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1/6/2015
My first New Year’s resolution is to periodically post some of my witnessing encounters here in an effort to help other Christians see evangelism more as a lifestyle in 2015.
Personally I have found that the more I make evangelism a priority in my life the more opportunities I have to at least plant a seed (1 Cor. 3:6). That’s the way it’s been for many years. But recently it seems like I can even go further with very little effort on my part because I know God is going before me and clearing a path! I’ve also noticed that it used to be that every once in a while when I travel God would give me divine appointments. Now however it is rare that I would fly somewhere and God doesn’t have any divine appointments for me to speak to someone about Christ. Now that I’ve made evangelism more of a lifestyle, I do expect God to open doors more easily wherever I go and lately it is so obvious now that this is exactly what God is doing!
Yesterday I got to witness to a wealthy business man sitting next to me on the plane from Chicago to Charlotte. At first he showed no interest in having any dialog, but when he went to plug his phone in in order to charge his battery, by divine appointment it didn’t charge. While complaining to the flight attendant about his lack of power, I offered to let him plug his cord into my plug under my seat. That was it…that was all the conversation starter I needed to see God’s divine appointment with this person start unfolding right before my eyes!
Over the next hour that we talked together, I learned several things about him including his religious upbringing (Catholicism) and other things. Very early in the conversation I discovered that though he believed in a God who created all of us and believed that we were in some way accountable to and believed that Jesus was the only way, still there was something holding him back from having a personal relationship with the God who created him. To make a long story short, it turns out that he was pretty upset that the catholic priest he interacted with told him he couldn’t be saved unless he was pro-life rather than pro a women’s right to choose. This one barrier helped explain to me why on the one hand he said he believed in God and believed that Jesus was the only way, but kept implying in our conversational that other faiths may think they also have the truth as well. (Implying he’s not really certain that Christianity is really true). I did get him to agree that if his friend is trapped in a burning building, and even if his friend says ‘I don’t want to be rescued,’ that he would still feel compelled to rescued his friend. So I said to him “shouldn’t we do the same with others since we know Christianity is true?” Shouldn’t we at least let them know about the consequences (That is actually what I was trying to help him to understand in our dialog). He agreed with me very reluctantly.
I told him that the thing that motivated me in my life was that someday I would stand before our Creator and have to give an account for what I did with my life. To make sure he understood exactly what I meant by this, I further explained that whatever good I accomplished in my life wouldn’t happen on my power, but by God working in me to give me the desire and the willpower to do what I know I should do (Phil. 2:13), once I allowed God to work in my heart. Towards the end of our conversation I told him about the time I participated on a religious panel discussion representing Christianity and someone from the audience asked the crucial question that night: How does your religion help others stop hating other people? I told him that no one had an answer to that question so after a brief pause, I pointed out to my audience that the bible teaches that the same power that rose Jesus from the dead is available to me to live a transformed life (Rom. 8:11). As a result I can be a better father to my children, a better husband to my wife, and yes even love those I naturally hate. Needless to say that there was much more we talked about in that hour and it was very clear that he wasn’t presently very open to exploring these cracks in his belief system and considering a more personal relationship with Christ. My prayer is that God would put someone in his path to take him a step further tomorrow or next week or next month to help him take a step even further towards the Truth.
I hope that in this next year you too will commit to making evangelism a lifestyle and watch what God does in your life and see all the divine appointments God will open for you as you walk in obedience to Him!
His Servant,
David Geisler