Evangelizing to your Friends

This month, we are focusing on evangelism; sharing the good news of the gospel with the people around you! Jesus’ last command to His followers before His ascension was telling them and us to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. This is known as the Great Commission, and it is the prime directive of our lives as Christians. Last week we opened up with how to share the Gospel with our families and today, we’ll be talking about how to share the Gospel with our friends. Today, we’re going to give you a few keys to keep in mind as you begin to share your faith with your friends.

First, you want to make sure that you understand the difference between sharing and selling. There is a different type of mentality that comes with selling. For starters, selling comes with a lot of pressure. If you don’t close the sale, you lose the commissions, if you never make any sales, are you even a salesman at all? We’re not selling the Gospel. We’re sharing it. It is not our responsibility to sell others on Jesus. He is not a product. When we love something or someone, we can’t help but tell people about it. When you’ve started a new relationship with someone who you think is just so amazing, you don’t even have to say it because your friends can see it written all over your face. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we read His word, the more we draw near to Him in prayer, the more our affections towards Him will grow. When we experience an authentic relationship with God, it’s naturally going to come out of us.

Next, and this is important, authenticity is critical. In 1 John 1:3, the evangelist says that he is sharing what he has “seen and heard.” In Revelation chapter 12, he describes the saints during the tribulation as overcoming the accuser by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. Evangelism itself is often called “witnessing.” The whole point is that you are sharing what Jesus has done for you. Now, a lot of times I have spoken with people who feel like their testimony isn’t as good as the next persons because they don’t have the type of story that astonishes people like, “I used to abuse multiple substances, lived on the streets and killed a guy for looking at me funny. But then I found Jesus and I don’t do any of that stuff anymore!” While those stories can draw a crowd, we have to remember that the hero of our testimony is not us, it’s Jesus. Notice, the song is called Amazing Grace, not amazing wretch. Pain is universal. Failure is universal. Sin is our nature without Christ. He is the focus of our personal testimonies and as long as we are authentically sharing the Gospel and not worried about trying to have the best story to tell, He will work through it in the hearts of our friends.

Another key to remember is vulnerability. In our culture today, Christians are often portrayed as “holier than thou” and self-righteously condemning everyone around them. Sometimes, this is due to certain individuals or groups who aren’t great at extending the grace that we have received towards the world around us. Other times, it’s due to the fact that bible-believing Christians are consistently portrayed in an unflattering and sometimes overtly negative way in media. This bias was recently pointed out by actor Rainn Wilson.

“I do think there is an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood. As soon as the David character in “The Last of Us” started reading from the Bible I knew that he was going to be a horrific villain. Could there be a Bible-reading preacher on a show who is actually loving and kind?”

What’s especially interesting is that Rainn Wilson isn’t even a Christian himself, just someone noticing a seemingly unfair slant within his professional field.

Whether it’s fair or not, the truth is that a lot of people in the world don’t have the highest opinions of Christians. Now, it’s not our job and it’s not even appropriate for us to try to soften any specific teachings of scripture so that they are less offensive to our post-modern sensibilities. Faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins by His atoning death on the cross is our only means of salvation. The Bible is God’s word and instructs us on the purpose of the world, our lives and how we should live them. We can’t compromise truth in order to win people to a more comfortable lie. In 1 Peter chapter 2, Jesus is described as the stone that the builders rejected which has now become the chief cornerstone and also a stone that causes people to stumble and fall, or a stone of offense. The truth is offensive to anyone living in deception, which to varying degrees is all of us. All of us were like sheep who had gone astray; we’ve all lived in ways that were contrary and in opposition to the truth. Submitting our wills to the will of the One who made us goes against our own desires to rule our own lives, but we recognize that our rebellion to God will only lead us further into misery and eventually death. When we can approach the conversation not from a place of self-righteous judgement but of vulnerability, recognizing the blood on our own hands from our sins against others and, ultimately, our sins against God, we show them that the same grace we have received is offered to them, too.

Sharing – not selling, authenticity and vulnerability. Keep these keys in mind the next time you have the opportunity to share Jesus with your friends. Do these keys guarantee that they are going to believe you and become followers of Christ, no. But, remember it’s not our responsibility to save people, only to share with them the offer of salvation that we have received.