Look below the surface and see
that the person you are witnessing to
is basically Adam, naked and running for cover
Most of us – and most definitely me – feel highly inadequate when it comes to witnessing. This webpage will end with a section titled Be Willing to be Tongue Tied that I pray is filled with insights you find most encouraging and will break your fear. We will start, however, with examining the motives behind people raising objections to Christianity. Understanding this will both lessen the pressure we feel and empower our witnessing. We will then move on to discovering how to be an effective evangelist. First, let’s set the scene:
When witnessing, our ultimate goal is not to win arguments, but to win souls. The goal of my Issues that make Christians squirm, for example, is to see God-haters fall in love with Jesus.
Now for someone to fall in love with you how many arguments do you have to win?
That’s worth thinking about.
Respect Non-Christians
In this discussion we will often mention non-Christians, but we do so without any feeling of superiority. After all, no matter what our heritage, each of us was once non-Christian. And in the following we can only speak of typical reactions and motives. When witnessing, we must listen carefully both to the person and to the Holy Spirit to see how we should tailor what we say to meet that person’s specific needs. The Spirit alone fully understands the person and has the answers to humanity’s deepest needs.
Conviction
We often focus on the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life, but the Spirit also has a vital role to play in the lives of non-Christians. The Holy Spirit ‘will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment,’ taught Jesus (John 16:8). When we witness, the Spirit of God is not only working within us, prompting us as to what to say, but he is also working within those we witness to, convicting them of the truth of what we share and of their need of salvation.
To understand the processes at work, we’ll look at Adam and Eve. Adam was not just another human. He is the human from whom all humanity came. All human genes (even Eve’s) come from him. Our entire genetic make-up was incorporated in him. So his reactions are likely to be typical of all human reactions.
When Adam and Eve sinned, the first indication that they were under conviction was that their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.
Conviction is God in his mercy opening our eyes to the reality of our spiritual condition. Without it we would be blissfully unaware that we are sinners. We’d be on our way to hell and not even know it.
When we’re under conviction there are the two possible reactions:
2. Try to squirm our way out of our guilt.
We know Adam’s choice and, being the father of all humanity, we can expect his reaction to be similar to all human reaction.
Adam tried to minimize his shame by:
Virtually all objections to Christianity fit these categories.
Covering up
Using fig leaves, Adam and Eve did their best to cover up, desperately trying to hide the extent of their shame. Non-Christians today try to cover up and hide the extent of their moral shame. ‘I’m as good as the next guy,’ they say. That’s probably true, but what a pathetic way to try to minimize our guilt.
Another way in which people attempt to cover up their moral shame is by putting on an air of respectability and/or engaging in lots of good deeds, such as church involvement.
Hiding
Next, Adam tried to run and hide from God. When we’re witnessing, people often say things that indicate they are running from God – that they won’t face Him and dialog with Him. ‘There is no God,’ say some. They won’t even face the fact that there is a God that they are answerable to. Other responses include:
What most people really mean when they say such things is, ‘I don’t even want to think about God.’
Another way people run from God and stop themselves from thinking about him is to cram their lives with so much activity that they have little chance to think about life’s most important issue.
Our witnessing ally, the Holy Spirit convicts not only of sin and righteousness, but of judgment. ‘A loving God wouldn’t send anyone to hell’ is the sort of straws people cling to in their attempt to hide from the fact of judgment.
When we are witnessing, people often throw in a question like, ‘Where did Cain get his wife?’ Such questions are usually just a ploy to get the conversation off their need for God. They are trying to duck for cover again. If we don’t realize this we’ll end up unwitting accomplices in their escape plan. We’ll think we’re witnessing, when they’ve actually stolen our witnessing opportunity. Their escapism could end in eternal tragedy. That’s why what we’re examining in this webpage is so important. We need to get below the surface questions to understand what’s happening at the spiritual and heart levels. That’s where the action is.
It’s too easy to be content with dealing with superficial issues when witnessing. For instance, some Christians have complained that I don’t go into Creation Science deep enough. But rather than focus on the ages of rocks, I believe God is more glorified, and people more helped by talking about the Rock of Ages.
Blaming Others
When finally cornered, Adam tried to blame another human. Common ways people of today try to blame other people are:
And Adam blamed God. (‘The woman you gave me.’) Here’s some of things people say to blame God:
Guilt, like pain, is a lonely thing. It makes us want to drag as many people down with us as we can. The biggest intensifier of guilt is the thought that someone is more moral than you. It implies we could have done better. That makes it so important to muddy other people. That’s the pleasure of gossip and slandering the church. People know they stand guilty before a holy God. One of the few sources of comfort they can get is to reassure themselves that no one has done any better. And if they can blacken God’s name, dragging him into the mud, that’s the ultimate way to quieten the screams of a tortured conscience.
