Wineskins Contributor・07/01/21

I am a raging introvert. I also want to love people well. Those two things are not incompatible but the combination comes with challenges. That makes evangelism a bit difficult. IT is easy to have reservations about starting conversations that I don't already have an idea how they might turn out on some level.

It occurred to me a while back that the most loving thing I can do is bring people to faith in Jesus. And this is helping me overcome reservations in interacting with people in an evangelistic sense.

There are lots of things we can do to express love - acts of kindness and service, giving of our time and money to people in need, etc and all of that can be done without paying attention to the greater need - the need for people to find Jesus and the implications of what happens if they do (the blessings) and if they don't (judgment, separation from God, punishment, etc). Many of us do nice things but we need to take that next step and do the most loving thing.

God is love.

God sent Jesus and Jesus showed us what love looks like.

God's love, modeled in Christ, comes into our lives and we share that love with others. Sharing the good news is loving. I believe it is the most loving thing a person can do.

John 15:13 says that there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for a friend. That can be taken in a literal sense - to die for someone but that isn't the only way to look at it. Laying down my life can also be an attitude I have of how I view my life in deference to you - that your needs come first and if your greatest need is Christ and what is getting in the way of me telling you that is my uncomfortability then I am really not living out the greatest kind of love because of my unwillingness to set aside things that are blocking you from having abundant life.

We can look at the inverse - if you believe people need Jesus to be saved then to withhold that from them would be an unloving thing to do. Maybe the not sharing is apathy or ignorance but at some point it becomes about faithfulness and love can drive us to that faithfulness.

Let us be loving people and let that love drive us to many things and many ways of serving AND let us make sure that it doesn't stop at just being nice...but that we are intentional about talking to people about Jesus. If you don't know how then let's talk about learning how. God is love and God will help us love others well. God will help us when we reach out to people to draw them closer to Jesus because God is always doing what is most loving and we need to as well.