Dear Friends
Seconds after we had left the table in the Menlo Park Mall, one of
our team members was sharing with his first prospect. You see John was a part
of an evangelism class at our church, and a few of us in the class had decided
to put feet to our faith and share Jesus in the mall’s food court.
Now while I have been a part of such ’cold calling’ evangelistic
ventures in the past, I always feel a degree of anxiety about going up to a
stranger and witnessing. I know the chances are high, that I may face ridicule
and rejection, and most people I know don’t enjoy these kinds of conversational
outcomes.
Now when it comes to sharing my faith, I am much more relationally
oriented. I prefer building a relationship with someone before sharing my faith
with them, but I know that we are called to share our faith in season and out
of season, and we are commanded to go into all the world and proclaim the
Gospel, and a crowded food court seems as much a part of the world as any. And so,
after prayer, and armed with gospel tracts, we set out on our mission to share
our faith.
I would be the first one to agree that this kind of witnessing is
not as effective in today’s church culture as other forms of evangelism, but if
it was good enough for the believers in the early church, I presume it ought to
be good enough for believers today. If we are told to go into all the world and
share the gospel, I guess a food court is as much a part of the world as any,
so off we went.
Those early disciples were told that they no longer could preach
the gospel in the streets and in public places, but that didn’t deter them, for
we find them preaching Christ everywhere they went, even on the steps of the
Jewish temple which would be a plenty dangerous place to preach.
After being arrested for witnessing and healing a lame man and
being told to cease their witnessing Peter and John said,” Whether it is right
in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we
cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).
As American Christians, we have enjoyed relative freedom when it
comes to sharing our faith, but things are now changing. Today, among all
religions, Christianity is the most persecuted religion of any and the
persecution is becoming more and more intense. Those who rule are continually
discovering ways to muzzle our message. In fact, only a few minutes after
we began witnessing, we were confronted by security who told us we must cease
as we did not have official permission to witness in the mall.
However, despite the growing resistance to those seeking to
proclaim our faith, the good news is that it is during times of persecution
that the church has always grown the most.
Sometimes like Peter and the Apostles, we must stiffen our
spiritual backbones and go for it. Sometimes we have to say, “Enough is enough”
and with Peter simply proclaim, “We must obey God and not man” (Acts 5:29).
Billy Graham once said. “Courage is contagious. When a brave man
takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened” (The Right to Lead,
John Maxwell, p. 23).
I closed with an example of that kind of courage we should all
possess. A 19th century circuit- riding preacher named Peter Cartwright was
prepared to deliver a sermon on Sunday when he was warned that President Andrew
Jackson would be in attendance. Cartwright was asked to keep his remarks
inoffensive. During that message, Cartwright included this statement: “I have
been told that Andrew Jackson is in this congregation. And I have been asked to
guard my remarks. What I must say is that Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he
doesn't repent of his sin.”
After the sermon, Jackson strode up to Cartwright. “Sir,” the
President said, “if I had a regiment of men like you, I could whip the world.”
It is true that courage, as someone has said, can be defined by a
three-letter word and the word is "YES."
May there be more and more “Yeses” in our spiritual vocabulary
when it comes to sharing our faith
Yours in faith and friendship,
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