Evangelism

It's a hard thing to do. God knows, I've never been able to do it right. All my non-christian friends still aren't Christian. I feel like I've driven people away from Christ more often than helped them find Him attractive. My life doesn't exemplify what I believe it means to have faith. In my discouragement, sometimes I'm too quick to give up on people, and worse yet to give up on God. It's something I need to work on, not just in the reaching out aspect.

Will God do it? I think that's the wrong question to ask. At least with the heart that says, if no, then I won't bother with them, or if yes, then I don't need to do anything more.
Can God do it? And if the answer is yes, then we can never give up. If the answer is no, then you need to find a new God who is capable of saving people. Find the Christian God, the one Jesus talked about.

You see in America our God is about a foot tall. And you look around and you have friend that are 5'2, 5'6, 6'0. Our Tv's are 27 inches our computers are 19 inches. What kind of metaphor am I trying to make? How about this? We make people bigger than God, we make entertainment bigger than God. The worst thing is we make the devil bigger than God. We're so scared of failing and messing up and getting sick and getting hurt... forget it. When are we going to realize how big God is? The apostles had a decent sized God. They turned the Middle East around in a matter of years. They didn't have money, publicity, big name speakers or musicians, but they had God. We have all the rest, but we don't have God. I heard a pastor once say "If you know God, you don't need to know anyone else. If you don't know God, then you need to know everyone else."

I like one of our IV staff workers because he has a good sized God. He quotes this passage in talking about God.

Isaiah 42 reads:
13 The LORD will march out like a mighty man,
like a warrior he will stir up his zeal;
with a shout he will raise the battle cry
and will triumph over his enemies.

14 "For a long time I have kept silent,
I have been quiet and held myself back.
But now, like a woman in childbirth,
I cry out, I gasp and pant.

15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills
and dry up all their vegetation;
I will turn rivers into islands
and dry up the pools.

I wish I believed the Bible more. What does it say changes the heart of a man? Us? God? Both of us working together? Miracles will make a person look twice, but love will change their hearts. If Christians loved others like we've never loved before, then people would take us seriously, then we'd be taking God and His Word seriously. I think the nature of evangelism has to be love.
We love the people we evangelize.
We evangelize by loving people.
We do it because we love God and to serve Him.

I may not know how people change, or at what point they change, but I can't stop trying, I can't stop praying. When we give up, nothing will happen. But in some sense we need to give up trying to do it ourselves because nothing will happen then either. It seems that love goes into everything. Or at least you need love to do everything right. That's probably a good place to start from.

Love More.