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by Dr. Bill BrightYou Can Change Your World
Some time ago, a young businessman who had just prayed with me and received Christ as his Savior and Lord exclaimed with tears of joy and gratitude, “You must bring a lot of happiness into this world!” He added, “My wife and I have been looking for God for some time. I can hardly wait to take the Four Spiritual Laws booklet home so I can introduce my wife to Christ.”
Over the years, the words of this joyful, young Christian have come to my mind again and again: “You must bring a lot of happiness into this world.”
Since 1944, I have had the exciting privilege of “bringing a lot of happiness into this world” by sharing the Lord Jesus Christ with tens of thousands of students and lay people around the world. In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul described this experience of bringing the gospel to others:
“Everywhere we go we talk about Christ to all who will listen” (Colossians 1:28, TLB).
You and I have the privilege of participating with our living Lord in the fulfillment of His Great Commission in our generation (Matthew 28:18–20). Just before He ascended to heaven after His resurrection, Jesus gave us this mandate to go into all the world to make disciples.
In my opinion, the only way to change the world is to change individuals. Changed people, in sufficient numbers, will produce changed campuses, changed communities, changed cities, changed states and nations - yes, in a very real sense, a changed world. Jesus Christ is the only One who can change people from within. We can help change the world by introducing people to Jesus Christ.
One of the greatest misconceptions so prevalent among Christians throughout the centuries is the idea that men and women do not want to know God. Wherever I go around the world, I find ample proof that the opposite is true. The Holy Spirit has created a hunger for God in the hearts of multitudes.
From my experience and through much observation, I am fully convinced that the majority of nonbelievers throughout the world are ready to receive Christ when properly approached with a clear and simple presentation of the gospel by a Spirit-filled witness.
Yet, tragically, most Christians have never introduced a single person to the Lord Jesus. There are two reasons for this.
First, the average Christian is living a defeated, spiritually impotent, fruitless, worldly (carnal) life. He is not walking in the fullness and control of the Holy Spirit. Many unfruitful believers feel like one Christian leader who explained his reluctance to witness for Christ, “My kind of Christianity is not worth exporting.” If this is true in your life, I encourage you to review my messages on the subjects of:
How You Can Experience God’s Love and Forgiveness,
How You Can Be Filled With the Spirit and
How You Can Walk in the Spirit.
The second reason most Christians do not witness is a lack of training. They have never been taught how to effectively communicate their faith in Christ. They have never learned how to begin a conversation about Christ, how to explain the gospel simply and clearly and how to lead a person to make a decision to receive Christ by faith. As a result, they feel frustrated and do not experience the joy of seeing someone come into God’s family.
In the coming pages, I want to share with you the reasons why it is so essential that we witness about Christ (which relates to our motives). I also want to explain how we can go about witnessing effectively (which concerns methods).
Why We Should Witness
Our Lord Jesus Christ came to earth to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). Today, He seeks the lost through the witness of His people. Permit me to give you eight reasons God desires all believers to share their faith with others:
1. As we witness, we bring glory to God. Jesus says in John 15:8,“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
2. The love of Christ compels us to share our faith (2 Corinthians 5:14). If you have experienced the love of the Lord Jesus, you will also want to introduce Him to others.
3. Sharing our faith is a direct command of Jesus Christ. He says, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Being a fisher of men means bringing men and women to Christ. Jesus also says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last” (John 15:16).
4. People without Christ are separated from God. Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The Word of God declares emphatically, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
5. God wants us to witness because of the benefits He offers to those who receive Christ. When we introduce others to Christ, they become children of God; their bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit; all their sins are forgiven - past, present, and future! They begin to experience the peace and love of God; they receive God’s direction and purpose for their lives; they experience the power of God to change their lives; and they can be certain that they have eternal life.
6. We benefit when we witness. Witnessing stimulates our spiritual growth. Witnessing leads us to pray and to study God’s Word and encourages us to depend on Christ. As we witness in the power of the Holy Spirit, we sow love and joy and peace. According to Galatians 6:9, God blesses us through what we sow for Him. Usually, we harvest the same seed we plant. For example, if we sow love, God will bless us with love. If we plant joy, we will experience joy. If we sow peace, we will reap peace. And always, the harvest is greater than the seed sown.
7. As we witness, we experience the tremendous privilege and honor of representing Jesus to the world. In 2 Corinthians 5:20, Paul writes, “We are Christ’s ambassadors. God is using us to speak to you: we beg you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, receive the love he offers you - be reconciled to God” (TLB).
Most people would consider it a high honor to serve as an ambassador for the head of their country - the president or king. As believers in Christ, we are ambassadors for the King of kings and the Lord of lords!
8. The Holy Spirit has been sent to provide the power for us to witness. Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). To fail to witness for Christ is to deny the Holy Spirit His right to empower and to use you to introduce others to our Savior.
How We Can Witness Effectively
As I have already indicated, many devout Christians fail miserably in their efforts to introduce others to Christ simply because they do not know how to go about it. Knowing how to witness often makes the difference between effective and ineffective witnessing. Before you can introduce others to Christ, you must:
- Know that you are a Christian.
- Have the empowering ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life.
- Learn how to present the distilled essence of the gospel so that the one with whom you are sharing will be able to make an intelligent decision for Christ as Savior and Lord.
Permit me to share several simple suggestions that will help you to introduce others to Christ as a way of life:
First, begin every day with prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to empower and lead you to those whose hearts He has prepared.
Second, relate to people in a loving, natural, personal way. Avoid being mechanical. Everyone responds to love. As you walk in love, the Holy Spirit will confirm to those with whom you are sharing your faith that you are genuine, that you are not simply trying to win an argument or promote a cause, and that you have taken time to talk to them because you truly love them with God’s love.
Not everyone you witness to will respond positively. Some may even be antagonistic. Remember, just as not all fruit in an orchard is ripe at the same time, so some individuals will be ripe for harvest and others will still be green - not yet ready to respond to the gospel. God may want to use you to sow the seed of the gospel or as an instrument of harvest. Whatever the case, relax and let Him do what He wants to do through you.
To make sharing your faith a way of life, consider every gospel conversation a great privilege and opportunity, not a legalistic responsibility. Think of God’s great love, of what knowing Him has meant to you and what it will mean to others when they receive Christ.
Third, use a clear, simple presentation of the gospel. There are many benefits of using an evangelistic tool such as the Four Spiritual Laws, which contains the distilled essence of the gospel. Let me list some of them:
- It enables you to open your conversation easily and naturally.
- It begins with a positive statement: “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.”
- It presents the gospel and the claims of Christ clearly and simply.
- It gives you confidence in your witnessing because you know what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.
- It enables you to be prepared at all times and to stick to the subject without getting sidetracked.
- It helps you to be brief and to the point.
- It enables you to lead others to a personal decision through a suggested prayer.
- It offers suggestions for spiritual growth, and emphasizes the importance of involvement in a church.
- Of special importance, it is a “transferable tool” that you can use to train those you introduce to Christ to lead others to Christ also.
Paul exhorted Timothy, his young son in the faith:
“The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2).
The Four Spiritual Laws is such a simple, transferable tool that it enables those who receive Christ to go immediately to friends and loved ones and tell them of their newfound faith in Christ. It also enables them to show those friends and loved ones how they, too, can make their own commitment to Christ.
