By Manny Vazquez, M.S., LMFT, Christian Counselor

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Dear Brothers and Sisters in our LORD Jesus Christ,

Yesterday, our Blessed Holy Spirit drew my attention to Romans 1:16-17:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’” (the New King James Version of the Holy Scriptures)

If you have paid attention to several of my past blogs, you will know that I often make the assertion that only our Sovereign God grants salvation, and by extension, faith, to those He pleases. I also said in a previous blog that if you love God, and you believe and understand the Gospel, and you love that Word, it is His Good pleasure to grant you salvation. For those of us who have salvation (and faith), it is not that somehow, we earned salvation, but our Blessed Father in his infinite mercy and love looked upon us and saw that we loved His Word and his Blessed Gospel, so He chose to regenerate our hearts. But be careful, Beloved Christian, lest you think that anything you did earned you the salvation freely offered by our LORD. To me, it is logical that if you fall in love with the Gospel, then our LORD would save you out of the abundance of his All-Encompassing Love. Amen.

In the verse above from Romans, there are several key take aways that I see. As a side note, you can unpack every verse in the Bible and write volumes on what that verse means. Here, the first thing I notice that Paul says is that he is not ashamed of the Gospel. I have a question for you, have you ever been embarrassed to share the Gospel with anyone? Do you know that if God puts you in a situation where you CAN share his Love and Gospel with someone, He EXPECTS you to share those things with that person? But what if they get angry? What if they disown me as their Son or their Brother? What if I break the law of separation of church and state (a law that does not exist, by the way)? What if I offend someone at work with my “proselytizing?” What if? What if? (I often tell my clients, don’t live in the “what if” world; only consider “what is;” for the only thing that matters is the reality around you, not the billion “what if” scenarios that you worry about every day.)

Dear Christian, do you know that Jesus said that if you are ashamed of Him, He will be ashamed of you before His Father in Heaven? Now, this is actually not a condemnation of you, because we have all been faced with opportunities to share the Gospel, and we have all not shared the Word at some point, whatever excuse we had. And there is also something to be said for not casting your pearls before swine; in other words, not sharing the Gospel with tares, or those who are eternally lost (our Blessed Holy Spirit will tell you who these people are; this is not passing judgment, by the way; this is recognizing fruit trees for what they are, something that Jesus Himself encouraged).

Now that you have been put on notice to spread by the Gospel by reading this blog (which was your choice, by the way), it is time that all Christians, and I mean, Christians, not those will one day become Christian (but your time is coming), to stop being ashamed of the Gospel, for our time is short. I’ve said it before – and I’m not the only one sounding the alarm, by the way – that the end of all things is upon us. And if the End of Everything is here, then what are you waiting for, dear Christian? Your unsaved Family is crying out for the Gospel. Your unsaved colleagues are also crying out for the Gospel. For that matter, the unsaved world is crying out for the Gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ. At Vazquez Counseling and Ministries Inc., our mission includes taking the Gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ to a hurt and dying world.

Please don’t worry if you will get into trouble for preaching and teaching the Gospel. Take the example of the Apostles in the 1st century. They often got into trouble with different leaders and people for preaching and teaching in the Name of Jesus, but they rejoiced that that they were found fit by God to suffer for the Gospel. And that should be the calling by our Precious Holy Spirit on your life, to preach and teach the Blessed Gospel of our LORD Jesus, despite any problems it may bring you.

Don’t let idiots who are against God keep you from sharing the Word of Life with those you love. Would you prefer to get into trouble or that your loved ones be saved by God? For me, hands down, I’d much rather get into trouble, and that my LORD would then grant salvation to my loved ones. But how can my loved ones know this God that I love if I don’t share with them the Good News of Salvation. To my shame, as I noted about you, too, there have been times in my life when I was ashamed, yes, ashamed, to share the Gospel with my loved ones. However, my LORD has been merciful to me, and he has forgiven me for this shame. My sin and shame are all under the Blood of Christ, as is your sin and shame. Amen.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking in this blog about not being ashamed of the Gospel, but what about the rest of the passage above in Romans. Well, it goes on to the say that the Gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes; in other words, only God can grant salvation by His power; it is an act of God alone; you may love His Word, His Gospel, but He is sovereign in granting you salvation; if He is not sovereign in granting salvation, then He is not God; that is how serous this is.

The passage goes on to say that God’s righteousness is granted to us “faith to faith,” which means that our faith grants us the righteousness only found in Christ, and then the kicker statement, the “just shall live by faith.” That means that everything we are, the person that God created us to be, is because of our faith in Him, a faith that can only be granted to us by our Precious LORD. What a merciful God we have!!!

And there you have it, the Gospel is the seed that is planted in the hearts of men and women, and we all get to partake in spreading that Blessed Gospel in the world. Are we perfect in doing that? Of course not! Because of our fallen nature, we don’t always listen to the prompting of our Precious Holy Spirit when He instructs us to share the Gospel with someone, but in God’s infinite Grace and Mercy, He forgives us and uses us anyway. I cannot tell you the number of times that God used my ineptness in sharing the Gospel for His Glory. And God can use you, too, in spite of yourself. Isn’t that the most wonderful Good News? Amen and Amen.