New Season, Same Mission

Last month, I received an email advertisement for a Back-to School sale

from 10ofThose, one of my favorite Christian publishers. It caught my

attention with the following subject line: Evangelism isn’t just for

experts. While the email went on to advertise various tools for sharing the

gospel, the brief accompanying article and that subject line really struck me.

They led me to wonder how many of us, if we’re honest, feel ill-equipped to

share Jesus with others. How often do we think evangelism is just for

pastors, missionaries, and othe

r “experts”?

The most important point in that email ad was this: “Evangelism isn’t just for

‘experts’. God calls all believers to share His love and the message of

salvation through Jesus with the world.”

It went on to share the following four “tips to help you gain confidence in

gospel conversations”:

Pray Before You Speak

Seek the Lord’s help. It doesn’t need to be some big, fancy prayer, but the

Holy Spirit who dwells in every believer wants to fill you with the power of

God to bear witness to Christ. He is the source of the power Jesus promised

in Acts 1:8 and the One who guides the words of Christ’s disciples in

Matthew 10:19-20.

Learning to rely on the Holy Spirit to empower our witness transfers the

pressure from us to Him…from our ability to say or do the right things to His

ability to accomplish His purposes. It is a great freedom to know that God

Himself is the force behind our evangelism.

Learn To Notice Open Doors

In other settings, we may refer to this as “situational awareness”. That term

is every bit as applicable to evangelism. One of the greatest and most easily

developed skills for sharing the Gospel is the skill of simply paying attention

and looking for opportunities. Both Jesus and Paul modeled this skill well.

In John 4, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at a well. Nothing about the

situation shouts “spiritual conversation”, except that Jesus is actively seeking

to bring people to His Father. He engages the woman in a natural

conversation that He immediately and intentionally turns in a Gospel

direction. Jesus and the woman connect over the common element of

drawing water from a well, and they end up having a life-changing

interaction that changes her eternal destiny. The Lord went into an everyday

situation actively looking for open doors, and when a door opened, He

noticed.

When the Apostle Paul was in Athens (Acts 17:16-34), a city full of idolatry

and intellectual debate, he took notice of their discussions, culture, and

worship. He noticed that they had a shrine “to the unknown God.”

Recognizing an open door, Paul seized the opportunity to proclaim Christ to

them in a relatable context.

Noticing open doors isn’t a program; it is simply attention paired with

intention.

Cultivate Gospel Habits

Developing habits that provide opportunities to share the Good News is a

matter of choosing to do things—often the things that I would already be

doing—with a Gospel purpose in mind. By becoming involved with

community groups like the American Legion, the local library, youth sports

leagues, or any number of things, we can foster meaningful relationships

with unbelievers around us. As those relationships develop, doors inevitably

open for Gospel conversations in a variety of contexts. It is then up to us to

notice the opening of doors and to act on it.

Always Be Ready

It does no good to cultivate Gospel habits, to notice open doors, or even to

pray, if we do not actually prepare ourselves to answer the questions people

will ask or to give an answer for the hope we have in Christ (1 Peter 3:15).

Christ-followers must rely on the work of the Holy Spirit to be the driver of

our evangelism, develop a purposeful awareness of opportunities God

presents, and cultivate habits that foster such opportunities, but we must

also be diligent to grow in our knowledge of God’s Word and Spirit-filled

wisdom (Colossians 1:9-10). When we are full of the knowledge of God

through study of His Word, it will spill out onto others in a natural overflow.

Preparation begets confidence. The more we learn of God by study and

experience, the more comfortable we become in sharing what we know. If

we have trusted Christ for salvation, we already have the most important

thing: a personal relationship with our living Lord. I don’t need to know

everything about someone to make a simple introduction, but it takes a

deeper level of knowledge to give a job recommendation, to campaign for a

candidate, or to be an effective matchmaker. How much more so if we intend

to convince a lost and unbelieving world that Jesus is the Way, the Truth,

and the Life!

These four tips are useful, but they are not a magic formula; they are simply

things to be aware of as we think about our mission to make disciples.

Evangelism begins with our own realization of God’s amazing grace and

grateful love for Him. When we encounter the living God in the reality of His

holiness, we cannot help but see our own wretched unholiness. Our need for

forgiveness becomes overwhelmingly obvious, even to the point of despair.

When we experience the unspeakable mercy of God’s forgiveness and

cleansing, every fiber of our essence longs to declare the wonder of this

glorious, holy, merciful God to a lost and dying world.

Isaiah had just such an experience in chapter 6 of the book that bears his

name, verses 1-8. Having received a vision of the Lord exalted in His temple,

with His glory on full display, Isaiah fell facedown, crying, “Woe to me!” He

recognized his own helpless, hopeless state as a sinner before the Holy One.

God took the initiative to cleanse him of His sin, sending a fiery angel to

cleanse Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal from the altar. After receiving God’s

forgiveness and cleansing, Isaiah’s immediate and instinctive response was

to plead for the privilege of being God’s messenger. Every fiber of his

essence longed to declare the wonder of this glorious, holy, merciful God to

a lost and dying world.

In the same way, having experienced God’s redeeming grace, our only

reasonable response is to live wholeheartedly for His purposes (Romans

12:1), seeking to share the marvelous grace of our loving Lord with

everyone we can. That desire impels us to make disciples of all nations, as

our Lord Jesus commissioned His followers to do (Matthew 28:18-20).

Let us, therefore, live in light of Christ’s command, which is our own deep

desire, borne out of the indescribable grace of God. Let us glorify the Lord and make disciples by reflecting the reality of Christ through every relationship He gives us.