Finally, Eve blamed Satan. ‘The devil made me do it.’ That’s so unfashionable that it’s become a joke, but the need to excuse our actions has not diminished the tiniest since Adam and Eve. So today we blame our upbringing, chemical imbalances, psychological disorders – anything to deny personal responsibility.
Denial
The critical point is that all of the above things are a reaction to guilt.
Non-Christians are like burns patients smashing mirrors; like people who fear they’ve got cancer refusing to see a doctor. They are living in denial. No matter how sophisticated they pretend to be, in spiritual matters they are driven by fear and guilt. Inside, they’re Adam, naked and running for cover.
The reason people don’t flock to Jesus is not because people believe in evolution, nor because they think there are errors in the Bible. The reason, in the words of Scripture, is that they love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. It’s astounding: people prefer darkness – ignorance. Why? Because the truth exposes their sin. It reveals that they stand shamefully naked in the presence of Almighty God, to whom they must one day give account. They want to run from that and live in denial. If we can understand what’s going on inside them, we’ll be much better equipped to help them.
Clever arguments will never win anyone for Jesus. The god of this world, said Paul, has blinded the eyes of unbelievers. That’s a huge area we won’t explore here, but it shows the critical importance of prayer and spiritual warfare. Someone said, ‘Prayer is the battle.’ Other ministry is just mopping up after the battle is won.
Countering People’s Reluctance to Face God
Let’s examine the two reasons why people run from God.
1. They fear judgment
That’s why we need to explain as fully and as quickly as we can (before they run off) the good news that through Jesus, God offers them love, forgiveness, and full acceptance. It is also most important that they be convinced that we in no way feel superior to them.
2. They want to remain in sin
To understand this, let’s again go back to basics and see why Eve sinned.
Satan constantly maligns God in the minds of Christians and non-Christians alike. So we need to keep setting the record straight in our own minds and in the minds of the people we witness to. God is the most wonderful Person in the universe. (An example of an attempt to portray this is You can find love.) The all-powerful, infinitely wise Lord is unselfishly and totally devoted to maximizing our eternal happiness. He is the Source of every good thing we have ever experienced. Even the fleeting pleasures experienced while rebelling from him are possible only because he created us with the capacity to experience pleasure. In the final analysis, God’s will is the most exciting, fulfilling thing anyone could ever do. (A brief webpage that attempts to expound this is Enjoying God’s Will for You. For a list of some of the benefits of becoming a Christian, see What’s in it for me?)
This must not, however, be taken to the extreme of making the Christian life seem like a picnic. Christ emphasized both the need to stop sinning and the cost of becoming a Christian. Avoidance of these issues when presenting the Gospel would render our witnessing un-Christlike.
Another reason why people want to remain in their sin is that they are so bound by sin that they fear giving it up. In the words of Jesus, the person who sins is a slave to sin. They could even think it impossible to give up their sin. They need to know the good news that Jesus can break the power of their habits and set them free. (For example, see BREAK FREE! Supernatural Solutions For Habits & Things You Dislike About Yourself.)
An obvious motivator to help people leave their sin is reminding them of the eternal consequences of remaining in their sin. Billy Graham calls becoming a Christian, ‘making a decision.’ How can anyone make an informed decision without knowing the most important consequence of making the wrong choice? I do not feel I have adequately presented the gospel unless I mention hell. Modern Christians, in stark contrast to Jesus, are so frightened to mention hell that fewer and fewer non-believers imagine that even Christians seriously believe in it. I suppose we are afraid it will cause non-Christians to run from God even faster, but hell becomes something positive when linked with the fact that a loving Savior is yearning to save people from hell’s horrors.
The Essentials for Effective Evangelism
1 John 3:10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
An evangelist without love and integrity is as believable as a bald man selling hair restorer. Without nonjudgmental, unconditional love for the unlovable, combined with all the fruit of the Spirit, we have as much chance of saving people as a rescue helicopter without fuel.
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
1 John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
No one can be saved from spiritual calamity without believing that God is good and righteous. Reaching this point of faith in this planet’s Creator, however, is far from easy when we live in a world filled with evil.
Likewise, salvation hinges on believing that God loves sinners so much that he offers them forgiveness and full acceptance. Such faith is difficult when one’s life has been spent surrounded by people who rarely, if ever, manage to forgive and forget.
