Going for the heart
I’m not sure why I woke up thinking about evangelism, but I did. It’s one of those things that we don’t talk about a lot because we’ve reduced it and analyzed it into something it was never intended to become. The result? We’re intimidated by it and pretty sure we’re not called to do it.
And yet, we evangelize everyone about everything else.
We talk about our aches and pains, our hopes and dreams. Our jobs, our families, our opinions. We tell people about the great deal we got on the last great purchase or the best place to get a coffee, a dinner, or a dessert.
Oh, we evangelize all the time. We just don’t talk a lot about Jesus. And that’s a shame, because of all the good things we talk about, He’s actually the Good News.
We’ve reduced evangelism to an academic exercise that requires us to know all the answers to all the objections, and yet no one who is in love talks about the object of their affection in that way.
Evangelism was never about God proving how wrong we were so that He could beat His chest and be right. It was about showing how good He is so that He could pull us into His chest and we could be loved. Take the love out of evangelism and you’re left with nothing more than a cold, sterile flow chart of objections and answers.
But evangelism isn’t about winning arguments; it’s about winning affections.
What was it the woman at the well said after her conversation with Jesus? Was it come meet a man who answered every question she had about life and the origin is of the world? Nope.
The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” (John 4:28-29 NLT, emphasis mine)
What she was really saying, “Come meet a man who knows everything about me and still saw me, noticed me, and talked with me.” She had asked a lot of questions trying to get information, but Jesus bypassed all of that and went straight for the heart.
Information can change our minds, but transformation begins in the heart. That’s why evangelism has to be about more than just facts. It has to touch and challenge the heart. Guess what happens when it does?
So the people came streaming from the village to see him. (John 4:30 NLT, emphasis mine)
When’s the last time you saw people “streaming” to get into a church service to see Jesus? When the Good News about Jesus touches our hearts like it did that woman’s, we, like her, will become the best evangelists the world has ever known. Not because we’ll have all the answers, but because the love of Jesus in our hearts will matter more to us than all the questions.
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