Posts tagged as:

evangelism

The Motivation for Evangelism

by Jessica on August 24, 2010

“A student asked Pastor Adrian Rogers for advice on how to lead a church in evangelism. Rogers said,

Your zeal is never any greater than your conviction. You can cheer others with your enthusiasm or their loyalty to the church or put them on a guilt trip for a while, but the only thing that will have a lasting effect is their love in the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not even a love for souls that sends people out; it’s the love of Jesus that sends people out.

The highest level of motivation for sharing our faith is love.

We need not be “guilted” into sharing our faith. We need not be tricked or forced into telling others of Christ. We need a heart transplant. We need to develop a deeper love for God first and then choose to love people, even the unlovely, because Christ first loved us.”

- William McRaney Jr., The Art of Personal Evangelism (200-201)

Evangelism is something I struggle with. It’s not my strong point and usually my attempts leave me feeling like an evangelistic failure.

The other week I was remembering a missions trip I took to Ethiopia in 2007. It was the last day in our first village, a huge crowd gathered as we were beginning to leave. It came to the point that some of our translators and disciplermakers were beginning to fear for our safety urging us to quickly load in the vans and leave.

As we got in the vans were surrounded by people and, to be honest, I was nervous as our drivers were making their way through the crowd to the little dirt road. These weren’t the most sturdy vehicles and people weren’t exactly clearly the way.

Thankfully, we made it out safely.

As we made our way down the dusty road in the middle of a desert in Oromia people began running alongside of the van begging to be let in. Why? They wanted to hear about Jesus. It was almost comical in a way…one would jump in, profess faith, be prayed for then jump out and as they jumped out {of a moving vehicle} another would jump in. We started calling it drive-by salvation. It happened three times that day.

These people were chasing after a moving vehicle and jumping inside. We had a story to tell…one of hope and they were desperate to hear it.

People are dying all over the world and yet we wait–I wait–to tell them, to bring them hope. We craft sermons and programs and prepare our testimony and wait…and they’re just desperate for a little hope, a little light.

I wonder what is it that keeps us waiting? The perfect circumstances? A mission trip? When we know all the right answers? When we *finally* have our act together?

Or is it that our love for God is smaller than we’d like to admit? Are we motivated more by guilt and obligation than love?

Have I ever been so desperate for the Living Hope that is Jesus that I’d run alongside a moving car until they let me in? I don’t know. I think more often than naught my faith is comfortable and complacent. What about you?

What motivates you to share the Gospel?

Tagged as: evangelism, gospel, Living Intentionally, missions

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Feeling like an Evangelistic Failure

by Jessica on March 4, 2010

in Living Intentionally

I’ve shared before how evangelism is not my strong point. It’s just not. I don’t have great stories of how I lead ‘x’ many people to the Lord or those chance encounters in the airport where someone was just “so ready to hear.”

Tonight was the last night for the first half of my Leadership class I’m taking with the Seminary Wives Institute. You know…the class that should have been called Women & Evangelism. The one where we had to hand out a track.

I didn’t do it.

I carried a few around in my wallet the whole six weeks. I saw them every time I was at the store or searching for my chapstick in the abyss that is my purse. They were always there…waiting.

Now, I’m not a fan of tracks. Sure they’re useful, concise, and get the message across. But in general they’re not really personable. And awkward. Here let me walk up to a complete stranger and say, “This little booklet contains the secret to the best thing that ever happened to me. I wanted you to have it. Bye.”

Umm…yeah.

It’s not that I don’t want to share what God has done in my life or see people saved. I struggle with fear and busyness, mostly fear. Will I say the right thing? Will the situation be so awkward they won’t even hear what I’m saying? Will they laugh at me? Will I fail?

That’s the real issue.

When you tell a recovering perfectionist that they need to share the Gospel as a graded assignment things can get a little crazy. Their {my} motivation will be the grade, pleasing the teacher or peers, looking good.

