By David ReayTuesday 29 May 2018LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read Romans 12:9
9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; (NRSV)
Some approaches to personal evangelism are cringeworthy. The aim was to form a friendship with someone in order to get them converted. We were urged to be concerned with their souls and to become soul winners. Conversations were gently or not so gently turned into discussions about Christianity. We became marketers of a product rather than a genuine friend.
This is not to say that bringing someone to faith in Jesus is not important. It is about the most important thing we can do, having someone come from death to life and have assurance of being accepted by a gracious God. It is a mark of genuine love that we want someone to embrace Jesus.
So what is the problem? Simply one of proportion and perspective. We ought to aim at forming a genuine friendship that cares not only for their eternal destiny but their here-and-now existence. We ought to speak and act naturally without the inner tension of feeling we have to get all spiritual. Above all, we love others from the heart and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us into appropriate opportunities to show them something of God’s love in word and action.
We would love such friends to embrace Jesus and by our words and actions will encourage them to do so. But beneath it all is genuine friendship that loves them as they are whether they accept our faith or not. It boils down to job descriptions in the end. Our job is to love them, the Spirit’s job is to convict and convert them.
Blessings
David Reay