When you grow up in the church, there are numerous times where the person speaking will challenge you to go share the Gospel with your community, school, sports teams, and everywhere in between. As a kid, I always thought that when people shared the Word with friends or strangers, it had to be this eloquent, verbal confrontation that would mimic the teachings of Paul or something. I found it difficult to get on board with the idea that every Christian should be able to present the Gospel message like a TedTalk presenter, and it took me years to really grasp how every single follower of Christ can spread the good news without constantly thumping people upside the head with the Bible.
Everybody who believes in the message of Jesus Christ should be able to talk to a non-believer about the Gospel if they are willing to listen. I will never say we shouldn’t be ready for these situations. However, I think Christians tend to assume all we can do to make disciples is talk to people on the street in awkward, uncomfortable exchanges. This is not the case whatsoever.
We have been given tools by God- other than language- that can successfully share the love of Christ with those we encounter in our lives, and they aren’t secret at all. These ways to influence others are open to discovery, and they can be easily applied to everyday life with the right focus and genuine intentions behind doing so.
The first tool we can work with is our free will and what we choose to do with it. This ability to use our actions to reflect our integrity and values is powerful, and it has a strong influence whichever way we choose to act. If we act above reproach and go out of our way to serve others around us, and find joy in it as well, people can catch a glimpse of what the love of Christ can do in people’s lives.
At the same time, if we do things that benefit only ourselves or hurt those around us, we create a negative view of how Christians are perceived. In all honesty, I never feel like I need to do good to those around me so that I can share the love of God with them. I find that if you have a genuine heart for Christ, then you have a heart for selfless service, and you can’t help but be obedient and serve as a result of the joy you receive daily from Christ’s love.
It is a lot to digest and can be confusing at times, but what isn’t confusing is the feeling you get when you use your actions, not for your own glory, but for the glory of the Lord.
The other tool we can use is both verbal and non-verbal at the same time. Our tool is prayer, which I personally have found to be more powerful than anything else I could possibly do. It is verbal because you use language to express what you are hoping for with the Lord, yet it is non-verbal because you don’t have to be with the person you want to pray for in order to pray for them.
It doesn’t matter who it is or what stage of life they are in, all that matters is that someone is praying for their salvation. Praying for someone is the second greatest act of unselfish love (besides a certain someone dying on the cross for our sins) known of, and I feel that we can never do enough of it.
I mean, it can never hurt to pray too much, right? You would be shocked at the radical results that can come from simple prayer over someone’s faith. I have seen people’s lives flipped upside down with a newfound love for Jesus, an answered prayer indeed, but I know it wasn’t prayer itself that transformed it. It was the Lord stirring in their life that changed everything, but when we use the power of prayer we can be obedient servants while also sowing the field for the great harvest.
At the end of the day, anything you say or do can help further the Kingdom of God, but we as Christians have to decide which approach is necessary for spreading the good news to those who don’t know its power.
Whether your spiritual gift includes public speaking, unrelenting prayer, selfless service, or writing on Odyssey (wink, wink), take advantage of it and use it for the good of others and to bring glory and honor to the Lord. The rest of it will take care of itself- or at least someone with a lot more power will.