So what chance have people of accepting by faith that God can love and forgive them if those who say they know God – and even claim to be filled with him – do not demonstrate by their warmth that they truly love sinners? If we who are fallible humans cannot love and accept other fallible humans, it will be exceedingly difficult for others to believe that a holy God would love and accept them. And how can they believe that God is good and righteous if those proclaiming this truth do not show themselves to be of the highest integrity and genuinely good people?
1 John 4:12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
God’s love is manifest to those who have never seen him if we show his love.
Anyone who turns his nose up at society’s rejects or who feels superior to those who do not live a Christian lifestyle might as well ditch every attempt at preaching John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world . . .”). As a communicator of the gospel, he is no better than a tinkling bell. For someone dying in a spiritual wilderness, a Christian without love is an oasis without water.
Let us never forget how foundational love is to Christianity. Jesus insisted that top of the list of God’s requirements is that we love – loving God with every fiber of our being and caring about our fellow humans’ eternal and temporal happiness and well-being as passionately as we want these things for ourselves. In fact, Jesus said we are to take up our cross and follow him; loving with the iron resolve that drove him to be tortured and sacrifice himself for his enemies. The cost of love is so horrific that it is exceeded only by the reward.
In our Lord’s powerful description of the Final Judgment, when the sheep are separated from the goats and assigned vastly different eternities, the critical factor is how much love they had shown (Matthew 25:31-46).
Jesus, though ever so tender to those conscious of their sin, repeatedly tore strips of highly devout, theologically conservative Bible lovers for the shallowness of their love (Scriptures).
A Christian who does not love his enemies is a fraud. As Jesus said, anyone can love his own. If we love only the likable, we are no better than pagans ( Matthew 5:46-47). And love without righteousness is a farce.
Obviously Jesus had to be totally sinless to be the real Son of God and to atone for our sin. Putting that aside, however, how many people throughout the ages would have made him their Lord and Savior if he had asked people to give him money, lusted after women, hobnobbed with the “holy,” while snubbing “sinners,” or had been selfish, dishonest or hardhearted?
We are divinely commissioned to be Christ to those who currently hate him and act despicably. We are not just to tell but to show them the beauty of Christ. They need to see in us the goodness, kindness, generosity, compassion, integrity, forgiveness and sacrificial love of their Savior.
Let’s re-examine this Scripture:
2 Corinthians 5:14,20-6:10 For Christ’s love compels us . . . We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. . . .
Any ambassador worthy of the name is continually mindful of his solemn duty to reflect in all he does the dignity and integrity of the one he represents. So it comes as no surprise that Paul continues his reference to being Christ’s ambassadors with the following. Please read it soberly:
2 Corinthians 6:3-10 We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Arrayed before us in the above passage are the exquisite qualities of the ideal evangelist – the ambassador through whom the King of kings makes his appeal to those for whom he sacrificed his all. As is to be expected, each of them finds their highest human expression in Jesus’ earthly ministry. I see three layers of attributes in this impressive list:
1. Sacrifice
2. Spiritual Beauty
3. Staying Power
For more insight into the qualities required of an evangelist, let’s hear again from the inspired Apostle who said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1):
1 Corinthians 9:12,19-23 . . . we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. . . . Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. . . . To those not having the law I became like one not having the law . . . so as to win those not having the law. . . . I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. . . . I do all this for the sake of the gospel . . .
The great apostle is highlighting an essential aspect of effective evangelism. We usually gloss over his words, however, without realizing all the painful dying to self it involved. He had do things that were not only inconvenient but made him cringe – things contrary to all that he had both prided himself on as a devout servant of God and had been trained from birth to believe is the only proper way to conduct oneself. Consider Peter’s reaction to his vision of unclean animals and hearing the words, “Kill and eat” (Acts 10:11-16). From birth, Jews were conditioned to react even to casual conversation with a Gentile as if being forced to swim in a sewer. And that is nothing relative to the extremes Paul endured to win those whose culture, background, values and beliefs clashed with his own. Remember the disdain Israel’s godly elite felt toward the one who ate and drank with sinners and tax collectors (Scriptures). Are you willing to endure such disdain from the supposedly godly as you embrace a Spirit-led mission to reach the lost?
In the next chapter of his epistle, Paul expounds this further. For years I failed to notice how much this second passage focuses on evangelism. Ask God to help you read it with new eyes:
1 Corinthians 10:27-11:1 If some unbeliever invites you to a meal . . . eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it . . . for conscience’ sake – the other man’s conscience, I mean, not yours. . . . Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether *Jews, Greeks or the church of God* – even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. (Emphasis mine.)
