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Effective Witnessing Strategies

11/27/99


[This is part 1 of a series on effective witnessing strategies]

	First, this article is not on how to save your friends; that is a job for God alone.  This is just one method
of sharing the Gospel with others in an organized way.  We are called not to save people but to be a light (witness) 
that people might hear and through God's grace be saved.  We need to witness even to those whom we think cannot be 
saved because it is not for us to determine who will be saved - we just don't know who will be.
	The method that I will present I have found to be very logical and natural.  It's widely used in many tracts 
and by many evangelistic ministries.  The whole method is this:
	0.  God's unconditional love
	1.  Man is separated from God by sin.
		A.  We are all born in sin.
		B.  Sin leads to death.
		C.  There is nothing we can do about it.
	2.  God's provision.
	3.  Knowing is not enough.
Some people like to include point number zero (no, I didn't do that because I play with computers a lot and they count
starting at zero!); some like to break point number one into two points (man is separated and hopeless).				
This article will explore the point number one.

	Man is separated from God by sin.  When you tell someone this, they may seem a bit confused.  There are several
terms that we (Christians) have gotten used to hearing things over the years which others may not correctly understand.
You may want to ask them, "What do you think sin is?"  They might say "Killing is a sin....stealing is a sin...." and
mention other "big" ones, but you must point out that even little stuff is sin.  Your intent at this point is to get
them to realize that they are sinful too.  You cannot move on to the next step until they understand that they are 
sinful.  You might reply, "You're right, murdering and stealing are sins, but you know what, we sin any time we go 
against what God commands us.  The Bible says that even lying is a sin." (Ex. 20:12, Ps 119:163, Prov. 6:17; 13:5, 
Eph 4:25, Col. 3:20, 2 Thess. 2:9) "Have you ever lied?  I know I have.  The Bible also says that if we break one of
His laws, it is as if we had broken all of them.  Therefore, even if I lied just once, then I am full of sin."[1] The
Bible also says that "whomever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgement" (Matt. 5:22) and "whoever
looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery in his heart." (Matt. 5:28).  "Are you a sinner," you 
ask, "I know I am!"
	Romans 6:23a says "for the wages of sin is death . . ."   Again, you want to define some jargon here.   "What
is a wage?" you ask. "It's something you earn.  It's like work, they pay you because you did something,"  they reply.
"This verse means that since I have committed sin, I am  deserving of  death.  It's not talking about physical death 
here - we all die physically - it's talking about spiritual death; eternal separation from God; hell.  Since we are 
born sinful, we are born spiritually dead."  Don't let them sidetrack you with questions about what hell is like or 
if it exists at this point.  You just want to get through this whole "presentation" first and worry about other 
questions later.   You continue, "Since God is truly Just, he always gives punishment to whom it is due and praise to
whom it is due.   I have just shown myself a sinner, and the Bible says ‘for the wages of sin is death,'  so I can 
conclude that I earned eternal death."   
	Being separated from God is like having God on one side of an infinitely wide chasm and you on the other 
(figure 1).  All the arrows that point from us to God represent all the "good" things we do to try to get to God,
like going to church, helping others, putting money in the little red bucket to help the homeless, not being bad,
etc.  Notice that all of these arrows are too short: None of them actually reach far enough!  Some may reach further
than others, but they all fall short.[2]  This is what trying to reach God by works is like - it's impossible!  
There's nothing man alone can do to get to God.  Man is hopeless on his own.  



A few helpful illustrations:
[1]	If you have a glass of pure water and you put just one drop of the world's strongest poison in it, the whole
thing becomes contaminated and you can't get it out!!  More accurately, since if we break one we are guilty of all, 
it's like dumping out the water and filling the glass with the poison!
[1]	From the Bible, "Your glorying is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven (yeast) leavens the whole
lump? . . . . Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but
with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."  (1 Cor. 5:6,8).
[2]	If you, me and the best swimmer in the world must swim from California to Hawaii to be saved, what will
happen?  I'll make it 50 yards and drown, you'll make it 85 yards and drown, he'll make it 3.44 miles and drown,
and none of us will reach Hawaii!!  How much more impossible is it to get to Heaven by good works!!
[This is part 2 of a series on effective witnessing strategies] 3/4/00

     Again, this article is not on how to save your friends; that is a job for God alone. This is just one method of sharing the Gospel with others in an organized way. We are called not to save people but to be a light (witness) that people might hear and through God's grace be saved. We need to witness even to those whom we think cannot be saved because it is not for us to determine who will be saved - we just don't know who will be.

     The method we looked at last time was a sort of natural progression of events for explaining salvation. The format of this method shown below:

  1. Man is separated from God by sin.
  2. God's provision.
    • The gift (we didn't earn it)
    • Jesus, the sinless, perfect sacrifice
    • Handling skeptic people
  3. Knowing is not enough.

     In the last part of this series, we talked about how guilty man is of sin. Even one "little" sin is enough for God to condemn us to hell. To make it worse, we are born sinful and can do absolutely nothing to save ourselves, because salvation is not based on how much good we can do to outweight the bad: Once we sin, we are guilty of breaking the whole law. Once we put poison in a cup of water, we can't get the poison out. We went through a few illustrations to help show some of these principles: The poison in the cup and the three people trying to swim to Hawaii (they all drown! -- our works are nothing compared to the vast chasm which separates us from God). In conclusion, we found that man is utterly hopeless left to himself. He cannot reconcile himself to God.

     This part of the series will attempt to demonstrate how God's provision -- His way of paying for sin -- can be clearly and Biblically explained when witnessing.

