Evangelism When You Don’t Feel Like It

Mar. 17 2008

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Here’s another story we received about sharing your faith with others. This one is from Nathan Lee.
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I didn’t really even mean to share.

It was a Thursday night and I had just gotten back to my dorm, to find my friend Asa outside in the hall. He was a fun guy, always wandering into our dorm in search of food or conversation – we always ended up talking about his life back in Jersey and all the really odd people he would run into. I really enjoyed those conversations usually, so I thought I’d stop and talk a bit.

We started by bemoaning Physics and how horribly we were doing in it, and this progressed into a discussion about Asa’s engineering group. People were walking up and down the hallway, and Asa’s roommate Nick came out and the three of us sat around and talked about school and life in general .
I was kind of tired. It was getting late-ish.

All of a sudden, I turned to Asa and I heard myself say, “So, what kind of a spiritual background do you have?”

At that moment I wanted to take back those words. It wasn’t like it was even part of the agenda or even on my mind to try to talk to these guys. I mean, I kind of wanted to (in general – along with everyone else at school I know), but I was not at all “ready” for an “evangelism session” – you know, when people kind of put on the bulletproof vest and the helmet and then go out sharing with all the answers to all the hard questions and everything.

Asa said his mom was Methodist, and his dad was a Catholic, and that he went to church mostly with his mom. He talked about how hypocrisy in the church really angered him, but he acknowledged the existence of God and the need for religion. Nick, on the other hand, was more of an agnostic. He said he mostly had a problem with organized religion, the kind that tells you that you need to give, give, give money to the church and gives nothing back. He was definitely coming from the mindset that religion is the “opium of the masses,” but also wanting everyone to be tolerant (a more postmodern mindset, I guess). I kind of asked how they thought they got to heaven, or to God… and both of their answers were basically: “do good things, be good to the right people, be a good person.”

Then they both kind of stopped, and said “What about you, Nathan? What do you believe?”

At this point I still wasn’t ready (I guess I never am?), so I asked God for help and then I said “Well, I’m a Christian – and I would kind of call myself non-denominational… kind of reformed…”

I don’t even remember what happened next.

We talked about the sinfulness of man, how we are all imperfect, and we can’t get to God, how God established the law and how we couldn’t meet it by our own efforts. I shared with them how the Bible says we all deserve hell. We talked about how God needs to be a good judge and can’t let sin go unpunished, how the punishment for a crime depends on the one whom the crime has been committed against. I tried to lay out the fact that we’re in a bad situation as sinners.

Asa and Nick were mostly quiet while I was talking. Nick was more vocal, being a more “That’s good for you, that would totally make sense if it was true”, but I noticed Asa was quieter, kind of thinking maybe. I went on and talked about Jesus and why he wasn’t just a “good person” and how he is the only way.

At the end of my sharing the Gospel, they were both quiet. I asked them what they thought? How they felt about it? Nick was still “Yea man, that’s really great for you, I respect that.” But Asa was still quiet. I invited them both to an Alpha preview night we were having on campus, and gave them some booklets. I am amazed at how God worked through that – even though I was tired and wasn’t necessarily “ready,” he still used me to share the message of the Gospel.

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If you want to send in your story about sharing Jesus and get a free copy of Mark Dever’s book ”The Gospel and Personal Evangelism” in return, you still can. We’ve got two copies of the book left.

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