Oswald J. Smith wrote, "We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first."

No Excuses

Did you ever find yourself on a date that you wished you could cut short? Without a good excuse, it’s hard to end the date prematurely, so Cingular and Virgin Mobile cell phone companies got together and invented the “Wireless Escape-A-Date and Rescue Ring” service. It works like this. In the middle of dinner, the service calls your cell phone. “Hello?” you say.

“Hey, this is your Escape-A-Date call,” says the voice on the other end of the line. “If you’re looking for an excuse, I got it. Just repeat after me and you’ll be on your way: ‘Not again! Why does that always happen to you?…All right, I’ll be right there.’ Now tell ‘em that your roommate got locked out and you have to go let them in. Good luck!” Back in 2004, customers were requesting 10,000 Escape-A-Date calls per month.¹

There’s no honor in deceiving someone, but we often do the same to ourselves when it comes to evangelism. We want an excuse, so we create one. D. James Kennedy called it, “The skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.”² And we get very creative in manufacturing these lie-stuffed skins. See if you’ve tried any of these before:

I witness by my life.

The very definition of evangelism vaporizes this excuse. To evangelize means to proclaim good news, and witnessing by one’s life falls short of verbally proclaiming the gospel. Paul wrote,

How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” (Rom 10:14-15).

It looks like Paul forgot to talk about the beautiful feet of those who just live the example! Paul’s logic goes like this:

1. People cannot call on Jesus if they don’t believe in Jesus.
2. People cannot believe in Jesus if they don’t hear about Jesus.
3. People cannot hear about Jesus if no one proclaims Jesus.

People can’t believe in a Christ they never hear about, no matter how holy our lives are. We may have good works and a godly testimony, but of whom are we testifying? Our self. Our holy life makes us look good but says nothing about Jesus Christ—the One who deserves all the credit for our godliness. Yes, living a holy life is important—it helps to qualify the message we proclaim. But even if we paid the ultimate price and died for Christ, but never told people who He is, we have not evangelized. No one has ever been saved simply by watching someone’s good example.

Imagine planning a vacation with your family and the travel agent shows you stunning photos of St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the US. No matter how many pictures of ancient buildings and knockout tourist spots he shows, it’s pointless until he gives you travel details on how to get there. That’s what God wants you doing for lost people. Let your life advertise the glories of Christ, but don’t stop there. Give them directions.

I’m too busy.

If this is true then our priorities are wrong. The problem is not that we’re too busy but that we’re too busy for Jesus. We over-commit ourselves until we’re running around like a headless chicken and then we complain: “I’m too busy.” But that’s undisciplined busyness. Praise the Lord He wasn’t too busy to save us! Even if our busyness is in the name of Christ, serving others and doing ministry, if it’s keeping us from obeying Christ’s command to reach the lost, then these activities have become a sin.

Try this. Write down every activity you do in a full week and then red mark the ones that need to go so that you have regular time with unbelievers. If we schedule time to be with the saved, how could we not do the same for those heading fast to a dreadful end?

If your challenge if simply laziness, red mark the activities that won’t matter on Judgment Day and rearrange your life. Don’t take this too far. There is a time for recreation, socializing, music, and relaxation. Recreation is good and God intended it to be used for His glory. Workaholics need to repent and use the pleasures God provides for us to enjoy (1 Tim 4:3; 6:17).

But when believers tell me they don’t have time to share their faith, I’m very tempted to ask, “How many hours of TV did you watch last week?” One survey reports that the average American spends six hours a week surfing the net and over ten years of his life watching television.³ If we just watch three movies a week, that’s 312 hours a year. When Halo 2, a video game about a laconic super-soldier battling alien zealots on a ring-shaped planet, hit the market, gamers logged 91 million man-hours playing this game in the first ten weeks after its release. That's 10,000 years spent in the virtual world!⁴

Movies, television, and video games are not inherently bad, but if we’re honest, we’ll admit that we spend way more time indulging in these things than we should. A few hours less of TV, a couple evenings left open so you can talk to your neighbors—a few cuts here and there can make a huge difference.

I don’t have the ability.

God never asked you to have the ability; He just asks you to obey. If effective evangelism depended on our ability, no one would get saved! The Holy Spirit of God within you provides all the ability you need. Paul wrote, “My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2:4).

I’m afraid.

This is no lie. I have yet to meet a single believer who doesn’t get afraid when he witnesses. My palms sweat and my heart speeds up almost every time I share. Paul got afraid too. He preached to the Corinthians in “weakness and in fear and in much trembling” (1 Cor 2:3). You can let fear keep you down, or you can stop listening to fear and go out in the name of Christ who promised to be with you always, even to the end of the age (Matt 28:20). And in the end, what are we really afraid of? A little rejection at the most. But if Jesus received the epitome of rejection to save us from an eternity in hell, can we not endure a little rejection for Him?