     Last time, we read Romans 6:23a, which says "for the wages of sin is death . . ." Once you get the person to whom you are witnessing to understand that they are sinful and hopeless to save themselves, you can read the second half of this verse, where we find the hope we'd been anticipating: Romans 6:23b ". . . but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." At this point, it is a very good idea to make sure they understand the jargon again. You ask, "What is a gift?", they reply, "It's something someone gives you." You want to stress the fact that the essence of a gift is that you pay nothing for it -- it's free, or else it wouldn't be a gift! You also want to stress that we did nothing to earn it -- if we did some work for a gift, it wouldn't be a gift, but merely a wage. Likewise, we cannot put a condition on a gift: "This gift is yours. . . but only if you do this . . ."

     Following that point, since there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, we must rely on another: on Jesus Christ who was perfect and had no sin and could therefore bear the sin of all of His people; He is the gift. Many people do not know or understand why they need Jesus, so this point is important for them to understand. God's law demanded that sin be paid for by eternal death. Jesus was sinless and perfect; He didn't have His own sins to pay for, like every other human, so He was able to take on every sin of each person He intended to save. He paid for those sins on the cross and finished the payment when He cried "It is finished" (John 19:30) and the curtain on the temple was torn in two. The price He paid was equivalent to each one of His people spending an eternity in hell. You can make this part more personal by saying something like "He became sin for me and paid my penalty so that I could stand perfectly blameless before God."

     Many people will challange you with the historical accuracy of the Bible and of the account of Jesus. It is worthwhile to study and be able to answer for such things, but it is more important to share the gospel. Someone may say "Jesus wasn't God, He was just a good man". There are many places in the Bible which claim and demonstrate how the Savior was God (too many to list, Isaiah has many, skim through Matthew, Mark and Luke and you'll find many references to how Jesus fulfilled prophecy after prophecy). There were also many witnesses the day Jesus was crucified. If someone challenges you on an intellectual point such as history, you can talk history, but remember that talking to the intellect is often superficial. You want to try to soften a hardened heart, not argue against a well-educated mind.

     Some other people will maintain that they can do enough good to get to Heaven (this means they have a works-gospel, and you need to take them back to get them to understand that they are hopeless without Christ). Something you might ask is "Why did Jesus die then?" You may get some silly answer like "because some people couldn't do enough good, so He came for them." It's important to clarify this point, but don't get too sidetracked. Remember that you want them to understand each part, but you also want to get though each point in the case that they think about it later and then understand it, but don't know what to do next.

     Next time, we will explore point 3 a little, "Knowing is not enough".

  • "Jesus came for sinners. He didn't come for good people, there weren't any!" (Romans 3:10-12 "There is none righteous, no not one...!")
  • Jesus was the Lamb slain before the beginning of the world.
[This is part 3 of a series on effective witnessing strategies] 5/20/00

     Again, this article is not on how to save your friends, that is a job for God alone. This is just one method of sharing the Gospel with others in an organized way.

    The method we've been looking at was sort of a natural progression of events for explaning salvation. The format of this method is shown below:

  • Man is separated from God by sin.
  • God's provision of a Redeemer.
  • Knowing is not enough.
    • Checking where they are
    • Believing is more than knowing
    • What next?

    In the last part of this series, we looked at how we could communicate God's provision of Jesus Christ to pay for all of the sin which His people have committed. We spent time on what the "gift" meant in Romans 6:23b. A gift must be free; we can't earn it, and it can't have any conditions on it: "This gift is yours.... but only if you do this...." We talked about how Jesus could pay for the sins of His people because He had no sin of His own to bear-- we can't pay for our own sin because it requires an eternal separation from God. We went over some things to keep in mind when handling skeptical people, like don't get dragged away from your focus by non-relavant questions or challenges.

    This part of the series will attempt to aid the explanation of how knowing about God is not enough. We have to know God-- furthermore, He has to know us! (Matt. 7:22-23). To back up for a moment, before entering this part of the conversation, we just finshed talking about how Jesus paid for sins, and we had that diagram of the chasm with the cross acting as a bridge from us over the chasm to God. It's a good idea to find out from the person to whom you are witnessing where they think they are in the diagram. Are they on man's side trying to jump the infinite chasm by themselves? Are they looking for the "bridge"? Are they already a Christian just playing along? At this point, if they are not clear on where they stand or if they don't understand something, you'll have to go back and help them through a little if you can. If time is short, it's always a good idea to get all the way through your witnessing plan, though.

    We read in James 2:19, "You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that -- and shudder." We see that even the most Evil know about God -- They even fear Him and tremble before Him! Obviously, just knowing about God is useless. When we think back to our own salvation, we see that something inside completely changed. We have a new soul; we have a peace before God; we realize that God's will has become our will in that we are very disturbed when we sin. We don't see our strength, we see just how weak we are and much we need God. The point is that there's is something far greater than just knowing about God. It's something which completely reshapes our being and transforms us from within. We can only say that it is by the grace of God that our eyes were opened and that our spiritual life was restored.

    Perhaps the person is feeling like their eyes have been opened. What do they do next? You might want to suggest a few things: Get them a Bible so they can see for themselves the word of God; suggest a few verses, chapters or books to read, like Proverbs, for instance. You can invite them to church, youth groups, meetings, etc. so they have somewhere to have Christian fellowship and meet other Christians. Invite them to pray with you. Maybe they should pray to submit their lives to God and ask for Him to take complete control of who they are. Maybe they should admit that they are sinful and in need of the Redeemer, and pray for mercy.

     This is the end of this series, but next time we'll talk a little about common objections you might face when talking to someone about Christ and how you might respond to them.

*Coming in the future: objections you could face; summary of witnessing strategies...
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