* By distinguishing “the church of God” from Jews and Greeks, Paul seems to be meaning Jews and Greeks who do not belong to the church of God, i.e. are not believers.
A woman confided how she came forward for salvation in a church service – the most spiritually critical moment of her entire life – and the pastor gawked down her dress as he led her in the sinner’s prayer. Here’s a hint of our Judge’s attitude to such an act:
Matthew 18: 6-8 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
In an attempt to inspire you to pay the necessary price for effective evangelism, let me provide a personal example. The details are unlikely to be specifically relevant to you but the magnitude of the cost is probably more applicable to you than you currently realize. For a year I had the privilege of being engaged in full time evangelism – primarily one-on-one – in a third-world country. I was communicating mainly with college students who had not only been taught English throughout their education but taught in English. Nevertheless, it was still their second language and I was from what to them is a foreign country. Consequently, they had enormous difficulty understanding my “weird” accent and vocabulary. I was far more skilled at English than they were (after all, it is the only language I know). It was tempting to be a fool by stubbornly holding on to my superior command of English and better education. Instead, I quickly concluded that the only effective way to communicate was to ditch my pride and almost everything I thought I knew about English. I had to regard these people as the linguistically skilled and myself as the ignorant foreigner who with agonizing and humiliating slowness had to try to laboriously learn from scratch how to talk properly.
I noticed that people in that country often made their first, tentative attempt to reach out to strangers by offering them food. At that delicate stage in connecting with people, rejecting their food came close to being seen as rejecting them. Even if this hurdle were somehow mounted and the relationship had grown strong, foreigners not eating their food was seen as an act of snobbery – as regarding their food preparation as unhygienic (and there was a degree of risk) and their food choices as somewhat barbaric. I heard the pain in a young man’s voice as he confided to me that most missionaries would not eat their food. So I ate dog, sea slug, duck egg with the duck inside about to hatch, snails straight from the rice paddy, pig brain soup, and so on. I sought to eat rat but a recent flood had wiped them out.
Even if you do not step outside your country – not even in cyber space – patriotism can be an insurmountable obstacle to effective outreach. This can be true, for example, when speaking with immigrants. Even with fellow patriots, our cherished political views must remain unexpressed or we will disqualify ourselves as an evangelist to many people. “My kingdom is not of this world,” declared Jesus (John 18:36). “Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven,” (Philippians 3:19-20) wrote Paul. As much as we might long to spout our favorite philosophies and political views, there are many times when to be effective evangelists must bite our tongues lest our personal convictions and preferences – no matter how “correct” – cause such offense that it drown out the gospel message in the ears of sensitive hearers. Any would-be evangelist too arrogant or bigoted to see this is not worthy of Christ.
Your sexual morality and freedom from addiction might be important to your walk with God, but as an evangelistic tool it is almost useless. (The one possible exception is if you were once so hopelessly enslaved to depravity that your new life is seen as close to miraculous.) Your stance on abortion, homosexuality, premarital or extramarital sex, illicit drugs and so on is more likely to cause those still in spiritual darkness to think you are hopelessly out of touch, narrow minded and bigoted than it is to stir their interest in Christianity. Losing your battle with lust or addiction could undermine everything you say about Christ. It could destroy your credibility as a witness by getting you labeled as a hypocrite. Nevertheless, winning that battle is unlikely, of itself, to draw anyone to Christ. What is needed is not self-righteousness or cold pharisaical morality but the warm, positive effect of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
It is tragically easy to slip into feeling superior to non-Christians. Doing so not only undermines one’s effectiveness as a soul-winner, it undermines one’s walk with God. Too many Christians think that God is harsh, judgmental, arrogant and bigoted. Of course, they would never use those words, but beneath the religious veneer, that is what they think, and that false concept of God is revealed in their attempts to evangelize. Yes, outside of Christ, judgment is terrifying, so the love of Christ compels us to reach out to the lost, as representatives of the true God – the God who is warm and soft-hearted; a God of such compassion that he preferred the torment of the cross over the agony of seeing his enemies suffer in spiritual darkness.
I have been astounded at the extent to which my Bible study of this topic has kept uncovering more and more times that Scripture links evangelism with the necessity of manifesting a Spirit-filled life by the beauty of our integrity, love and all the fruit of the Spirit. The above is just a tiny sample of all the relevant Scriptures. I invite you to explore this subject further in a link at the end of this webpage.
I would also like, however, to provide a real-life example of how the life we live empowers our witness and gives us the spiritual authority to input into people’s lives.
