Jesus said, “They’ll Know You by Your Love”

You know, the reason America's become a post-Christian nation is that Christians stop sharing their faith and quite frankly, stop having fun. Forget what you've been told, faith sharing gets fun and it's easy. If you want to have the time of your life or the rest of your life, you're going to love this message. So here's the truth. The term evangelism is no longer attractive to anyone. I mean, no one wants to evangelize it. No one wants to be evangelized. I mean, I know that you're holding evangelism class in your church and maybe two people will show up. Well, evangelism is more important than never. Get me straight on that. All of us are called to do it. We need to stop using the term evangelism and the things we've always done to evangelize people. They're not working anymore. Now, mind you, God's Word will never return for it. However, we proclaim the good news. It will always impact lives, but it can also repulse lives at the same time. And that's not good. You know, I passed a guy at a street court this week yelling, we're the megaphone. The world is coming to an end. Come to Jesus now. And I thought to myself, so I said, God blessed him for his zeal and maybe someone will be stirred with his message, but how many others are being repulsed by it? When we were first married, Karen, I actually went knocking on doors at night in the neighborhood around our church in Detroit. You can't do that today. No one would open the door. We'd probably get shot. And for sure, the family wouldn't stop what they're doing inside their home to invite us into their home to give them a sense between Jesus. I mean, believe it or not, that actually worked back in the day, but not now. Most Americans have their defenses up today. It's a different world. You can't encroach up people's space and people don't want to be sold something they don't want to hear by someone they don't know. That's why social media is so successful today. And then there's the pen of anger in America that's killing innocent people every day across America for doing nothing wrong without questioning the dynamics of talking to people who are lost without God has changed a bit. The message that all of a sinner heading to hell is probably not where you want to start conversations with the lost today. That's the last thing they did here. They probably already know that and believe that God hates them. If they believe in God at all, they probably believe that God is angry with them and they have no idea that God loves them. No one gets mad at you for telling people that God loves them. Have you noticed that? All of this explains why Jesus said they would know your mind is cycled by your love, not by your memorization scripture or bullet points or even your life story. Now, aren't you? All of those things may be helpful at some point, but loving on people is how relationships are formed and building relationships is the essence of evangelism. The surprise comes in how fast you can build relationships with complete strangers by simply loving on them. Most people are starving for loving and when they see your love is for real, they'll tell you things they wouldn't tell their best friend. I mean, seriously, it can happen in less than 10 minutes of casual conversation when you block out everything and focus all your thoughts and your love on them. It's amazing. Quite frankly, sharing your faith is effortless. When you love God with all your heart, all your mind and your soul and your strength and your neighbor and yourself, there's nothing left for you to do after that. You have no excuse. You can start doing that right now. God knows you can't prepare for spontaneous conversations with complete strangers. That's impossible because you have no idea where those conversations will take you. This is where the fun begins, everybody. This is where you begin to have an intimacy with God that cannot be achieved any other way. This is why God tells us that I say, at 43 to 10, I appoint you as my witness so that you will believe. Sharing your faith explodes your faith. You simply allow the Holy Spirit to remind you of an illustration or a life experience or a passage of Scripture that you may not even thought of for years and you watch God use that, remind you and use it to speak to the heart of a person's need that you're talking to and you see life change and emotions and you know, God is speaking to you at that very moment. I mean, Luke 12 12 tells us this fact. He says, the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say, at the moment you need them, it's supernatural. That's real faith sharing. When you allow God to do it, you just relax and lift it. It's so easy. You cannot believe how amazing every time he'll never let you down. This is way more than evangelism. It's about being all in with God knowing he created you. He owns you. He loves you into salvation and he wants to love everyone around you into salvation through you and when you allow him to do that, it just doesn't get any better. Wow. Okay, see you next time.