In my building project, before I could
even start the building of the foundation, I had to dig and
prepare the area that I was going to lay my foundation on. I
couldn’t lay my foundation just anywhere, it could only go a
certain place. This took a lot of work on my part and even
the help of a friend. Our preparation for evangelism may
require the same thing.
You’ll recall the story that Jesus
told of two men who wanted to build a house. One man built
his house upon a rock – a solid foundation. The other man
built his house upon the sand – a weak and easily shifted
foundation. The rock is Christ, his word, & his actions. The
story specifically relates to building your life on Christ,
but it carries over into evangelism just as well.
So we are building upon Christ, his
word, and his actions. How do we do this is regard to
evangelism? Praying is a good start. We’re told to pray
without ceasing, so this should already be part of our
Christian lives but often it isn’t. Confess your sins. I’m
not perfect and neither are you. Realizing this serves as a
reminder that everyone we are trying to reach suffers from
the same problem of sin as we do.
Ask God to prepare your heart so that
when you go out, you aren’t aiming for personal glory or
even just to add numbers to your church. Ask God to
eliminate any and all pride so that whatever is done would
be for His glory and His alone. And ask that God would use
you to reach other people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When we work for God, we aren’t working under our own
strength but under God’s.
Next, as you prepare, you need to know
what you are talking about. That’s why you need to be
reading your Bible and constantly searching the scriptures
for truth. This isn’t something that simply makes good
sense, it’s something that we are commanded by scripture to
do. In 1 Peter 3:15, Peter writes, “Always be prepared to
give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason
for the hope that you have.”
This doesn’t mean that you’ll be able
to answer every question a person may have about
Christianity. I can’t answer every question about
Christianity and you shouldn’t be expected to either. When
posed with a question we can’t answer we can look for
answers and get back to a person. Where our responsibility
lies, is that we are able to tell anyone why we are a
Christian, the difference Christ has made in our lives, and
why they should be Christians too.
We should be able to tell a person how
they can become a Christian. This may sound odd but a lot of
people have their objective to get a person into church.
After that, they believe it is the pastor’s responsibility.
If a friend would ask them how to be saved, they wouldn’t be
able to explain it in non-Christian terms. Believe it or
not, many Christians, although they themselves are saved, do
not know how to explain to another person how to be saved.
Using phrases like, “ask Jesus into
your heart”, or “believe in Jesus and be saved” might mean
something to us, but to the unchurched, they sound very
weird and confusing. How do I ask Jesus in my heart? How do
I know if he’s in there? How do I believe in Jesus? I
believe that he lived, he was a real person. Is that enough?
Know how to explain salvation to someone else without using
confusing terms! In Appendix A, I have included a list of
terms, many of them suggested by my students online, that
should probably be avoided when explaining the gospel.
As an exercise, I suggest that you write down how you would
tell someone how to be saved. Sure, you are saved but can
you explain it to someone else? Try to avoid phrases that a
non-Christian may find confusing.
Next Section -
The
Foundation
