Joel Groat: Sharing the Good News with Mormons

hi my name is joel grote and I've got chapter 21 in the book sharing the good news of Mormons the focus of my chapter is helping a Mormon come to a personal conviction a personal awareness of a sin really the premise for the chapter is this if there is no true deep conviction of sin there will be no true repentance and if there is no true repentance a person remains every bit as lost as they ever work the other thing that the chapter really kind of focuses encourages is trying to have a redemptive relational conversation with the Mormon so really with this chapter you don't even have to address Mormonism per se and I'll start out the conversation when I can with the question to a Mormon do you believe that commandment-keeping is important and if you know I think about Mormonism then you know commandment-keeping is core it's integral to the system commandment-keeping is what allows the Mormon to have as good standing with God to be able to feel the spirit the problem is many Mormon people don't realize how many of the Commandments they break and how much their sin separates them from God and how much didn't they have in their account so at some point as we're talking and we're talking about commandment-keeping I want to get to the question where I'll ask them if they've ever taken the sum of their sins if they agree that sin is what separates them from God do they know how much sin there is there and then it's just a matter of when they say no they never have working them through kind of a really quick math problem where you take and I just usually start at age five and I'll say hey the age of accountability is eight with Mormonism but my kids started sending away before eight so starting at age five if you just send four times per day five days per week we give you nights and weekends free that's 20 sins per week 50 weeks per year with two weeks of vacation thrown in from sin gives you a thousand sins per year and I'll do that for sins per day from ages five to nine eight sins per day for ages 10 to 14 and then 16 cents per day per day from ages like 15 to 19 and if you do that math it adds up to like 35,000 sins and then the question I want to ask when because at that point you'd have a lot of fun with this it's so much fun because you're sharing your own stuff talking about your own kids things you struggle with but when you get to that point of those 35,000 sins that they agree that we all have on our account easily my next question is so what how many of those have you confessed how many of those do you even remember to confess how many of those are still on your ledger before a holy God and what is it you have to do to get that ledger wipe clean so the chapter can be a lot of fun there's a lot of joking around but it also gets to the heart of our sin and it brings a Mormon to an awareness of his personal sin which more than Mormonism tends to create two types of people people who are very light and superficial about their sin because it's the only way they can feel good about themselves and so they have to ignore it and Mormons who actually have come to see how sinful they are how the fact that they are falling short that they're really not doing everything they could possibly do and those are Mormons who at times are very depressed they're under so much pressure they're likely just to give up everything so this offers hope it offers a way to relate and and the other thing that I focus on is just remembering that a Mormon is a person first and they're a Mormon second and so even if Mormonism crumbles if as a person they aren't rightly related to God they still are a lost Mormon and an ex-mormon who hasn't repented is still a lost ex Mormon so we want to bring people to this important awareness of sin and my chapter simply gives you a way to work through it it gives you Bible verses that talk about the great transfer the idea that the way we get rid of our sin is it all goes on Jesus and his righteousness comes on us so the pressures off and the other thing that it really helps a Mormon see and understand is then the good works that they do the commandment keeping they do it's not based on earning God's approval or favor they have the delight of God as an adopted child once they have the righteousness of Christ and then they're free at that point to simply do the good works to enjoy the favor of God love him and love their fellow man and enter into deep authentic relationships both with God and with one another that isn't possible unless they have their sin issue taking care of and cleared away so thanks encourage you to get the book sharing good news with Mormons and if you want a very simple straightforward approach that helps people with this idea of conviction of sin chapter one I hope will be a great practical help for you to do that you

Channel: Eric Johnson

Views: 131

Rating: 3.6666667 out of 5

Keywords: Joel Groat

Id: vexRVk7cHfI

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 06 2018