The Secret to Effective Evangelism- Acts 16:14

Last night in our LIFE Group, we talked about reasons Christians have trouble sharing their faith with others. We get nervous. We feel unprepared. We worry about how they will view our message in light of our past mistakes. We feel awkward about bringing it up. We fear we will offend them if they believe differently. There are a million different reasons...I should say excuses.

But the truth is that none of them are worth missing an opportunity to share the gospel with someone. As atheist entertainer Penn Jillette pointed out in a video a while back, how much do you have to hate someone to not tell them about Christ if you believe that He is the way to salvation from death!?

And yet, knowing the command of Jesus to go into all the world...knowing He said that whoever acknowledges me before men, him will I acknowledge before my Father...knowing that He promised to be with us always as we were going throughout the world with the Good News...knowing all of that, we still hesitate!

I love passages like the one above because it reminds me that I am not responsible for the response of the person with whom I am sharing the gospel. I am responsible for sharing. Just look at the verse again and take comfort in it and courage from it! "The LORD opened her heart to respond to Paul's message!" Luke doesn't record what persuasive words Paul used. In fact, Paul said in other places that he purposefully didn't use persuasive words. Luke doesn't record that Paul was meticulous in his presentation or that Lydia was overwhelmed by Paul's history of righteousness. I'm not saying those things aren't important. A message given by someone who doesn't care to walk the talk can be one of the most damaging things in the world! Luke records that Paul passed the message on and GOD OPENED HER HEART TO RESPOND TO IT!

What difference does that make?

Can we just sit back and wait for God to work? Well...no. He typically works through His people as a first resort for spreading His message.

Paul said, "we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20).

The difference that it makes is that we can confidently and thoughtfully open our mouths to speak the life-giving words to those around us without fear of messing it up! Should we take care to speak with love so we don't turn others away? Absolutely! Should we try to craft our messages in ways that others have an easier time seeing past us to God? Without a doubt! Why do you think Jesus told so many stories? But should we be paralyzed into silence and inaction out of fear of doing more damage than good? BY NO MEANS WHATSOEVER! 

I can't convince anyone to put away their sins. I can't convince anyone to put their faith in Christ. I am not capable of that. Jesus, himself, was rejected by people during his ministry way more often than he was accepted! Do we really think we are incapable evangelists because we don't have better results than the Word of God, Himself!?

The pressure is off. We plant. We water. But it is up to God to give the increase. The question is will we trust God enough to follow Him and work with Him in planting and watering.

Where He Leads Me...Will I Follow? Acts 8:10-1

Wouldn't it be nice if you audibly heard God give you directions? Sometimes I think if I could only have that then it would be much easier for me to obey. After all, it would be an obvious choice. I can't help but think that I would much prefer that to having to go through the messy process of trying to discern what God's will is in the details of how things should be done and how I should spend my time and who I should talk to and a host of other things.

If my memory is correct, I originally picked this verse because of Ananias' choice to obey despite the risk. I am so glad we were given the dialogue between Ananias and God. It's really kind of humorous when you think about it. Ananias actually tries to inform God of the kinds of things Saul has been doing. I guess it says a lot about God that He didn't just give Ananias a "Really? Did you think I missed that!?" But then again, I'm assuming God isn't sarcastic like I am! (Which by the way, I need to work on changing my sarcasm if God is not like that!) No God doesn't argue with him about Saul's past and even his present circumstances. After all, Ananias was right! Saul was guilty of everything Ananias mentioned! But God simply tells Ananias about Saul's future and tells him to go.

I originally picked this verse because I wanted us to think about the people we deem incapable of responding to the gospel. If anyone were in that category, it surely would have been Saul! But oh, how thankful has the church been for two thousand years that God did not give up on an angry, misguided, murderous Saul of Tarsus! Stop for a minute and think...when I ask you who in your life is so lost that they are beyond the point of coming back...whose face comes to your mind? I won't pretend for a minute that I know they will come to see Christ for who he is. But I would like for us to be honest with ourselves that the way we treat people sometimes belies the fact that we do often at least subconsciously pretend to know that they will not come to see Christ for who he is. How thankful are you that Ananias obeyed God in spite of his reservations? In spite of Saul's past and even his present? Saul was not the only person confronted by the Lord in Acts 9. Ananias was too. And they both had a choice to obey or not.

Which, by the way, brings up another interesting point. Why did God wait to tell Saul through Ananias what he needed to do to be saved? Why not just go ahead and finish the conversation instead of telling him to go into town and wait for a man named Ananias to tell him what to do? Well...I don't know. But I do know that it only makes sense based on how that played out to pay that much more attention to who God wants us to teach about how to be saved. Whatever the reason- and I have no doubt that He has his reasons- God has left that part of the plan to us. To the followers of Christ. If we disobey, who will teach the Paul of this generation how to be saved so that he/she can influence the church for the next 2,000 years?

That's what I originally wanted to talk about. But when I read the passage tonight and began collecting my thoughts, I just kept thinking that I would obey like Ananias did if I could only hear from God directly. And I found myself again longing for that kind of direct communication from God. To be honest, I'm not sure where I am on all of that. I seem to keep circling back to those types of thoughts. But one thing I am convinced of is that if I am ever to have more of an understanding about the details of God's will so I can obey them, then I am going to need to be obedient to the things that have already been revealed to me. I heard a teacher talking about Philippians 3:16 where Paul says, "Only let us live up to what we have already attained." And the context is all about pressing on to gain more of Christ. He pointed out that in the middle of the desire to gain wisdom and gain depth in relationship to Christ and gain understanding of God's specific will, Paul stops and tells us to just be obedient to what we have already attained. In other words, why should God reveal more of Himself to me if I am not responding to that part of Him that He has already revealed to me?

So what about it? Do you long for more? Are you responding to what you have right now? In the context of Ananias and Saul...are you viewing people the way God does? Do you see people as what they might be inside Christ as opposed to what they are outside of him? May we be a people that constantly trusts that God has made Pauls out of Sauls in the past and He can do it again...if only we will have the courage to obey the command to "as you are going, make disciples of all nations..."  Will you be obedient today in small things so that God will ask bigger things of you tomorrow? I can't help but think that God knew Ananias would obey this command because Ananias had already obeyed so many times before. I want God to know that of me...because I want to know Him.