I have been on a journey for 30+ years as an adult “Christian” to come to realize in this past year how I had actually missed it. When I say, missed it, I mean that I knew how to act as a “Christian”, but didn’t truly KNOW God as the person in Mathew 7:21-23 discovered. I faithfully went to church, tithed, gave of my time, and even taught Sunday school and did evangelism here and abroad. I now see how I did this without KNOWING God. Now that I have come to truly KNOW Him I have come to see and understand in so many new ways. This blog has helped me tremendously. I have been working at sharing my journey with others and have been a little lost in how to help others in their journey beyond just sharing my experiences. What I previously thought evangelism was and even my training to actually go out and do now I see why it was so ineffective. I have also found a guy named Ray Comfort and have begun to adopt his approach to evangelism. We can’t just go out and proclaim the good news and share scriptures to validate God’s love for us and salvation through Jesus. Evangelism is much, much more then our efforts in sharing. Evangelism requires the Holy Spirit to be at work. We can’t do it. It is not our job. Before we can sow seed, we MUST remove rocks, clear the weeds and prepare the soil of ones heart before the Spirit of God can redeem a soul. Not only has my eternal destination changed this past year, but my understanding of our jobs as followers of Christ. I have come to understand our jobs. Matthew 22: 36-40 I believe is the “test” of a true conversion and believer. If we KNOW God then we KNOW His desires. God’s greatest desire is for His children to come to KNOW Him and we are charged with the task of helping bring others to Him. I think it is important to share that what I have learned is that evangelism isn’t leading people to salvation in Christ, but leading people to find and KNOW God. God must reveal Himself. We can’t do that for people as it is the job of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t come to KNOW God until I finally got tired of not understanding how one could prophecy, cast out demons, and perform miracles and not have eternal life. I literally cried out to God to show me how this was possible and God revealed to me the secret. It is simple and yet difficult – KNOW God. Again, I don’t think that we can truly KNOW God and not be about loving our neighbors or doing evangelism. Thank you again for your helping me better understand how to do this.

Oliver

Lots of us moved right away from that old approach, and what a relief it was. The pressure to “bring people to Christ” was off. And if we maintained our integrity we discovered that our non-evangelism was more effective, more real and more lasting than what we did before. Thanks for giving us this stimulating series.