Just Do It

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations..." Matthew 28:19

To be honest, evangelism isn't a big part of my life. It's barely even a little part of my life. When it comes to teaching and building up young believers, that's not a huge problem for me. But when it comes to people who don't know Jesus and I feel like I need to preach the Gospel to them, I'm utterly lost. I've grown up knowing the importance of spreading the Gospel but I've always thought that it didn't have anything to do with me. Surely there are other people God called in order to spread His kingdom!

Most of my friends know that I'm a Christian, mostly from what I do on Friday nights and Sundays. And how I close my eyes to give grace before a meal. But I've never actually shared anything with them, and whenever I'm asked how church was it's always, "Good". From what I can see in myself, self consciousness is a huge reason why I've never been active in sharing my faith. When I was younger I would always have an issue of confidence and being self conscious of every single action that I did, always feeling like I wasn't good enough for anything. I tried my hardest to "fit in" with my friends, only to see that I never really did. I never denounced my faith but I didn't speak up when others were ridiculing it either. I dreaded to think how others would view me if they knew that I loved Jesus, most afraid of being labeled one of those "Christian losers".

One of the only times I've actually actively spread the Gospel I did for my own selfish reasons. When I was in middle school I really liked this girl who was one of my best friends, but I knew it was wrong to date non-Christians. So whenever she felt down or something bad was happening in her life I would always bug her to go to church and give Jesus a chance. Only many years later did I realize the negative impact that I had in actually spreading the Gospel to her; I was merely doing it for my own gain.

So this past Sunday there were three newcomers who just came to America to study English. When everybody went to go clean I felt kind of bad that they would be by themselves so I stuck around to try to talk to them a little bit. We ended up talking about Christianity and religion and I found myself explaining how Christianity isn't about a religion but more of a relationship. That's what makes Christianity different from all the other religions, we don't do things in order to gain our salvation. While I was sharing it felt like a really different experience, one that I hadn't felt in a long time and in my head I could only think, "Wow I'm actually doing this".

But then today I grabbed lunch with a friend that I haven't really hung out much because we have different schedules this quarter. I know that God has put him on my heart to invite him to our church but I've always come up with different kinds of excuses. He's from China and it's hard for him to get along with his roommates here. He also finds America really boring because he doesn't do anything except stay in his room all day, the only thing he can do. I know that I should invite him to Rainbow but I've always said to myself that I wouldn't be able to be with him so that wouldn't be good. And other excuses of the sort. And even today, I couldn't even bring myself to talk about God or religion. The only thing that he shared was, "I dropped a class because the English was difficult for me; it had to do with God which is so boring." Then I pretty much didn't even want to mention God in front of him so it wouldn't have a negative impact on him.

So all in all, I don't really know what I'm trying to say. These are just some of the experiences I've went through of sharing the gospel. This is definitely something I need to work on and recently through our discussions of getting the youth to invite their friends, I am starting to realize the lack on my part of evangelism and reaching out to non-Christians. But no matter how we feel I think Jesus' command sums it up quite nicely. He says, "Go!" There should be no hesitation, no excuses. This is one of those things that we need to Just Do It.