Christine is an American, now living in another western country, who has a middle management position in a secular company. Almost all of the hundreds of people she works with are immigrants from over thirty different countries and diverse religions, primarily Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims. Most are refugees who have suffered greatly, and often as a result of US foreign policy and yet her Christlike nature outshines the huge disadvantage that being American is in this environment. Despite them knowing she does not belong to their religion, many not only admire her but call her a saint and because of her feel far more positively toward Christianity than they ever imagined they would. She has had this job for less than six months but won them over in a matter of weeks. The workplace is one filled with resentment and tension (they even pull knives on each other) and yet she can hardly move through the place without receiving hugs from all sorts of people. She can barely do anything without people offering to do it for her. Just today a typical incident occurred. Christine was about to do some work and some Muslims and Hindus interrupted her.
“No, no, we do for you,” said one of them in his broken English.
“You’re not my servants,” responded Christine, not wanting to exploit them.
“We are glad to be your servants,” came the reply. “You are kind to us.”
Christine was not suddenly given a full-blown ministry. It is a spiritual principle that those who are faithful with a little will end up entrusted with much (Scriptures). From childhood, Christine had devoted her life both to breaking down prejudices and to understanding foreign cultures and religions. She was seven years old when she first started befriending homeless, traumatized Vietnam vets. They scared everyone else because of bouts when they would think they were still back in Vietnam and pull knives on people. Her mailman told her that speaking softly to them helped calmed them, so she tried it. Little Christine was occasionally spat on, shouted at and had her hair pulled but she was unfazed. She understood mental illness because of a sister who sometimes had aggressive episodes. She refused to give up on these unwanted veterans because she believed they needed human kindness and that they would find a little child less threatening than an adult. Her own family life was cold and harsh and out of sheer loneliness she sought God’s friendship from when she was five. From then on she had God’s love in her heart, and love “covers over a multitude of sins,” keeps no record of wrongs, and forgives “seventy times seven” (1 Peter 4:8; 1 Corinthians 13:5; Matthew 18:22).
Very many years later, Christine personally knew people who were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack. She was quite traumatized by the event and it generated within her deep ill-feeling toward Muslims. Working through those feelings took quite some time but they were so incompatible with the rest of her Christlike nature that she eventually broke through and began to truly love Muslims as Jesus does. To help this she read widely about Islamic culture and the history of many Muslim countries.
From before she gained her current job, Christine – to the consternation of many of her Christian friends – had witches and people of many different religions on her Facebook page, and was freely witnessing to them. One of them, for example, was an angry Muslim in Pakistan who openly said he wanted to kill the first Westerner he laid eyes on. He knew she was American but this was not a time to wave the American flag. Christine’s cultural sensitivity, Christlike graciousness and love not only calmed him down but so turned him around as to get him thinking about Jesus. He even asked that Christians pray for him.
A group of key Muslim women approached Christine in the lunchroom of her current workplace. Because of the vast size of the place, she had rarely spoken with any of them but they had obviously been observing her. They offered her special food, told her they regarded her as the ideal woman and that despite her not being a Muslim they want to be like her.
This is typical of the awe with which Christine is treated by the several hundred men and women she works with. Many of them are disenchanted with their own religion and/or see Christine as having something they want spiritually.
Such a reputation does not come cheaply. It took years and years of enormous sacrifice and working to total exhaustion to gain the expertise and high reputation it took for her to win that job. Now, though in management herself, she refuses to emulate other managers there who stay primarily at their desk. She is continually mixing with workers, discovering their needs, doing the dirty jobs no one else wants to do, working harder than them, helping them with tasks that are not part of her job description and so on. Although, relative to her expertise, she herself is underpaid and financially struggling, she finds far more joy in getting those under her promoted than she does in the possibility of getting a raise herself. She has often had to risk losing her job in order to stand up to those higher than her in the company to fight racism, unsafe work practices, and so on.
She has forgiven those whom she could have got fired for wrong behavior. Reports of such acts have spread like a hurricane among the astounded workers whose religions do not have a forgiving God. Naturally, Christine uses such opportunities to talk about her forgiving Lord and her every word rings with authority because her life confirms the reality of her message. The mix of religions and races is potentially explosive but she shares her faith in such a humble, caring, respectful, highly sensitive way that instead of fostering divisions it actually does much to promote workplace harmony.
There is a huge price to be paid to win the love and respect of potential enemies and those hostile to Christ. Close physical contact with hundreds of refugees exposes her to tuberculosis, dangerous forms of hepatitis and other diseases. They love her so much that they keep hugging and touching her, thus magnifying the danger, but what would Jesus do?
