All of us should know as Christians to feel confident enough to share about Jesus rather than feeling awkward; in fact, we all know more better than we think, we just lack in confidence in it!
“Well I am not a preacher, missionary going oversea and so forth.” This is the truth; God’s plan A is you and me. If preachers were to reach the world, we would have reached the world! We have a lot of them.
Then how’s the gospel to spread? When the people of God and people of faith goes forth and gossip the gospel everywhere as an everyday lifestyle.
We are to have more a conversation rather than a presentation.
Shifting from giving an evangelistic presentation to having an evangelistic conversation takes pressure off the witness and relates the gospel more clearly to an unbeliever.
People really don’t care about whether you care about God until they know how much you care about them. If they know you care about them, they will listen to you. I promise you! You have to demonstrate that for them.
People must see our changed lives as much as they hear the message from us. See a demonstration of the gospel that is in our lives.
There is a sense, the more we know somebody, our words don’t matter but our life matters. The less we know somebody, our words matter greatly.
The less relationship, your words matter.
The more relationship, your actions matter.
As Robert Coleman said it well in his book, Master Plan of Evangelism, “One living sermon is worth a hundred explanations. It is good to tell people what we mean, but better to show them. People are looking for a demonstration, not an explanation.”
You don’t meet a lot of people who say, “Prove the gospel to me!” You meet actually a lot of people who say, “Can you live it? How does this connect to my everyday life?”
Whatever vocation and location you are on mission.
In Acts 2, the apostles Paul got up and quoted from the Old Testament prophet Joel, why? Because he spoke to a group of devout Jews and they came from that worldview.
Paul now is in Acts 17, Mars Hill he talks to pagan worshipper. What is Paul doing? He starts with creation, big picture story of the Bible.
#1 We were born in America (1960s) that was more like Jerusalem in Acts 2.
#2 We now live more like in Athens in Acts 17.
We an learn a lot from Acts 17 from Paul. Understanding the context we are in and speaking to people will help us on the long run.
Understanding the truth shows knowledge, but knowing when and how to say it shows wisdom.
There are people who like aggressive witnessing. Sometimes people struggle to understand how they do certain things and understand that everyone does it differently.
Sometimes, “Well, you’re not real spiritual because you don’t do the way I do share the gospel” That is being a Pharisee!
There are some people who are very good a building relationships with neighbors and others, but they are not really intentional at all. They then come to those aggressively witnessing people and say, “Well they don’t really care about people. They bottom up on people”
Can we just stop talking at each other and encouraging one another? People are not in danger of losing their reward in heaven. They’re in danger of hell! There’s too much at stake.
So the question is “Why?”
In the evangelism training we so often jump into the “How.” We get people with basic training and all that is good stuff, however if we don’t have the “Why” we lose the meaning of “How”. If you have a “How” and not the “why” then there is no movement.
Example: Global terrorist, that are ravaging the world today, do you think they have a manual of 40 chapter how to become a terrorist? No, they have an idea that they will die for, they just need a bit of guidance.
If your, “Why” is huge then your “How to” is not so important.
If your, “Why” is small then you need a lot of “How to”
Gospel; it is important for us to understand the beauty and the glory of the gospel.
We are all on mission to fulfill the Great Commission.