Christian Living

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Reasons to Evangelize

Even if the Word of God did not command it, there are still reasons to do so; the main one being the millions on the wide road to hell. Some don’t know God and they don’t want to know God, others think that if they do enough good in their lives they will go to Heaven. After all, God is a God of love and He will not turn them away if they tried really, really hard to be a good person. Unfortunately, that is the doctrine of works and it is of no value to God.

Many of us Christians live in the closet; by that I mean we do not want our friends to know we are a Christian because they might think ill of us and not want to be our friends any more. Although many of your friends will drop you because you no longer join in with their lifestyles, they will also disrespect you and Christianity as a whole if you are trying to be a secret Christian. Of course there is no such thing because you either are a Christian or not, you cannot be a Christian and live in a closet and if you try, you probably are not really a Christian. Sorry, I just had to say that.

So, once you become a Christian you will suddenly crave the things of God. You will want to know all about Him and fill yourself with His Word at every opportunity and generally you will not be able to keep it quiet so some of your friends and family are likely to think you took to drugs or went crazy; they will begin to distance themselves from you. You may think you are the same, but when you accepted Christ as your Savior your DNA changed and you became a child of the King. You will begin to worry about your friends and fear that they are going to hell, this causes your heart to break for them and your desire for evangelism grows. Since you are a baby Christian it is natural to have a little fear because you don’t know which Scriptures to use or what exactly to say at first. If you are still being silent after being a Christian for thirty years, you definitely should check to see if you were ever saved in the first place.

As a new Christian, my biggest fear was leading someone to Christ and doing it wrong – the person will think they are saved and are not, they will go to hell and it will be my fault because I did not do it right. This is a ploy of the devil, he convinces you that you are inadequate and lack the skills necessary to witness or to evangelize. However, we must remember; we are not doing the work of Salvation, which is the Holy Spirit’s job; we are only witnessing something that we know to be true. The person can accept it or reject it, but we have planted the seed by our words and that is all that is required of us. We may have opportunity again with that same person or someone else might witness to them and so the seed continues to grow until one day they make their decision.

If we look at evangelization as sharing the love of God with someone whom we love instead of grabbing them by the shirt, getting in their face, and announcing they are going to hell unless they listen, we would get better results. We may not be that forceful, but sometimes we are lacking in tact and it seems to the person that is exactly what we are doing. Another thing to remember is that your friends and family are watching you; your actions are one of the best forms of evangelizing you have. If you are living for God, they will soon want to know Him because they will crave what you have: peace, love and the assurance of eternal life. In conclusion, the reason to evangelize is the love for others planted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit and the desire for them to be with God forever.

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved: How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” (Romans 10:13 - 15 KJV). Once you are a Christian, you are the one bringing glad tidings – you may not be an ordained preacher, but you are a child of God and therefore a witness to Him and His love. It is in your DNA to evangelize, you can do nothing else.

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