I might risk our friendship.

True, you might. But if your eight-year-old child was edging toward a cliff, would you hold back from warning her in fear that you might upset her? Mark Cahill writes, “…what kind of friendship do you have if you would go to Heaven when you die, but your friend would go to Hell? If you are friends for 20 years then separated for 800 million plus years, what kind of friendship is that? If you are not eternal friends, are you really friends at all?”⁵

I leave evangelism to the experts and do my part by supporting them financially.

It is important for Christians to support missionaries and evangelists (Gal 6:6), and even Jesus directed “those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). In addition, some believers possess the gift of giving and should exercise it responsibly and faithfully (Rom 12:8).
    
But if evangelism is only for those trained to evangelize, then Paul must have been kidding when he wrote:

And He gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers... (Eph 4:11)

But the sentence does not stop there. Paul goes on to tell us why God gifted leaders with these abilities:

…for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. (Eph 4:12)

God did not equip Christian leaders with gifts so they could keep them to themselves while everybody else writes the offering checks. He gave the gifts to equip you the believer.

Who should share their faith? Every believer who walks the face of this planet. God commands us to tithe (2 Cor 9:6-10), but we dare not hide behind this command to keep us from obeying the command to evangelize (Matt 28:18-20).

It’s not my gift.
That’s okay. Mercy is not my gift either. But does this acquit me of showing mercy to others? God gifted some with evangelism so that they would equip you to do it too. More than anything else, God wants you to obey Him. And you can’t do that if you don’t share your faith.

The gift of giving provides an excellent parallel. Only some believers have the gift of giving (Rom 12:8), but this does not release other believers from their duty to give of their financial resources to support their local church.

I don’t know enough.

If you know enough to be saved then you know enough to share the gospel. Even if your knowledge about the Bible is minimal, if you’re a Christian you have all it takes to effectively reach the lost. Yes, learning more is good and will make you more proficient in evangelism, but we must remember that no matter how many objections an unbeliever may raise, their conversion does not rest on our ability to answer those objections. The gospel alone by the power of the Spirit can convert the most calloused skeptic.

He’s non-elect!

Some from the hyper-Calvinistic clusters excuse themselves from evangelism with the empty claim, "God already chose whom He’s going to save and nothing’s going to stop it.” I agree. But is that a valid excuse for disobeying Jesus Christ? Yes, God will save whom He wishes, but whom does He use to fulfill this plan? You and me.

Now it is true that someone has to read Scripture with closed eyes if he wants to deny that the only ones who get saved are those whom God chooses. Jesus said that none will come to Him unless it has been “granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). Luke tells us that “as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). Paul tells us that every believer was chosen by God “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4). This is a wonderful truth both practical and awesome. But some have used this doctrine as a shield against God’s command to make disciples. And many of this bent who do take the time to share their faith give such half-hearted, cold presentations of the gospel that you’d think they were announcing government policy on cabbage trade instead of words of eternal life. And when the unbeliever refuses to believe, this kind of believer pacifies his passionless gospel presentation with the foolish excuse, “Oh, there’s another one of God’s non-elect!” Who has the right to say this before Judgment Day? This Christian would be far closer to reality if he stood before a mirror and said, “Oh, there’s another non-evangelist!”  

To be quite frank, we have no excuse for not telling unbelievers the gospel. Fellow saint, the time has come to rip off the skin of a reason, face the truth, and submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus by going and telling.

Mission Possible

You still might find yourself wondering, “Who am I to make disciples for the kingdom? I’m terrified just to broach the topic of spirituality!”

Just remember one thing: Christ is with you. Christ closes His great commission command with words of comfort:

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matt 28:20b).

Christ will not leave you. Even when the heavens are rolled up like a scroll, and God’s wrath is poured out upon the entire world in the end times judgment, Christ will not leave you. Even if your friends betray you, your parents abused you, or your teachers fail you, Christ will not leave you. Even when you feel utterly inadequate to share your faith, Christ is not taking a vacation from your side.

That alone is the greatest comfort you could ever receive. You are better equipped for evangelism going as a terrified novice with Christ, than if you’ve mastered all the evangelism techniques in the world but go without Him.

End notes

1. World (August 21, 2004): 9 and Ringtonia.com, http://www.textually.org/ringtonia/archives/2004/08/004816.htm, October 29, 2007.

2. D. James Kennedy giving his testimony on an Evangelism Explosion testimony on cassette.  

3. Michael Fabarez, Preaching That Changes Lives (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002), 94.

4. Time (April 18, 2005): 123. 

5. Mark Cahill, One Thing You Can't Do in Heaven (Rockwall: Biblical Discipleship Publishers, 2005), 51.