Most people do not have these
experiences. They don’t travel for business nor have they
had any wonderful experience where they just met someone and
they lead them to Christ an hour later. This doesn’t mean it
can’t happen. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, even more
often than any of us realize. However, these stories, while
meant to encourage us that God can do anything, sometimes
discourage us because we feel that we can’t do these things
or that God isn’t doing these things through us.
The second reason that I haven’t
included any such stories is because these things haven’t
happened to me. I am not a gifted evangelist. Other books on
evangelism have been written by people who are gifted
evangelists who are telling you what works for them. If you
are not gifted in that way it is very hard to get the same
results.
Instead, I am like Apollos, I water
what has been given to me. This is what I do best. As you
have learned by now, there are a lot of people who have
heard the gospel and think that they are saved but do not
actually understand it and live it. I am best able to reach
these people. If the opportunity to present the gospel to an
unbeliever arises I am able to do so but I work best with
those who already have some understanding (or better said,
misunderstanding) of the gospel.
You may be totally the opposite. You
may love going door to door to invite people to a church
event or striking up a conversation with anybody that you
happen by. That’s great. God made us different and we are
better equipped to deal with different people.
Paul and Apollos were probably very
different in personality and approach to evangelism. God
used both of them to reach different people at different
levels of spirituality. It is a good thing they we aren’t
all alike and it is a good thing that we don’t all follow
the same method for evangelism.
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