“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20I admit that I have trouble with this. When I think of evangelizing, I have visions of televangelists with big hair and fake tears. “Churchy” lingo makes me cringe. And if it makes me, a church-going Christian cringe, then how must it make the un-churched person feel? I have some un-churched friends, even a very atheist friend (but I’m still praying for her!) and I know as soon as Christianese enters conversation, they send up a big concrete wall and none of it gets through to them.
But for a long time, all I knew were the churchy words. I think it takes a lot more understanding to “get” the big concepts that the Bible teaches, and then to put them in our own words. We have to make it a natural part of conversation. The way we talk when God is the topic of conversation shouldn’t sound significantly different from the way we talk about any topic. I don’t mean to be irrevrent about it, but we shouldn’t suddenly switch gears to “sound holy” when we speak of the Bible, or our relationship with Christ. I have finally realized that it takes doing it– actually talking about Christ, and about my relationship with him– to become comfortable with it. If I feel uncomfortable talking about it, that will show in conversation, and I’ll most likely end up making the other person uncomfortable, too. And that sure won’t make them want to know Christ.
What I am trying to do is to become so comfortable talking about Christ that my enthusiasm about life with him will come shining through. I want to live my life in a way that glorifies him. I want to live joyfully, so that those who know me (but don’t yet know Christ) will want to know what my “secret” is. And when they ask, or when the opportunity comes for me to bring it up, I want to talk about Jesus in a way that makes them want to get to know him, too. Without “preaching” at them or thumping a Bible. (That part can come later.)
The other day, I finally watched the “Cardboard Testimony” video I’ve heard about from friends. If you haven’t seen this, you can find it on YouTube. Watching the people walking by with their cardboard testimonies was pretty powerful, but the part that spoke to me the most was at the end of the video. A man (the pastor, maybe??) asked, what if this was the greeting committee for you when you reached heaven? Because of what you had done and the lives you had touched here on earth, all these souls waited to greet you and thank you for the part you had in getting them to heaven. Wow. That is definitely something to strive towards. Will I have a welcoming committee like that? Will you?
