Sharing the gospel can be intimidating. Yeah, I’m a missionary, and I just said sharing the gospel can be intimidating. Ironic, huh? Here’s the thing, it wasn’t until a few months ago that I realized I thought sharing the gospel was intimidating. I love Jesus, and I thought that was enough to help me share the gospel. I thought just loving the people God put in my path was sharing the gospel because I was loving on them. Showing Jesus’ love is sharing the gospel, right? Wrong.
I’m not proud to admit it took almost half my race to realize that for the first part, except for a few select instances, I was loving people and not sharing the gospel. As I was looking back through my journal, I realized I legitimately thought I was sharing the gospel by being a humanitarian. Anyone can love people, paint houses, play with children, listen to someone’s story, but unless you’re verbally sharing the gospel, you’re not actually loving them. My brother-in-law sent me an awesome sermon talking about some of this, and it said that love = grace + truth. I loved that. Loving them where they’re at, but also sharing the truth with them.
Once I realized what was happening, I started praying for God to show me how to actually share the gospel with someone in an effective way, because trust me, I’ve seen it shared in less than effective ways, and when presented with the opportunity to share I wanted to be prepared. God totally delivered. Our first night in Laos, one of our hosts shared with us something called a worldview, which he said was necessary for us to understand in order to effectively share the gospel with this people group. A worldview is basically what it says, it shows how someone views the world and why. It’s compromised of what is done (their behavior), which is dictated by what theybelieve is good (their values), which is dictated by what they believe is true (their beliefs), which leads you to what they believe is real (their reality).
This completely transformed the way I saw sharing the gospel. Because I’ve always known that in order to share the gospel, you needed to have a relationship with someone; they needed to trust you in order for your words and actions to hold any kind of weight. (I know, sometimes it’s someone you just met, but from my experience, it works better when you have a relationship with the person). You need to understand what in their life has led them to believe what they believe, to know why what’s real to them is their reality. If you want to share the gospel with somebody most effectively, you need to understand their inner workings.
In Laos, a majority of people are buddhists or animists (they worship Buddha or worship spirits). In order to share the gospel with a buddhist, it’s extremely different than sharing with an animist. For example, we believe you have eternal life in Jesus. If you’re sharing with a buddhist, you must know that the four pillars oflife for buddhists include that life=suffering. So if you tell them that they’ll have eternal life in Jesus, they’re going to assume that they’ll be suffering forever, which is the complete opposite of what you’re intending to tell them. Instead, you have to say we believe because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we get to spend eternity in paradise with Him in heaven. See the difference? In one way they’ll think they’ll be suffering forever in Jesus, and in the second way they’ll wonder why they’ll spend eternity in paradise and hopefully ask what that means. They’re reality, the core of their being, believes life=suffering. So if you don’t understand that, you won’t effectively share the gospel with them.
Life here is so entirely different from back home. There’s giant buddha statues overlooking the city that you can pretty much see from any vantage point around the city in the mountains, and people will walk up to them and worship them to earn merit. You see, buddhists live in constant fear. They’re always terrified that they could die and their merit (the good things they’ve done) haven’t outweighed their sin. It’s a works-based religion that if you do enough good things you’re ok, but if your sin outweighs your merit, boy you’re in trouble. How miserable does that sound? Being in constant fear and worry, worshipping idols that can’t see, can’t hear, can’t comfort, can’t give you peace, that you need to sacrifice to, that can’t love you? Psalm 115 takes on a whole new meaning when it’s happening right in front of your eyes. That is why the gospel needs to be shared. To save the lost. So they can have eternal life and the peace and joy and love that only Jesus can bring them.
And that’s what I’m excited about. Being able to bring this back home, that what I’m learning here about sharing the gospel can be applied to every day life. If you have a friend or a coworker or a relative that doesn’t know the Lord, what in their life is dictating their beliefs, their values, and their behavior? Get to the core of their being to know what part of the gospel to share with them. Let Holy Spirit guide the conversation and he’ll speak to the parts of their souls that only God knows. And have an open mind and open heart to be that vessel He uses to further His kingdom and save the lost.
God bless,
Jenna
