Fulfilling Your Mission

This is a very well-known verse. It is the mission statement for the Church and for every believer, to spread the good news of the gospel to all creation. It isn’t reserved for evangelists, for those who have been Christians for many years, or for ministers and church leaders. It is for everyone from the moment they gave their lives to Christ.

It seems to me that not many of us are doing this. Perhaps it is because, as new followers of Jesus, we quickly become so immersed in Church life that our old life disappears. In one way that is a good thing, because we are now new creatures in Christ Jesus, but it’s a bad thing if we no longer have any relationship with people outside our Church fellowship, other than perhaps in the workplace.

The Bible says, “But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?” (Roman 10:14 NLT). Yet some Christians almost seem afraid to associate with non-believers in terms of friendship groups. Others have so many Christian activities taking place that they have no spare time. But the challenge remains that we are told to tell others, and how can others know about Christ unless we tell them?

This is something that I came to realise about my own Christian life a few years ago. I was just engaging with Christian groups. I was ministering with Ellel, teaching and preaching in my own church, and attending a house group every week, but I wasn’t sharing the good news with people who had never heard it. I decided something had to change and joined a group of men who met each week for lunch and consisted, with one exception, of non-believers with various degrees of agnostic and atheist beliefs.

My aim, with God’s help, was to find opportunities to share my faith with them, or at least let it be known that I was a follower of Jesus. I don’t mean lecturing them; just taking advantage of whatever opportunity came up. At times it’s been challenging.  However, over the past two to three years, I’ve had the joy of seeing three of them come to faith in Christ, and also the wife of one of them.

I’m not a great evangelist, and I’m not writing about this to boast, but to gently encourage all of you reading this ‘Seed’ to start to mix with more non-believers and share Jesus, if you aren’t already. Why not ask God to show you opportunities to do so?