Usually, at the commencement of her work, a speaker or writer would want to establish her credibility for the work. My credibility for writing an article with the above title is the fact that I have been a Christian for 14 years and I have only made one “convert”. Yup, only one, in spite of all my “efforts”.
Why this miserable “failure”? This must be the topmost question in your head. As if it’s not the topmost question in my head! But anyway, as I look back, I think I employed the wrong approach. I always had it in my head that Christianity is the “true religion” and I consciously and subconsciously set out to prove it. Prove it through all kinds of “evidence”. But my audience was not the right kind to be receptive to this approach. They were mostly well educated and widely read. They new that their own religion and others had their “evidence” too. I was told this a few times but I did not take it seriously. Until recently, I lent the book God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew to a Muslim friend. Of course I asked him what he thought of it after he finished reading it. (At least he finished reading it.) His response was very interesting. He learned that God did not just help the Muslims. He told me he had read many similar books about Muslim missionaries who went out in faith and how God worked miraculously on their behalf. So I am not sure if he’s more surprised that God also helped Christians or I that God also helped Muslims!
Some Christians will fall back on verses like: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matt. 4:45b) Which is true but shallow. Others dismiss the miracles as coincidences, which is even worse because it is stubborn denial. My point is, Christians can be
so naïve; we live in the rabbit-holes of our churches and try to survey the sky from the bottom of the well (Chinese proverb). Looking back, I have to admit that if I were in my friends’ shoes, in those days, I wouldn’t have been attracted to Christianity.
But what’s different about our faith then? Or is it different? I believe it is. But the difference is more than skin deep. It goes right to the heart of man. A person who becomes a Christian must believe that he’s a sinner who has fallen short of the perfect standards of God and that only Jesus can save him. This is ultimately something we need to believe. And only the Holy Spirit can cause someone to believe. This is good news and bad news. Good news because it’s not our job to “convert” people. Bad news because it’s out of our hands and, well, it’s gonna take more effort on our part to prepare the ground. It has been said that God’s timing is usually slower than ours!
I think 1 Pet. 3:15b provides a good model for evangelism: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” This is how I understand it, in practical terms, at least when applied to people like my friends. “Always be prepared to give an answer” means learn more about our own faith and other faiths. We need to speak confidently about our faith. The Holy Spirit will help us, of course, but this is no excuse for laziness. Also, we need to talk about other faiths accurately, and not be misrepresent them as something they are not. That would be laughable to anyone who knows better. “To everyone who asks you” means sometimes it is better not to say anything but wait until people ask us. For them to ask us, we need to spend time with them and share our lives with them. No hit-and-run evangelism. “Reason for the hope that you have” means why we do not shipwreck our faith despite the many storms that we encounter. We need to show by our lives that Jesus is different. We show this by being different ourselves, but superficially but in times of great difficulty. “Gentleness and respect” means we mustn’t assume that others are stupid. Evangelism is not a project. If we sense it when others make a project out of us, and we hate it (no matter how nice they try to be to us), we ought to know that others also sense it and hate it (no matter how nice we try to be to them).
Now I only hope that the rest of my life shall be long enough, God willing, for me to apply the above. Hopefully by the end of my life I shall be qualified to write anarticle with a different title. Proverbs 11:30 says: “He who wins souls is wise.” But some versions read: “He who is wise, wins souls”. I guess if we are wise in our approach, we will eventually win souls. May God use us and bless our sincere efforts to bring our friends and loved ones to Him. |