Now for me what makes this even worse is the feeling that I am already an evangelistic failure. I feel like if I don’t preach and share the Gospel then I won’t be following in the Great Commission, and even more disturbing to my heart I fear I won’t be honoring God for what He is worth.

If knowing Jesus really has been the greatest, most life-changing thing that’s ever happened to me then why is it so hard to just share it? Why does it feel scary? Why do I worry so much about saying the right thing? Why don’t I just do it?

I really struggled this week with having not yet shared the track (or more importantly, the Gospel) with anyone. How horrible of a Christian I must be? I hadn’t even shared with anyone in the last six weeks! This fear of failure in evangelism has been stealing my joy.

It came to a head this morning. The Lord lead me to Psalm 111 and before I began to read it he said, “Take joy.”

I prayed and confessed my fear of failure. I told Him of my fears that I was lacking in his service. That I wasn’t doing enough. And then he began to speak,

I am the one thing you should be doing…pursuing. Your one thing should be Me…getting deep into the heart of me. Then you will know my great pleasure and delight in you. You are not alone. You are not a failure. Take joy as I take joy in you. Don’t let Satan hold this over you–what does he know? Stand up today for your joy is in My strength.

And I read over and over in Acts 4, how uneducated, common men stood up and spoke with boldness in front of the priests and Sadducees.

And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, ”By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, [...] let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. [...]

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Acts 4:7-8, 10-13, 31

Pursue Jesus. Be found in Him. Walk in joy and strength. And He will be the one to give me the words to say.

I don’t take this to mean that God wants to me to have a conversation about the Gospel with every person I meet, but I also don’t take it to mean that my non-verbal testimony should be enough. Our actions should reflect to God, but sometimes we still need words. For me, that means stepping out in the boldness that God provides.

I’m not a failure. I cannot conjure up the right situation or words to share the Gospel. And I surely can’t make someone come to Christ.

But I can be willing and ready to be used. Waiting. Watching. Resting.

Tagged as: evangelism, failure, Living Intentionally, perfectionist

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“Even to the ends of the earth”

by Jessica on February 11, 2010

in Be an ambassador

Last night there was a mini debate in our community group on whether or not the great commission was for everyone (and by everyone I mean all believers). Here’s what Jesus said,

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

So…is it for everyone? My short answer: yes.

Just for clarity’s sake there was some confusion between the debating parties. The difference of terms and phrases coupled with meaning can add a bit of fire to any discussion. But there was one who said the great commission isn’t for everyone and the other said it is. Just to be clear I agree with the latter.

There were two arguments against the great commission being for all believers:

The commission was only given to the disciples.
Not everyone is called to go out to the nations.

To the first argument:

If the great commission was only given to the eleven disciples, what would happen after they died? If no one continued to carry the message of the Gospel then we wouldn’t be here now. To say that this command was only for the eleven there is a bit ridiculous and I doubt that’s what the person truly meant.

If you look at the great commission after Jesus says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” he finishes with “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.” Didn’t Jesus just command them to go and make disciples of all nations? So one of the things the disciples would have taught their disciples would be to go and make disciples of all nations.

To the second argument:

Everyone is called to go out to the nations. End of story. However, what that looks like will be different for everyone. I think one of the issues in the debate was the definition of nations. The party against* the great commission for all, it seemed, defined nations as countries other than your own. The other party defined nations as all nations, including the one you occupy.

The one against argued that not everyone can literally go depending on age, season of life (ie, mother with young children). True.

But everyone is called to spread the gospel wherever God has them. At home, in prayer, giving to send others out, local ministry. If we’re moms with young children then they are our primary mission field. If we’re a wife to an unbelieving husband, then he is our “nation.” If we have unbelieving friends, family, neighbors, co-workers then they’re our “ends of the earth.” When we see the hopeless, helpless, needy they are our nation.

If you’re a disciple of Jesus, then you’re commanded to “go and make disciples of all nations.” Don’t wait. Everyone has a nation.