Often a mix of negative emotions surround the idea of personal evangelism; words like awkward, scary, annoying, and fear are associated with sharing of your faith. For a lot of us, our perception of evangelism is flawed due to fire and brimstone street preachers or Bible beater friends at school that made you embarrassed to be a Christian. Because of this perception we have found it quite easy to become complacent with our evangelism amongst our friends, family, and community and find clever answers to justify our reasoning. But what we have failed to recognize is that Jesus’ last command to us was to go out into the world and make disciples. And yet if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us rarely participate in this command and shudder at the idea of being proactive about it. Recently at school our principle gave a talk on personal evangelism and I wanted to share some of my notes (not the whole talk but just some of the key points) in order to encourage you to step out and realize that we don’t evangelize because it’s a duty, but rather, we share our faith because we love people. We need to get to a place where we are willing to love people more than being afraid.
The Love of God
> Love is the foundation of Evangelism because it is the foundation of our faith. It all begins and ends with Him (1 John 4:7) love springs from God. He is love (1 John 4:6)—not that he is loving, but that he is love. (we know him if we love)
o Most people don’t change until they know that God loved them beyond what their mind can comprehend
o God loved you enough to bleed for you
> Great commission wasn’t get good at alter calls but rather go into the world and make disciples
> Very rarely do people find Christ on their own (this is why Jesus commissioned the church)
The nature of God’s love
o Passionate Acts 1:3
§ His passion was the joy set before him; his passion is people
o Sacrificial John 3:16, John 15:13
§ Can’t understand the sacrifice unless we know that God is love
§ (prayer that we fall in love with our savior so we feel compelled to share our faith)
o Covenanted Is. 54:10
§ Doesn’t matter how good/bad you are; God’s love is not removed
§ If you don’t understand God’s love then you won’t share it (you will only share it out of religious compulsion)
§ My faith is only as good as its practice; our theology has to be pedestrian (if it doesn’t walk among us then its only intellectual)
§ His love is unchanging, merciful, everlasting, can’t be diluted
§ As a Christian, if there’s every been a time where you feel that God’s judging you, imagine how hard it is to convince a non-Christian that God loved them unconditionally
§ We know the Christian way to lead people to Jesus, OR we can fall so in love with our Father that we feel compelled when we encounter non-Christians
§ Sometimes we don’t share our faith just because we’re insecure (perfect love drives out fear—it’s possible to live without insecurity)
· Nothing to hide, nothing to prove
§ We can’t save anyone, God is the one who does the saving, all we’re called to do is deliver the message (be ambassadors)
§ The bible doesn’t say if we don’t share our faith that we’ll go to hell but it does say that if they don’t have faith they will go to hell
Ø If you fall more in love with Jesus and allow his love to transform your life you WILL begin to share your faith
o When you’re in love with someone, it’s not a secret—you can’t hide it. If you can, it’s not love
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