She relishes this opportunity to serve God and considers it well worth the risks. As one worker told her when she was discouraged over the way her superiors were treating her, “You can get another job, but we can’t. If you leave, who will protect us?”
Christine is seen by management as being in a degree of danger, both because of work hazards (deadly snakes, potential explosions, fires, exposure to poisons etc – there have been hospitalizations even since she has been there and she has suffered poisoning) and because of some of the employees who could possibly kill. Her workplace is so vast that often she is literally acres away from any other westerner. Some workers are only on trial release into western society. Some are Taliban from Afghanistan who not only hate Americans but have greatly suffered at the hands of the US military and are psychologically unstable.
Some have hair-trigger tempers and talk frequently of Jihad, physical violence and death threats (though not toward Christine, as they see her Christlike nature and regard her as their defender who is utterly trustworthy and truly cares for them). There are often outbreaks of fights plus occasions of deliberate sabotage as acts of revenge against management.
Once a distressed Muslim man began repeatedly stabbing Christine’s arm with a pen. She exercised the self-mastery to not pull away. Before long he came to his senses, and stopped, horrified at what he had just done. She responded by saying, “If that connects me to your pain, keep on going.” Is it any wonder that they love her!
One of the refugees working with her is a Buddhist monk. A manager had said some unfounded harsh words to him. Seeking to comfort him, Christine told him she does not like the way the managers treat people. (Their bullying traumatizes already traumatized refugees.)
“I know you don’t,” he responded. “You are like the Buddha.”
“You mean gentle?” she asked.
“No,” he replied, “you have compassion.”
“Well, that is also the way of the Christian God,” said Christine.
“I know!” he said in his broken English. “Christian religion good. Your God is real. I know. I see him in the way you have compassion. I said at the temple, ‘If you not going to be a Buddhist, be a Christian because their God is real love.’ I know this because you love Muslims and they are difficult to love. I know because I watch you and love from your God is real. We all know that. I told them that at the temple.”
The Muslims in her workplace rightly believed they were being discriminated against by other groups and it was decided to elect advocates from each main ethnic/religious group in order to resolve this. Without her knowledge, the Muslims nominated and elected Christine. This is astonishing for many reasons. First, they chose a Christian, not a Muslim. Second, Muslims are typically very sexist but not just the women but the men chose a woman to represent them. Third, there are a large number of different ethnic groups and sects within the Muslims and they often regard each other as heretics and hate each other. Every one of the many different factions chose Christine. Fourth, Christine is an American, and the animosity between Americans and Muslims is notorious worldwide. Moreover, the Hindus also wanted Christine to represent them but decided to let her represent the Muslims because she could only represent one group but because and Christine is renowned for her integrity the Hindus knew she would also be fair to them. Some Chinese were a little peeved because they love Christine and they, too, wanted her as their fearless advocate but they accepted her assurances that she would be fair.
On separate occasions, workers from four different religions have referred to her either as the light or bringing light. What is even more remarkable is that, as far as she knows, they each made this assessment without consulting each other. For example, a Sheik told her, “There is something so different about you. You have a light in you. We [Sheiks] don’t understand it but we see it when you enter the room. Your faith is so personal. You don’t just know about God, you know God. You are at peace with God. It’s as though he is your friend.”
“He is my friend,” she replied.
The Sheik just looked at her, dazed. The concept was mindboggling.
The Sheiks have invited her to their temple to share her story.
She tells all that call her the light that the light in her is Jesus, but this bewilders them because their perception of Jesus is very different to what they see in her. They think of Jesus as arrogant and aggressive, even hate-filled, like their perception of so many westerners who claim to represent Jesus.
“We take you seriously because you take your faith seriously,” they say.
Christine has had to make herself very transparent and vulnerable so that they can see the Christ within her and the genuineness of her love and faith. This degree of openness has been difficult for her. She would rather keep her past sufferings private – sufferings that empower her to understand their hurts and fears. It would be so much easier for her to present a tough exterior but she knows they need to see the person she really is if they are to be drawn to the God who sustains her.
The Great Commission is not to preach but to make disciples.
Matthew 28:18-19 . . . All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations . . .
Preaching is superficial; discipling costs. It requires investing one’s life in people. In the words of the great apostle:
1 Corinthians 4:16 . . . I urge you to imitate me.
1 Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
Philippians 3:17 Join with others in following my example, brothers . . .
Philippians 4:9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. (Emphasis mine.)
