Believer, The World Needs What You Have
January 23, 2023 • by Rebecca Manley Pippert
I’ve been sharing my faith and helping others to do the same for most of my adult life. My husband and I have traveled the world equipping churches, seminaries, and student ministries in how to be effective witnesses for Christ. Over the years, we have witnessed tremendous cultural changes that have produced genuine challenges for the gospel.
Yet one thing never changes: people’s desperate need for God. No matter how secular or hostile it may become, culture doesn’t have the power to erase the creational longings that God has placed in all humans: for meaning, love, purpose, identity, and connection.
If anything, the greater the darkness, the more the light of Christ shines!
So here’s the puzzle: Why do many Christians sincerely believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most wonderful, liberating news that God has ever given our weary planet, yet struggle to share it?
There are several answers to this, but one obstacle is simply this: we lack the confidence.
So here is what we need to remember: that God has given us everything we need to be an effective witness:
the Power of the Holy Spirit
the Power of Christ’s Love
the Power of God’s Truth
These are God’s divine resources that calm our fears, strengthen our faith, and empower us to share our faith boldly and effectively.
“God has given us everything we need to be an effective witness.”
The Power of the Holy Spirit
Even if You’re Not an Extrovert
I can’t count the number of times Christians have told me: “I can’t witness because I’m not gifted as an evangelist, nor am I an extrovert!”
But the risen Jesus, just before he ascended into heaven, did not say: “Go therefore, all you extroverts, evangelists, and pastors, and make disciples of all the nations. The rest of you, just hang out until I return.”
No, he said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).
Jesus commands every Christian to be his witnesses. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume (perhaps unconsciously) that it’s our gifts and personality that make us effective. Deep down, we think Jesus’ call to witness is reserved for extroverts and those gifted as evangelists. What makes all the difference is remembering that Jesus, the greatest evangelist who ever lived, dwells within us through the Holy Spirit. Evangelism depends upon the Lord’s power working through us, not our own.
Even if You Feel Inadequate
I also frequently hear: “I can’t witness because I feel so inadequate and weak at witness.”
But our weakness and inadequacy in evangelism is not a hindrance to God! He created us as creatures who are dependent. God knows our frame and limitations. They are no barrier for him.
The apostle Paul begged the risen Lord three times to remove what he felt was a debilitating weakness: a “thorn in the flesh.” But instead of a cure, Paul received a promise: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
What was Paul’s response? “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (v 9-10).
The primary question in evangelism (and life!) isn’t whether we are weak and inadequate—that’s a given. Rather, it is whether we will ask the Lord to use our weakness to glorify him, and trust that the Lord is able to work in and despite our weakness to do great things! It is as we accept our weakness that we will truly lean on the power of the Holy Spirit.
“Evangelism depends upon the Lord’s power working through us, not our own.”
The Power of Christ’s Love
Christians often say: “I fear the hostility that I may encounter if I witness.”
The Gospels reveal the model of Jesus’ love. We see Jesus listening—seeking to understand who he was speaking to. He asked questions so that he could get on their turf.
Jesus didn’t use a formula or have three set questions he asked everyone. Instead he looked for common ground, so he could build relational trust. He showed empathy and a desire to understand the other’s story.
If people see that we have a genuine desire to understand them, they become softer and less defensive. If people realize that we love them as people, just as Jesus did, and don’t merely see them as “evangelistic projects,” they are more likely to listen to what we know they most need—the gospel.
Nothing can change an unbeliever’s negative view of Christians and Christianity more quickly than them experiencing a Jesus-like love from his people, or them seeing a Jesus-like love in the way his people approach the social problems around us.
The Power of God’s Truth
Have you ever noticed that, when he was sharing his message, the metaphors Jesus used or the points he emphasized depended on the person he was talking to? His gospel did not change, but the way he connected it to the questions they had asked or the needs he had discerned did.
To the woman at the well in John 4, who had lived an immoral life, he framed the gospel in terms of living water that would quench the thirst she had tried, unsuccessfully and sinfully, to satisfy in other ways.
In the previous chapter, to Nicodemus, the great teacher of Israel, Jesus framed the gospel as needing to be born again. Jesus was saying to this deeply religious man that because sin is so serious, nothing less than becoming an entirely new creation—a new spiritual being—would suffice. Nothing he did—his good works, his religion, his position—could make him be “born again.”
How does the way you communicate the unchanging gospel take account of where people around you are at? Perhaps the hardest part of the gospel message to explain in our current cultural moment is the reality and seriousness of sin—because (unlike, say, 200 or 400 years ago) we live in a society that doesn’t believe in sin. So, I often describe the problem as us each having a God-complex. We get ourselves and God mixed up—we insist on running our lives as though we were wise and insightful and knowledgeable enough to know what’s best. And it’s exhausting. That’s because it’s way beyond our pay grade. And that is the attitude that the Bible calls sin—a rejection of our good Creator and a determination to sit in his place. But by talking about a God-complex and helping people realize that this is our normal approach to life and that it does not work out well, they are more ready to listen to us talk about what the Bible means by the word “sin.”
To this day God’s truth is still true. And when we communicate it faithfully and thoughtfully, just as the Lord Jesus did, we find it is no less powerful now than it has ever been.
The world Needs What You Have Found
We are living in unprecedented times. We face both deep challenges and enormous opportunities for the gospel. Evangelism may not be easy, but it is desperately needed. And to the extent that we remember and trust that God has given us everything we need for effective witness, we will stand up and speak up, inwardly strengthened through his Spirit, outwardly ablaze with the love of his Christ, and ready to proclaim his glorious, life-giving gospel.
Remember this: the world needs what we have found.
Rebecca Manley Pippert is the author of several books on evangelism and Christian living, including the best-selling Out of the Saltshaker and Stay Salt. She regularly speaks on spiritual renewal, evangelism and character formation for church conferences, at schools and colleges and in pastoral training seminars.
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