By David ReayWednesday 15 Jul 2020LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. (NLT)
It has been too often the case that Christians think of evangelism as inviting people to evangelistic functions at church. Or to think of witnessing as verbally explaining what and why we believe. These things have their place, but we must not confine our understanding of faith sharing to church invites or verbal explanations.
Faith sharing best happens where there is a pre-existing community. So a church member will likely do more faith sharing in a non-church environment. The church becomes primarily a place where we are enthused and equipped to so share our faith rather than a place to which we may invite people. To put it more crudely, we bring our faith into the world rather than insisting the world come to us.
And the New Testament puts much emphasis on our good works in regards to faith sharing. Words have their place and do matter, but unless our lives in some way back up those words, our witness will fall short. Good evangelism is like a good song. We need the right words, but we also need the right music. The music is the godly nature of our lives.
Seeing it this way means we infect the world with the good news of Jesus. And as a result, those who may initially be hostile to Jesus may come to be reconciled to him. We become carriers of a life giving infection.
Blessings
David