Christianity has always been a missionary religion. However, statistics show that only about 3 percent of Christians ever share their faith, in spite of the fact that telling others the good news about Jesus is commanded in the Great Commission:
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19-20 NIV)
With such a clear directive from Jesus, why is it that 97 percent of us disobey by never telling another person that they can have a relationship with Christ? There are several reasons, ranging from a fear of rejection to the belief that we don’t know enough. I think one of the biggest reasons, however, is that we’re simply not alert to the opportunities that come our way every day.
Many Christians today only think about sharing their faith when their pastor preaches on the need for all of us to be engaged in evangelism. Then any thoughts about telling the Good News to their family, friends, neighbors, and anyone else the encounter vanishes until the next sermon or the next time the church offers an evangelism class. This was not the case with Jesus’ first disciples, however, and we have the same Holy Spirit they had.
The book of Acts is filled with examples of men just like us making the most of every opportunity to share their faith:
1. Then Peter took the lame man by the right hand and helped him up. And as he did, the man’s feet and ankles were instantly healed and strengthened. He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk! Then, walking, leaping, and praising God, he went into the Temple with them.
All the people saw him walking and heard him praising God. When they realized he was the lame beggar they had seen so often at the Beautiful Gate, they were absolutely astounded! They all rushed out in amazement to Solomon’s Colonnade, where the man was holding tightly to Peter and John.
Peter saw his opportunity and addressed the crowd. “People of Israel,” he said, “what is so surprising about this? And why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by our own power or godliness? For it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of all our ancestors—who has brought glory to his servant Jesus by doing this. This is the same Jesus whom you handed over and rejected before Pilate, despite Pilate’s decision to release him. You rejected this holy, righteous one and instead demanded the release of a murderer. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. And we are witnesses of this fact!
“Through faith in the name of Jesus, this man was healed—and you know how crippled he was before. Faith in Jesus’ name has healed him before your very eyes.
“Friends, I realize that what you and your leaders did to Jesus was done in ignorance. But God was fulfilling what all the prophets had foretold about the Messiah—that he must suffer these things. Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah. (Acts 3:7-20 NLT)
When we read this passage the natural inclination is to focus on the healing of the lame beggar; after all, that’s not something you see every day. But in only seeing the miracle God performed through Peter, we overlook Peter using the miracle as an opportunity to turn the conversation away from himself and toward Jesus. The people were marveling at the miracle, and Peter saw his chance to tell them about the One who enabled him to perform it. How many times every day could we start a conversation about Christ with someone simply by stopping long enough to give the praise and credit for a positive event to the Author of all blessings?
2. As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, “Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and he met the treasurer of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under the Kandake, the queen of Ethiopia. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage, he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and walk along beside the carriage.”
Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
The man replied, “How can I, unless someone instructs me?” And he urged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit with him.
The passage of Scripture he had been reading was this:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter.
And as a lamb is silent before the shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
He was humiliated and received no justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”
The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, was the prophet talking about himself or someone else?” So beginning with this same Scripture, Philip told him the Good News about Jesus.
As they rode along, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look! There’s some water! Why can’t I be baptized?” He ordered the carriage to stop, and they went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. (Acts 8:26-38 NLT)
In this passage, Philip was led by the Holy Spirit to a particular location, but it was still up to him to recognize the opportunity and make the most of the situation. When he heard the Ethiopian official reading from the book of Isaiah he asked a simple question: “Do you understand what you are reading?” And the man answered honestly that he needed someone to help explain it to him. Many people would like to know more about what the Christian life is all about, but we don’t bother to initiate a conversation with them. Even when we find ourselves engaged in a conversation about spiritual things with a non-Christian we are often afraid to share what Jesus has done in our lives because we don’t want to risk offending anyone. Many are as eager to hear as the man in this passage was, and we should not hesitate to share the Gospel with them.
3. While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply troubled by all the idols he saw everywhere in the city. He went to the synagogue to reason with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and he spoke daily in the public square to all who happened to be there.
He also had a debate with some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. When he told them about Jesus and his resurrection, they said, “What’s this babbler trying to say with these strange ideas he’s picked up?” Others said, “He seems to be preaching about some foreign gods.”
Then they took him to the high council of the city. “Come and tell us about this new teaching,” they said. “You are saying some rather strange things, and we want to know what it’s all about.” (It should be explained that all the Athenians as well as the foreigners in Athens seemed to spend all their time discussing the latest ideas.)
So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.
“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone.
“God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:16-31 NLT)
For many of us, this is actually the worst possible scenario. As hesitant as we might be initiating a conversation about our faith, answering someone who asks us to explain it can be even more intimidating. This is why Peter tells us to always be ready to give the reason for the hope we have in Christ (1 Peter 3:15). But Paul did not shy away from speaking to the intellectuals of Athens, and we should not be afraid of those who challenge us to defend our faith today. Paul did not attack the many gods they worshipped, but rather pointed them to the one true God. We can follow his example, not needing to get into debates about science or philosophy but simply sharing the Gospel.
So what is the Gospel we’re supposed to share? The gospel, the evangel, the good news that Jesus brought is not nearly as complicated as we often try to make it. In a nutshell, Jesus’ message was that we have all sinned and none of us deserve Heaven. But God loved us enough, even while we weren’t loveable, that He sent Jesus to take the penalty that we deserved. The apostle Paul put it this way:
“My friends, I want you to remember the message that I preached and that you believed and trusted. You will be saved by this message, if you hold firmly to it. But if you don’t, your faith was all for nothing. I told you the most important part of the message exactly as it was told to me. That part is: Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say. He was buried, and three days later he was raised to life, as the Scriptures say. Christ appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. After this, he appeared to more than five hundred other followers. Most of them are still alive, but some have died. He also appeared to James, and then to all of the apostles. Finally, he appeared to me.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-8 CEV).
Jesus said in Luke 19:10 that he “came to seek and save the lost.” How does He save us? When asked how to be saved, the apostle Paul gave this answer: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…for if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Acts 16:31, Romans 10:9 NIV).
That’s the Good News. We can keep it to ourselves if we want, but we’re disobeying Jesus by doing so. We should never forget that the only reason any Christian has the assurance of eternal life is because someone shared the Gospel with them first. We need to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to tell people about Jesus, because the Gospel is the best news there ever was. We should seize every chance we get to share it.
