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many questions that are asked early during an evangelistic presentation are not real questions—they’re smoke screens. The questioner is trying to avoid the conviction that is sure to come when one confronts the gospel.
The message that has gripped our hearts and forms the centerpiece of our lives remains unspoken, unshared, and unproclaimed.
Questions bring these concepts into clearer focus for consideration and even acceptance.
But the reason I’d accept the gift of a pen is different than the reason I’d accept the gift of salvation. I don’t need a pen. I could find something else to write with. I could even live my entire life without using a pen. I probably already have a lot of pens, ones that I might like better than the one I’m being offered. I might accept a pen as a token of the giver’s generosity or as a display of friendship. But accepting salvation is different. If I correctly understand what I’m being offered by the Messiah’s death on a cross, I know that it’s something that I can’t live without (eternally,
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“The man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
You may win the argument but lose the person.
Until someone is more interested in truth than in airing his or her own opinions, it’s best to talk about the weather.
Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain. Give honest, sincere appreciation. Arouse in the other person an eager want. (That’s what a so-what testimony can do.) Become genuinely interested in other people. Smile. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.1
We are not primarily target-missers; we are self-centered false-target worshippers.
Thinking that you deserve to go to heaven is arrogant.
They must come to the painful realization that their notion of how people get to heaven (i.e., being good enough, never killing anyone, treating others nicely, etc.) doesn’t work.
Before people benefit from the good news, they’re likely to be bothered by the bad news. If our goal is to avoid conflict, we need a different message. If, on the other hand, our goal is to be truthful (something more difficult than open-minded) and loving (something far better than tolerant), then we have the perfect message and the ideal model of how to proclaim it.
revelation rejected brings darkness; revelation received brings light.
When people simply respond to pain with cold, calculated statements of theology, they deserve the title that Job gave his friends—“miserable comforters” (16:2).
God wants us to be strengthened to handle suffering, not informed so we can explain it.
We do not know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason is not. It cannot be that he does not love us. It cannot be that he does not care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself. He understands us, he has been there, and he assures us that he has a plan to eventually wipe away every tear. Someone might say, “But that’s only half an answer to the question ‘Why?’” Yes, but it is the half we need.2
Times like this will do one of two things: they will either make us hard and bitter and angry at God, or they will make us tender and open and help us reach out in trust and faith.… I pray that you will not let bitterness and poison creep into your souls, but you will turn in faith and trust in God even if we cannot understand. It is better to face something like this with God than without Him.
This kind of evangelism doesn’t sound like the normal kind—the kind that’s smooth and soft-spoken, like a well-oiled insurance policy sales pitch. But note how Jesus dealt with the Pharisees. I prefer His method over the sales pitch when dealing with people who are merely looking to justify their unbelief.
You say we cannot know anything unless we can prove it in a laboratory. But that statement cannot be proved in a laboratory. You say science is the best way to know things. That sounds like a philosophical assumption and not a scientific discovery. The belief that science is better than faith sounds like a faith belief.
You say that science is the only way to know things. How do you know that? Science is better than faith? Is that something you can prove in a laboratory? Isn’t belief in science a kind of faith assumption? It sounds like you and I are both people of faith. You have faith in science and I have faith in the God who makes a world where science makes sense. Does that make sense?
we might accomplish more by attempting less.
If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.
So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.
our goal in proposing these four factors is to get our friends to read the Bible, not to convince them to believe it. If it really is the inspired, powerful, untamed Word of a sovereign God, it can be trusted to do its own convicting, humbling, salvific, worship-inducing work.
The sooner we declare what the Bible says rather than defend how the Bible says it, the more powerful our case will be.
We must also look at all the words that Jesus spoke, not just the ones that fit on bumper stickers.
In other words, these verses make the case that having an attraction to someone of the same sex is merely a temptation; acting upon it is the sin.
Hmm, side B?
“You’re not homophobic, are you?” has the same endrun punch as “Have you stopped kicking your dog?”
“I’m not afraid of homosexual people, but I am afraid for them.”
How could we be obedient to these commands, or how can we identify the “false prophets” or the “swine,” without making some kind of negative evaluation? “Judge not” must mean something else.
Some of us think that straight lust is entertainment whereas gay lust is an abomination. God, however, sees them both as idolatry.
our silence is a failure to show the power of the gospel.
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.7
The aforementioned last plank might be the worst because it creates an environment of silence and secrecy—two of the devil’s favorite tools. How can people confess struggles that aren’t even allowed to be mentioned?
If we really love our neighbors as ourselves, we can’t just leave them alone.
In other words, sins are wasteful and enslaving, regardless of how forgivable they might be.
He could well have added, “Sure, you’ll be forgiven of this sin, but you won’t walk away untarnished.”
When you see sex as something that’s okay before marriage, you set yourself up for engaging in it outside of marriage. It’s not a guarantee, but statistically it often leads to destroying a marriage.
Instead, the woman felt bound to please or protect some other person, and abortion was the price she felt she had to pay.
“I knew it. I’d hoped there was such a thing as holiness and beauty and sexual fidelity, but there really isn’t, is there? You got my hopes up, stirring up something within me—something that might have been planted by God—but then you dashed those hopes to pieces. You did more than just disappoint me. You impaired my ability to see God clearly. If He’s holy and good and loving, the smear of your sin has tainted my lenses so I can’t see it.”
It could be said that the church is a haven for hypocrites—people who fail to perform according to the standards that they affirm.
The eternity that is planted in our hearts finds its initial fulfillment in our Savior’s cross, yet it longs for total fulfillment in the very presence of that Savior.
“I guess that one of the reasons why the church has so many jerks in it is because it’s the one place that acknowledges that we’re all jerks! But the church helps us find forgiveness for being a jerk as well as the power to stop being one.”
took the salvific vehicle of a big fish to turn Jonah’s heart around. (Read his prayer in chapter 2.) It takes another salvific vehicle, a cross, to get us into a similar posture.
Paul understood the cross as a scandal because it showed us how incapable we are of attaining kingdom righteousness by self-effort.
Buddhism seems right to many inquirers because it acknowledges an oft-neglected spiritual dimension of life. It also minimizes the difficulty of dealing with evil and pain, and appeals to people who are hassled by the noise and chaos of modern society. Sitting in silence for half an hour of meditation after fighting traffic and technology seems right to a lot of people.
Although Hannah’s anger at abortion was righteous, her feeling of helplessness overshadowed her concern for Nancy’s soul.
Resisting the “Me too” response can free you to focus on the feelings behind the words of the other person and keep the attention on that person.
Silence and especially true listening are often the strongest testimony of our faith. A
If we had let him talk even longer, he would have only hardened in his unbelief. Sometimes saying goodbye is the best evangelistic move.
“I don’t blame you for thinking there are no answers. There are more questions than answers, that’s for sure. But I think I know some of the answers.”
