When I found out that our ministry for month six would be evangelizing to college students, I was pretty excited. I was ready to form relationships, start off slow, and introduce Jesus with a soft hand after getting to know people. After being in the Baltics, where any mention of God or Jesus seemed to scare people away, it seemed the way things must be everywhere.
I was mistaken. Our contacts led us in a few days of training and it quickly became clear that slow and steady was not their motto. This was nothing like the Baltics. And it frightened me. What our contacts wanted was for me to go up to a random person on campus, ask them to go to lunch or dinner or grab bubble tea, and then at some point within the next hour or so you are with them, introduce yourself, your testimony, and the entire gospel, including asking them at the end if they want to follow Jesus.
I was overwhelmed. How would this ever work? I thought I’d have time to get to know people first before dropping the Jesus bomb on them. Isn’t that how it was supposed to be?
Not always. The truth hit me after my contact said a very crucial thing: because of the place we were in, this one lunch or dinner I was having with this college student could be the only time in their life that they ever hear about Jesus. They might hear his name in an American movie (probably used in vain) but they would probably go their whole lives without ever hearing the gospel.
Extravagant, unashamed, bold sharing of the gospel. This is what was being asked of me. I wasn’t sure what it would look like or how it would go, but I was no longer afraid.
After a few days of going out with our contacts to practice this method of sharing, we went out to have dinner with a girl we had met the night before, and our contact wanted us to share by ourselves. She would be there to help as needed, but this time it was up to us.
It was an awkward start. I didn’t know how to begin sharing my testimony. It’s not something that always eases in to normal conversation. But our contact helped me out and I was able to share with this precious daughter of God, and she related to me. We went forward to share the gospel. I was nervous, probably from an attack of the enemy. I felt there was no way this girl could understand in such a short amount of time all that the gospel meant.
But the Lord speaks to people. And when you get down to it, the gospel isn’t hard. It’s actually very easy. We just like to make it complicated. I was amazed when after everything the girl’s response was, “It’s just so beautiful.”
She got it on some level. The Lord was speaking to her, and we could tell.
At the end, the girl was unsure whether she wanted to make the choice to follow Jesus or not. But after we talked for a while more, she made the choice. She wanted to join our family. She wanted to follow Jesus.
We led her in the prayer. She fought back tears. I fought back tears. I had never seen someone come to Christ before.
If I spent the whole Race doing nothing else of significance, knowing that the Lord used me to help bring this sweet girl into his kingdom would be enough.
