|
A Closer Look at
Witnessing
Witnessing and watching the
results of our ministry can be frustrating or rewarding depending on our
accurate understanding of what is going on: what our part is, what God's part
is, and what part the person to whom we are witnessing has. So let's look at all
3 for some clarity here...
In the simplest of terms, our part is to deliver the Word of God,
kind of like taking a bag of seeds and scattering handfuls all over the place.
You can't improve on the raw Word of God, that is, Bible verses, pure and
simple. You can devise any number of clever evangelistic schemes or
explanations, but in the final analysis, it is the inherent power hidden in
Bible verses that transmits the life-changing energy to a person. This is a
great mystery..and it took me many years to discover it. Consider
this...
Isa 55:11 (KJV)
So shall my Word be
that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return
unto me void,
but it shall
accomplish that which I please,
and it shall
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
God's part in the witnessing process is to empower the delivered Word by means of the Holy
Spirit and to drive the message home into the consciousness of the person whom
you witness to. God must clear away all the hardness and spiritual debris which
gets in the way of penetrating to the part of that person's mind that allows him
to decide whether to accept or reject God's offer of
salvation.
Now, once the clear Word of God is
presented to the person, perhaps with some explanation from the seed-sower, it
is that person's responsibility to act on what they have
heard....they can either accept The Word gladly, ask for more
information, accept Christ, or reject the Word and turn away from Christ.
Consider this verse...
Deu 30:19 (KJV)
I call heaven and
earth to record this day against you,
that I
have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
therefore choose
life,
that both thou and
thy seed may live:
Ezek 2:3-7a (TLB)
"Son of
dust," he said,
"I am
sending you to the nation of Israel, to a nation rebelling against me.
They and
their fathers have kept on sinning against me until this very hour.
{4}
For they are a hardhearted, stiff-necked people.
But I am
sending you to give them my messages--the messages of the Lord God.
{5}
And whether they listen or not (for remember, they are rebels),
they will at
least know they have had a prophet among them.
{6}
"Son of dust, don't be afraid of them;
don't be
frightened even though their threats are sharp
and barbed
and sting like scorpions.
Don't be
dismayed by their dark scowls.
For
remember, they are rebels!
{7}
You must give them my messages whether they listen or
not.
The probability of success of any
witnessing, as with any attempt at farming, is in the quality or preparation of
the soil prior to the introduction of the seed. (See the
parable of the sower and the soil. Matt 13:13-23) but let's
modernize it a little by imagining we stand up in the middle of crowded
lunchroom and start reading Bible verses about salvation to the crowd.
According to the parable of the sower there will be at least 4 types of response
to this action....
I am sure that you could classify your
acquaintances into one or other of these categories. If you can't, it probably
means you have not been doing a lot of witnessing to these
people.
One thing to notice is that not much is
known about the sower himself. Some of his qualifications
are:
But aside from that, once the word has
been delivered, God confronts the person of the claims of Christ, and it is up
to that person to decide for or against God. And remember, to put off deciding
now, is to decide AGAINST God. As God says:
Heb
3:7-8 (KJV)
Wherefore as the Holy Ghost
saith,
To day if ye will
hear his voice, {8} Harden not your hearts,
as in the provocation, in
the day of temptation in the wilderness:
Now I have said all that to say
this...If your life is free from overt or unconfessed sin, (which is about the
only thing you could do to hinder the spreading of the Gospel), you dont have to
worry about anything else you are doing when you are witnessing. The Word of God
contains its own inherent power to change lives.
Heb
4:12-13 (KJV)
For the word of God
is quick, and powerful,
and sharper than any
twoedged sword,
piercing even to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit,
and of the joints and
marrow,
and is a discerner
of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
{13} Neither is
there any creature that is not manifest in his sight:
but all things are
naked and opened
unto the eyes of him with
whom we have to do.
Once you have given out the Gospel, in
effect, your job is only to water from time to time or add a little fertilizer,
but the transaction is all between God and the recipient. Your silent witness
carries on without doing anything because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in
your heart.
2 Cor 2:14-17 (TLB)
But
thanks be to God!
For
through what Christ has done, he has triumphed over
us
so that
now wherever we go he uses us to tell others about the Lord
and to
spread the Gospel like a sweet perfume.
{15}
As far as God is concerned
there
is a sweet, wholesome fragrance in our lives.
It is the fragrance of Christ within us,
an
aroma to both the saved and the unsaved all around us.
{16}
To those who are not being saved,
we seem
a fearful smell of death and doom,
while
to those who know Christ we are a life-giving perfume.
But who
is adequate for such a task as this?
{17}
Only those who, like ourselves, are men of integrity, sent by God,
speaking with Christ's power,
with
God's eye upon us....
Now, before you present the Gospel to a
person, you should be interceding for that person and asking God to prepare
their heart (the soil) to receive the Word. Perhaps God will cause some negative
thing to happen in their life, a loss or a tragedy, or an opening of their
spiritual eyes in some other way..so that when God moves you to present the
Gospel to the person, they will respond in the right way.
In fact, all successful evangelism is
preceded by seasons of prayer for those who will receive the Word. There was a
famous Christian missionary named "Praying John Hyde", whose ministry method was
in spending hours and hours in prayer for the salvation of people..to such a
result that people would start coming to him and begging to hear the Gospel...or
when he prayed in partnership with a travelling evangelist, he just stayed in
the back room and prayed for the salvation of the congregation, and people would
start coming forward before the preacher even spoke one word. (see the book "The
Kneeling Christian" by An Unknown Christian....or " Praying Hyde: the Life of John Praying
Hyde" by E.G.
Carre)
And as you pray for others and spend
long sessions in prayer, seeking God's face, He will start changing you, causing
you to become more Christlike...causing you to have a love for His word and a
passion to obey it, and "to become transformed by the
renewing of your mind" (Rom 12:1-3),
so that just by living in
communion with God and
rejoicing in the presence of Christ in you heart, your life will become a light set on a hill to draw people
to Christ.
God bless you as you seek to serve
Him.
in Christ...brother
bob..........<><
IXTHEUS CHRISTIAN GROWTH DEVOTIONALS
ALWAYS FREE OF
CHARGE
(but not necessarily free
of COST)
Feel free to redistribute
these materials to whomever you want.
Please submit all
questions, comments, suggestions,
or
REQUESTS FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Request a free email copy of my evangelistic
presentation:
"The God Who is Really There" from [EMAIL PROTECTED]
View back-issues of Devotionals at this
site:
send an email with CANCEL in the subject
line to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
God Bless You.....brother
bob.......<><
For more information, please visit our home page http://www.nazerene.com Yahoo! Groups Links
|
