer, but people get saved by sitting underneath the word of God.

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So of course I want them exposed to the word in every way, shape and form. And if the kid's 25 and they're out of the house and they live someplace else and they come home for Christmas vacation, do you force them to go to service on Christmas?

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What's your strategy there, Steve? Well, you know, what's my strategy?

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My strategy is, well, it's a little bit harder. I mean, I certainly would encourage them.

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I mean, what am I going to do? Take my 25 year old and beat him down if he doesn't go? You know, the answer is no, but I think certainly kids want to respect their parents.

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And I think if they're staying in the home and everybody else is getting up and you've kind of set the stage right, they probably would want to go.

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I can imagine saying to one of my kids, you know, they're 30 years old, they're back home for Christmas. Let's say one of them's not a

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Christian. You know, I'd really appreciate if you'd go with us. It'd mean a lot to me and to your mom.

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And it's fun to just go as a family. And I think they'd probably go, even if they weren't Christians, they would just go maybe because they're

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CNE Christians, you know, Christmas and Easter or something. But I think that's...

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They're in town to see the family, you know, and it's not like going to church is completely foreign to them that they've never done it.

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And so, you know, that's just kind of what the family does. And I think even just from a family perspective, they'd probably be very likely to do that.

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How about if you're a Christian dad and it's Thanksgiving, Christmas, a key holiday, and you've got a bunch of folks in, maybe the in -laws and the outlaws and kids, and some of them aren't saved.

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What should the father's strategy be before the meal in terms of opening the Bible, praying, setting the table theologically, preaching the gospel, preach, pray?

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What would you tell him to do? Well, you know, I'm just thinking back to Thanksgiving.

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Thanksgiving was a massive event at our house and it was actually a bit unruly because we had so many people there.

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And, you know, all I did in this particular occasion was I read from the

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Valley of Vision, which it was a great, great thing, just about the greatness of God and all the things that he provides.

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And then I did do some preach praying, you know, and then we ate, but yeah,

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I certainly think, you know, there's, I don't want to say an obligation, but there's an opportunity there.

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And I think you want to seize those opportunities in any way you can, whether it's reading from the

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Bible, whether it's talking about spiritual things, whether it's, you know, during the prayer, whatever opportunities are there,

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I think you want to take them. Steve, when I first got saved, I think it's going to be probably hard for you to grasp this,

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I know, but I think I went a little overboard. I can't grasp that. No can do.

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Oh yeah, unlike me who sold like 400 albums and all my comic books and all my baseball cards,

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I didn't go overboard. So we would have the grandparents over, my father was dead, so I was kind of the oldest, you know, man in the house.

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And so I would say at Thanksgiving, you know, so many things from scripture that not was, anything hot served on the table was now cold.

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So that everybody just thought, oh yeah, this is great. My potatoes are, you know, they've got, they've got icicles on them, thanks dad.

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I know, I mean, there's, there should be a strategy. You can say what you need to say in about a minute or less.

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Shouldn't you be able to preach the gospel in a minute or less? Well, let's put it this way. If it takes you half an hour to do it, then you don't know what you're doing.

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Well, we're talking today at No Compromise Radio, just some practical, helpful hints.

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Hopefully if you have an unsaved loved one, may we remind you that regularly and often

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God shows his glory by saving people through the witness, verbal witness of the gospel through loved ones.

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And so how often Steve, does one person in a family get saved, then the next, then the next, it's like a domino.

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God regularly does that because God is a saving God. It's very frequently that way.

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And, you know, I think it is the evidence of a saved life, a transformed life.

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And then the ones who are closest to them see that and go, huh. And it intrigues them.

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You know, it is in a sense, although we can't tell it at the time, it is God, in fact, drawing them and using this first step in their lives to further his own purpose.

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And how great is it that the Lord will even take our missteps, our miscues, our stubbornness and our ways that we're doing things the wrong way in front of our unsaved loved ones and God's gospel is even greater than our mistakes.

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It's more powerful than that. And that's, you know, it gets back to what you were saying about, you know, is one minute enough? The answer is yes.

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You know, God only needs 30 seconds, 10 seconds, you know, whatever, however fast you can get the gospel out, he can use that.

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NoCompromiseRadio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.