Evangelism is making the news about Jesus known. In our culture however sometimes we have to do pre-evangelism, we have to knock down the barriers people have before we can share the gospel with them.
If you think of it as a scale that runs: -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3...
0 is the point at which a person accepts they are lost and need Jesus and are willing to become a disciple, 1 and so on are disciples growing in maturity.
Most of the people we meet are somewhere on the minus side of the scale, they have all sorts of barriers that have to be overcome before they will listen to the gospel. It may be that they have had a bad experience of Church, maybe they think all Christians are hypocrites, that Christians are weird, perhaps they believe the Bible is full of errors and contradictions, maybe it is that they don't know any Christians at all.
With every person we meet we are to be called as God's ambassadors to be knocking those barriers down, to be moving someone maybe from a -10 to a -9, or a -4 to a -3, or at the very point when they become a follower of Jesus. It can be in something as simple as walking over and introducing yourself to someone you don't know and chatting with them. It is in living out the gospel in front of friends and colleagues, it is in engaging with their questions, it is in showing them love even if rejected.
Why not pray today that God would involve you in moving someone closer to accepting Jesus as Saviour and King and continually ask God to prompt you by his Spirit for opportunities.
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