Does evangelism scare you? Does it give you the willies?
One thing that makes people uncomfortable about evangelism is pressure sales. We see door to door salespeople getting the doors closed on them. We may have slammed the door on a Jehovah’s Witnesses ourselves, and we most certainly do not cherish the idea of doing something like that.
Maybe we think we’ll have to force ourselves to do it sooner or later, and we don’t cherish the thought. We procrastinate.
But, evangelism is not about making a sales pitch or closing a sale.
One day in prayer, I felt God bringing to mind that evangelism is about reproducing after our own kind.
The second thing is that we have to become the right kind of person that you’d want to reproduce.
After working in the computer industry for many years, I became familiar with a morbid form of humor called “The Darwin Awards”. The awards were given to those who die in the most unwise acts imaginable, and they were the epitome of humor at another person’s expense. The justification for the Darwin Award was that it expressed appreciation for those who took themselves out of the human gene pool thereby assuring that their stupidity would not be repeated in future generations.
Like it or not, we reproduce after our own kind
If we live in sin, we multiply sin in others. If we lie, we can tell our children that lying is wrong, but they won’t believe us.
If we live in hypocrisy we will reproduce hypocrisy. But, if we surrender to Jesus Christ and trust Him and obey Him fully, people will be challenged to do the same.
We don’t necessarily reproduce what we want to reproduce. We reproduce after our own kind.
So a big part of evangelism is becoming that Christian that you want to see others become. We cannot push people to be saved. We cannot push them toward Jesus Christ and away from hell. We have to pull them.
Have you surrendered fully or only partially to Jesus Christ? Is He truly your Lord and Savior, or does someone or something else have your trust and obedience instead? If so, that thing is your Lord–not Jesus. I wish I could say this more gently, and it isn’t my desire to hurt anyone, but this is something we all have to face. Is Jesus Christ really our Lord? If so, we will obey Him because of our trust and faith in Him.
Will you do that now if you have not already done that?
Failing to surrender fully to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is the number one roadblock to answered prayer. It is the main rift in our relationship with God. That does not mean God is pulling away from us. It means we are pulling away from Him.
Surrender does not mean anything unless it is complete. Imagine a battle where an army surrenders with white flags for the purpose of entering enemy territory bringing weapons with them to do destruction from within. That is what we do when we say, “I Surrender All” to Jesus but we’re not telling the truth. We’re holding back something. We haven’t chanced our allegiance. We’re still in sin but we’re waving the white flag of surrender without any surrender in our hearts.
Sometimes we will sacrifice almost anything if that can keep us from having to surrender. We will offer our refuse left and right. We will give up anything we can afford to give up. But, we will keep back the best for ourselves.
But, Jesus wants it all. Why? Because He doesn’t want our sacrifices. He doesn’t want us feeling that He should be greatful for all we do for Him. He doesn’t want us to go through live enslaved to a bitter, selfish mindset that has no faith in God. He wants everything from us so He can give us something infinitely better. He wants all that we cling to. He wants all that is most precious to us. He wants it all so He can give us more than we could ever get for ourselves.
And that may be the salvation of our loved ones.
And you may find that when you have surrendered to Christ, your prayer life will become powerful and effectual. Not that all your prayers and desires will be met, but many of the most precious ones will be met. And the prayers that are not answered may be there to create a character in you that will be more precious than any unanswered prayer would have been.
Will you surrender all to Jesus right now if you have not already done so? Will you ask your friends and family to do the same? Will you speak to your prayer partners about this and encourage them to do likewise?
Will you encourage them to take up this quest to make sure their family members are saved?
In the next half hour?