1 Thessalonians 1:6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord . . .
2 Thessalonians 3:9 We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow.
Note further in the following the importance of not just telling but setting an example:
1 Thessalonians 2:14 For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea . . .
Hebrews 6:12 We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
1 Peter 5:3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.
Discipling demands the removal of masks and being so Spirit-filled that when people see your transparent honesty, compassion, selflessness, devotion and purity they are inspired to model their lives on you. This does not involve striving to be Christlike but letting Christ reign in your heart so that he shines out of your life, drawing people to himself.
Be Willing to be Tongue Tied
An evangelistic article of mine was published in my university’s newspaper. A non-Christian member of the academic staff asked me about it. The conversation was going fine when he asked a sincere question. ‘When I was a child,’ he said, ‘I invented a black god and a white god. Whenever anything bad happened, I attributed it to the black god and whenever something good happened, I attributed it to the white god. How does this differ from what you are talking about?’
My mind seized up. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. After many panic-stricken moments of silence, I eventually had to say, ‘I can’t answer that.’
I was more than stricken with red-faced humiliation. I was devastated that I had let God down and let this man down. Naturally, I will now explain how it all ended wonderfully, right? Wrong.
You might find it difficult to comprehend, but for the next thirty years I was not just haunted by the memory of my mind going blank at such a critical time, my entire witnessing ability was crippled by the fear of a repeat. I would often avoid witnessing face to face because I was sure that any repeat would not merely be embarrassing, it could become a major hindrance to someone finding Christ, causing them to conclude that not just lame brain me, but Christianity itself, has no answer. I knew that in theory God could give me the right words whenever I need them, but I was acutely aware of the time when he hadn’t.
It might have even been before that incident that I first read God’s Smuggler. Years afterward I referred to this book by writing in one of my own books:
Brother Andrew, ‘God’s Smuggler,’ tells of a girl who became a Christian because he obeyed the Spirit’s prompting not to share the Gospel with her. He was in the ideal position to witness, but his Spirit-led refusal to exploit it, seized the girl with fear that she was becoming past hope. This moved her, like nothing else could, to give her life to the Lord.
Brother Andrew remained silent by choice, so I saw no connection between his experience and my own.
Many more years of defeat dragged by. Then I read about Paul Cain, a man highly acclaimed in some Christian circles as having the ability to speak powerfully under God’s anointing. Whether he really has this gift is irrelevant to the story. One night, everyone was bitterly disappointed with Cain. To a large, expectant audience, he gave a rambling sermon and ended without sharing anything special from God.
Jack Deere, a former professor of Dallas Theological Seminary, had helped organize the meeting. Greatly perplexed and embarrassed by Cain’s unimpressive performance, he confronted him about it. Paul Cain replied that he was just a silly old man with an extraordinary gift. Because it was a gift, he explained, and not a talent, he was completely dependent upon God to exercise it. If the Lord chose not to empower him to speak God’s word, there was nothing left for people to see but Cain’s inadequacy. He believes that occasionally God decides that people need to see what Cain minus God looks like so that they will be drawn to God, whom they need, and not to a man, who has nothing eternal to offer. Jack Deere likened this to the Apostle Paul’s thorn in the flesh that kept the apostle from self-destructing with pride.
That story, too, did nothing for my witnessing ability.
A little later, a friend shared with me about how she loved ministering by singing in the choir but she felt too embarrassed because for some inexplicable reason tears would often stream down her face when singing. I immediately thought of Cain humbled by his weakness and how he had to be willing to be embarrassed in front of thousands in order to be available to be sometimes used of God.
As I was trying to encourage my friend, I suddenly saw that this principle applies not just to her singing but to my witnessing. I had always claimed to acknowledge that people’s eternal welfare hinged on God, not me. If the Lord decrees, as he did with Brother Andrew, that silence is most effective at that point in a person’s life, and if he chooses to shut me up, as with Cain, by temporarily leaving me to my own inadequacy, then what feels and looks like a disaster is actually a manifestation of divine wisdom. If, like my friend finds her tears, I find it embarrassing, I need to remember how much Jesus emphasized dying to self and I should praise God for the opportunity to grow in that vital area of spiritual life.
You might suppose that because I’m a writer, I’m good at words but actually I’m a writer because I cannot think on my feet and have to stumble around for hours or days to fit words together in a way I feel half-satisfied with.
