Evan-ge-Love

To be perfectly honest, I was kind of dreading writing this post when I saw David send out the email asking us to share our evangelism experiences.  I feel like a major hypocrite telling the youth to be bold and share their faith with their friends when I do it so rarely myself.

I must admit I haven't been very faithful in carrying out the Great Commission since high school.  Most of the time, when Jesus comes up in a conversation with my friends I just try to make Christianity not "seem so bad," or I try not to offend anyone.  But I've been realizing lately that this is such a loser mentality.  Am I really going to let my friends that I care so much about face eternal judgement and damnation just because I'm afraid of offending them or they'll think I'm weird?  I know this is a common fear that many people struggle with, but one I really hope we can overcome together as a fellowship.

I was definitely a lot better about sharing the gospel when I was younger.  My first time was with Felix in 5th grade on the field of John Muir Elementary during lunch.  The second time was with my good friend Johnson* (name changed), during freshmen year of high school.  I was studying with him in the library at Lynbrook after school when I brought up this cool post about the Professor & the Student (http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/professor.html) that I had recently read.  Knowing that Johnson was a thinker, I attempted to demonstrate how God really did exist and tried sharing with him from my own meager personal experiences.  Johnson was intrigued, and promised to come with me to church.  He did, for the next several weeks, and about a month later at a youth outreach he gave his life to Christ.

Here's where I failed.  Johnson came to our church for almost a full year while we still met at De Anza college.  Then  he stopped coming.  It started off as just one Sunday, and then a few more, until every time I asked him about it at school he always had some excuse not to come.  Rather than following up or praying for him, I let him be.  I had other things, bigger things, more important things on my mind, things that right now I don't even remember. Johnson told me at the end of sophomore year that he just didn't believe anymore, that he hadn't experienced God for himself and science had too many good answers.  He said he need "time to explore" and to find answers to his questions.  He asked me to respect his decision, and I did.  I never invited him to church again.

Johnson and I grew apart after we both went to college.  He attended UCLA, where he joined a frat, pierced his ears, joined a dance team, and started wearing designer jeans.  Today, he works in LA and plans on applying to Harvard or UPenn business school, and has the GPA and GRE score to back it up.  Unfortunately, I don't think he's stepped foot since the last time he was at ours in high school.

Upon reflecting, I realized that my greatest failure through this whole experience was that I lacked compassion and love.  There were so many times that I could have prayed with Johnson, encouraged him, read the Bible with him, or directed him towards those with more experience.  Instead, I left him to swim on his own thinking that he'd figure it out when he was ready, and in the end, his faith couldn't withstand the waves of doubt that overcame his fledgling Christian life.  I understand that this isn't all my fault, and that perhaps no matter how hard I tried Johnson was going to become an atheist anyway.  But the point is, I didn't try, mostly because I didn't care enough to try.

This week we've challenged the youth to each think of one friend that is unsaved and to start praying for them everyday.  I've already missed 3 days, and it's gotten me thinking: "how much do you love your friends?"  Do I really love them enough to want to see them in eternity?  Or do I just kind of care, sometimes, when I can remember?  I think the takeaway from all this that evangelism must be born out of love, otherwise it's just going to be a task we do, a check mark on our list, a scoresheet we bring to heaven and say, "Look God, I did it this many times!"  And that's really what Jesus tells us to do.  Love your neighbor.  Love your friends, and those people He put in your life.  Love 'em enough to share the gospel.

Sorry I know this is super long, if you made it this far, I really do love you.