Are there others skills that free us in personal witness?

What are skills that will help believers gain greater freedom in witness? We need to learn how to ask good questions! Think about it. What were God’s primary ways of communicating to people in the Bible? He asked questions and he told stories. Yet what do we do? We give answers and preach sermons! We need to learn from Jesus, the Master question asker, how to ask good questions. We must also learn how to arouse curiosity in seekers. Surely Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman reveals his mastery of arousing curiosity. This is closely associated with another skill: learning how to raise the topic of faith without sounding artificial and contrived.  All of these skills will free believers and give them confidence. But these skills must be seen in the context of incarnational reality:  developing sincere, caring friendships with those who do not know God.

I have been discussing in the last three blogs the relational aspect of evangelism which is centered in expressing the love of Christ: by being respectful, listening carefully, loving sincerely. It is imperative that we “Get the Story Out” by demonstrating the love of Christ. But there are other foundational and critical aspects to being a witness. We hope to be addressing some of these issues in future blogs. Such as, how do we “Get the Story the Straight”? How do we faithfully, bravely and creatively proclaim the gospel? And besides that, how do we “Take the Story In”?  We need more than communication and content skills to be an effective witness. We must depend on the power of the Holy Spirit as we go about witnessing.

 So let us equip our churches and student groups to become inwardly strong, yet outwardly focused with people who are ablaze with the love of Jesus! If we love people with the love of Christ, we will have to grapple with their beliefs in order to understand them better and to be able to respond in a thoughtful, articulate, clear way. But the Holy Spirit will enable us to be courageous and the love of Christ in us will enable us to reach across all barriers to understand and love those we thought impossible to reach. Let us remember that while only some are called to be evangelists, we are all called to be missionaries, that is to live on the very frontiers of God’s redemptive involvement in our world.  Being available to the Lord of the Harvest in whatever way he chooses is the most exciting way to live. Seeing lives and communities transformed by the Gospel of Christ – is there anything more thrilling than that?