My wife set it up so that I had the opportunity to explain the Gospel to two people we were visiting. One was a Hindu and the other was a Sikh. I felt inadequate while speaking and on my way home thoughts of what I “should” have said came to me. I went to bed rather depressed about it. My wife prayed about my reaction and that night the Lord woke her to speak to her about it. What she said powerfully impacted me. Here, combined with thoughts that have come to me as a result of the insight, is the essence of what the Lord said:
Is anything too hard for me? It has always been my perfect plan to use imperfect humans as my witnesses. Do you imagine I am so incompetent that your weaknesses nullify my power to save? Must everything you say or do be flawless before I can touch hearts through you? Must everything that comes from your lips impress you before I can use it? Your limitations do not limit me; they are nothing but my chance to demonstrate my love for you and an opportunity to display my power. When we work in partnership, you can – and should – ignore your short-comings and rest in my omnipotence.
One thing I’ve learned about omnipotence is that the Almighty has so many more options than I can conceive. For example, of course he could give me astounding eloquence and irrefutably powerful arguments but he can just as easily reach a person through someone whose words are so pathetic as to seem almost unintelligible.
It might inflate my ego to think faster than a spaced-out, brain-damaged snail, but maybe what the lost need is a powerful Savior, not slick words and clever arguments.
1 Corinthians 2:4-5 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words . . . so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
If the Lord chose not to turn even the Apostle Paul into a slick-talking Gospel Salesman, maybe I should not feel hard done by if he lets me trip over words as I career headlong into being reluctant proof of what Paul wrote just verses earlier:
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
Maybe what matters is not saving face but saving souls. Perhaps me remaining humble is more important than having a shiny set of words I can try to dazzle people with.
When describing his presentation of the Gospel message, the mighty, supernaturally called, Spirit-filled Apostle even admitted, “I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.” (1 Corinthians 2:3). Elsewhere he wrote:
2 Corinthians 7:5 For when we came into Macedonia . . . we were harassed at every turn – conflicts on the outside, fears within.
2 Corinthians 10:10 For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.”
Galatians 4:13-14 As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you . . . my illness was a trial to you . . .
2 Corinthians 4:5,7-9 For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. . . . But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
Paul did not conclude that God not removing his fear and weaknesses meant that the Lord had abandoned him or let him down. Neither did he wait for fear and weaknesses to disappear before plunging into preaching. “Preach the Word . . . in season and out of season,” he said (2 Timothy 4:2). Since, whether we like it or not, we are called to sow the word of God, we need to heed the inspired wisdom that says we should not wait until conditions seem perfect:
Ecclesiastes 11:4,6 Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. . . . Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed . . .
We will always have an endless supply of excuses. We will always feel that God should choose someone more capable, but either God is smart enough to make right choices and powerful enough to be able to use the weakest of us, or he isn’t God.
I expect I’ll still have struggles, but if I can keep reminding myself of the above I’ll feel freer to let God be God and to stop putting myself under the pressure of the absurd delusion of supposing that helping someone find salvation hinges on my ability, rather than just on my availability.
I once heard of a church that was amazingly successful in bringing atheists into a living relationship with Jesus. Here’s how they did it: they would send their newest converts to atheists. Before long, the new Christians would find themselves argued into defeat. In tears they would blurt out, “I don’t know! All I know is that God is real and he changed me.”
Not only don’t we have to know all the answers, pretending that we do is a huge mistake that could actually drive people from Christ. To understand this, see a link at the end of this page. It includes the words of a one-time evangelist who ended up almost an atheist because of Christian know-alls trying to help him.
Bringing it All Together
When people put up objections, we can give brief answers, (you will find some examples in a link at the end of this page) but we need to see that their intellectual arguments are primarily a smokescreen for something much more basic. They stand guilty before a holy God and they know it. So they do everything to try to run and hide from it and to turn the spotlight from their dirty conscience onto other things.
Above all, we need to remember that there are no formulas in witnessing. Jesus is Savior, not us. As we reach out to those who need him, we need to rest in him and let God be God.
The greatest thing we can ever do for someone is to introduce a person to Jesus. So, at least in our consciousness, we need to fade from the picture, and let Jesus and that person talk. We need to listen attentively to both parties and simply be the catalyst, not the focal point.
Think on that and see how it influences your witnessing.
How to Evangelize Expounds still more Scriptures emphasizing how critical displaying the fruit of the Spirit is to effective evangelism.
Don’t Know What to Say? About the danger of thinking you know it all.
Examples of Brief Answers to Objections to Christianity The Astounding Power of Simple Witnessing
Not to be sold. © Copyright, Grantley Morris, 1998, 2002, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015. For much more by the same author, see www.net-burst.net No part of these writings may be sold, and no part copied in whole without citing this entire paragraph.