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March 30 - April 21, 2017
there are street preachers who share their message while still greeting people kindly, getting to know others’ troubles, and praying over personal pains, but I never saw them. What I saw were men who would stand on street corners accosting the public with their beliefs. No doubt they reached a few, but they repelled many more. Unfortunately, I have found that many Christians think of evangelism the same way, foisting Christian beliefs on strangers in chance encounters. The problem with this approach is that the gospel requires a radical life change, and not many people are about to listen to
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On the other hand, if a true friend shares the exact same message with heartfelt sincerity, speaking to specific circumstances and struggles, then the message is heard loud and clear. Effective evangelism
requires relationships. There are very f...
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This is only one of the reasons why a strong friendship is critical. A surface-level relationship might snap under the tension of disagreement, but by living our lives together, we were forced to reconcile.
These are the costs Muslims must calculate when considering the gospel: losing the relationships they have built in this life, potentially losing this life itself, and if they are wrong, losing their afterlife in paradise. It is no understatement to say that Muslims often risk everything to embrace the cross.
Some might ask why I did not just go ahead and recite the sinner’s prayer. The answer is quite simple: I had never heard of the sinner’s prayer. All I knew was that I loved the God of the Bible, and so I pursued Him more and more by reading as much as I could.
Jesus answered in the next verse: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” It was not that Jesus was turning me against my parents. It was that, if my family stood against God, I had to choose one or the other. God is obviously best, even if that caused me to turn against my family. But how? How could I bear the pain?
While I was wallowing in self-pity, focused on myself, there was a whole world with literally billions of people who had no idea who God is, how amazing He is, and the wonders He has done for us. They
are the ones who are really suffering. They don’t know His hope, His peace, and His love that transcends all understanding. They don’t know the message of the gospel.
I now realize this is a common problem. The honor-shame paradigm, combined with the cost of following Jesus, paralyzes many former Muslims into secrecy and deception. I have even met an immigrant in America who has been a Christian for more than two decades and still has not told his parents that he left Islam. My counsel to all such new brothers and sisters in the faith is that they walk in the light and hide nothing. Jesus intends for us to walk openly and freely, whereas secrecy and deception are the domain of the devil. This is particularly important for Muslims from honor-shame contexts,
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The greatest lesson I learned in that time is that suffering binds us closer to Jesus and opens us to the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, more than anything else.
What people need before befriending Muslims is not advanced knowledge of Islam but a willingness to discover what is important to their Muslim friends and the desire to invest the time to learn and discuss those matters as the relationship progresses. When it comes to a basic knowledge of Christianity, though, it is important for people to be able to articulately explain what they believe and why. That, at least, is what 1 Peter 3:15 tells Christians to do.
