Can the spiritually dead believe?

Have you ever wondered why people are not affected by the good news of the gospel? Have you ever wondered why men are not very much affected that the Son of God came to die for them? The Love of God for sinners is proclaim to them, and a path of reconciliation is freely offered to them but yet, men will not respond except with either an apathetic stance or an increase hatred for the very God who gave up His Son to save them. Does this trouble your soul as it does mine? For at times as I was just  now, I pondered with great sorrow that why will not you my friend believe the gospel.  Why are you not affected by such glorious wonderful things as spoken of in the Word of God? The only reason I could think of is that people are spiritually dead. Their hearts is hardened towards the gospel of Christ that senselessly they continue in their deadness until finally they eternally die and are forever shut out from the presence of God.

So if people are spiritually dead and cannot hearken to the call of the gospel, why bother at all in my evangelism. Why persist so much in living and speaking the gospel? The reason why I persist in evangelism is because ‘God has chosen to give us birth through the word of truth’ (James 1:18), that is the gospel.  For without the preaching of the gospel, my friends will never be made alive but also it is not me who make them alive but God for the scripture says, ‘For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’.

So if my friends are spiritually dead, yet they need to hear the gospel because it is through the gospel that light shines into their hearts and awakens them from their deadness into spiritual life. The battle of conversion is a spiritual one and this ought to lead to an increase in my prayer life. To love my friends is to pray for them, to pray for them with tears that perhaps God may grant them repentance. I should be torn like the apostle Paul who wrote that ‘my heart’s desire and prayer for my fellow Jews is that they may be saved, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers’.

If you have wondered why people do not believe, it is because they are spiritually dead; but this should not cripple your witness but rather it should focus your attention on God for He is the one who raises the dead. So when you behold the hostility of sinful men, look to them with love and pity, lay down your life for them, and look to God for God is able to overcome their resistance and bring them to their knees. God will use you to accomplish His purposes and a life laid down will indeed produce much fruit, some thirty, some sixty and some hundred.

K.Oni