Send Me: Conquering Your Fears for Bold Evangelism

I’m giving away one print copy of Ronie Kendig’s Conspiracy of Silence to a FW Blog reader! Leave a comment below for your chance to win!

Anxiety twisted my stomach as I battled the conviction that gripped me.

“So you think I should bring it up again, too?” I asked my mom the question, probably for the second time.

A week before, I’d had a conversation with a non-Christian friend who had recently been bringing up the topic of Christianity. She would throw out questions—tough questions, and I would flounder to respond on the fly. That week, she’d caught me off-guard with a very hard question that I’d never had to answer before. And I gave her a sort of pitiful non-answer that I regretted the whole week afterward.

Now while I know the answers to most of those questions myself, I’ve never been good at verbalizing those answers in a debate setting or defending my faith in a real-time situation.

Give me a computer or a piece of paper and time to write, and I can answer every single one of those questions without much room for argument. But put me in an in-person conversation with an intelligent thinker who challenges Christianity, and all those brilliant arguments and truths I know seem to hide themselves in some deep, inaccessible recess of my mind.

I suspect the reason for my usual “going blank” reaction is anxiety. Because as soon as someone challenges my faith or even just asks a friendly question, anxiety takes hold. In the case of the more aggressive or defensive debater, I suspect I’m anxious because I so dislike conflict. And, I hate looking stupid.

In the case of the friendly questioner, I’m afraid the friendliness will quickly fade into conflict and I’m afraid I’ll look like I believe something for no logical reason.

In both cases, though, I have one additional, powerful fear that grips me in such situations: I’m afraid I’ll make Christianity, or more precisely, Jesus Christ, look bad.

Whoever I’m talking to at the time is a lost soul. I desperately want that person, especially when he or she is a personal friend or family member, to come to know my Lord and Savior Who Redeems us from our sins and gives us eternal life and joy everlasting.

And I desperately fear that something I say will make it easier for them to reject Him.

Yet I know the truth. I know that nothing I say or do will prevent a person God has called as His own from coming to Him at the proper time. I know it’s ultimately not up to me.

So why am I still scared?

Let’s go back to that story for a second. I was talking to my mom as God was convicting me.

I was about to see my inquisitive friend again the next day, and I had a decision to make. Did I let the conversation flow as usual and wait to see whether or not she brought up Christianity (and hope she didn’t), or did I bring it up and offer a better, more complete answer to the question she’d asked the week before?

I’d done research since the week prior. I’d looked into the answers to the question she’d stumped me with. Some of them I knew and should’ve remembered, but I also discovered even better answers in that process.

I’d already been told by one family member that I should indeed bring up that question and offer those answers to my friend. And my mom, to my chagrin, said the same thing.

But really, I already had my answer in the conviction in my soul and in the mandate given to us in Scripture to share the Good News with everyone and always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15).

On top of that, I really, really want my friend to know the truth and be set free by the truth of the Gospel.

But I just kept thinking, and even said to my mom, that I wished I could just send my friend to someone like R. C. Sproul or John MacArthur, Ray Comfort, or maybe I could bring along Ravi Zacharias with me. These amazing evangelists and Christian apologists would be so much better than I am at answering all my friend’s questions and saying just the right things to open her eyes to the truth. Why didn’t God send one of them or have my friend encounter their speaking on the radio?

As I was saying such things to my mom, it hit me: I’m Moses.

No, not the courageous Moses who receives the Ten Commandments from the hand of God and then smashes them in front of all the people of Israel because of their sin.

I mean the timid, scared Moses of before, who grabs at every excuse he can think of for why God should choose someone else to bring His people out of Egypt.

I’d just taught this well-known story to my second grade Sunday School class, so the details were fresh in my mind. Moses sees a bush on fire in the desert and, when he approaches, he learns that God Himself is there, speaking from the bush. Moses wholeheartedly believes God is there. He doesn’t try to explain the fiery phenomenon with any explanation other than God. And He believes God is Who He says He is.

Until God tells Moses to do something that scares him.

Then, the doubts begin.

He says to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11b).

God answers Moses’s doubting question with this promise:

“But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” – Exodus 3:12

Yet Moses’s fear still holds him in its grip. He goes on to propose questions the Israelites will have for him, how they will doubt that he comes from God. God provides him with the answers to say and even promises to make this mission of freeing the Israelites a success.

Moses still can’t let go of his fear. He counters with an outright denial of God’s promise for success—instead saying the people won’t believe God appeared to him or sent him.

God responds by giving Moses astounding miracles to perform to show he is from God.

Still not enough. This time, Moses starts to list his own weaknesses that make him a terrible pick for this job. He’s not “eloquent” (Exodus 4:10), he says.

God says He’s the one who made Moses and God Himself will now be Moses’s mouth and teach him what to say.

Left with no more arguments, you’d think Moses would finally agree to what God told him to do. But he doesn’t. Instead, he tries one last pitiful attempt to get out of doing this frightening thing. He says, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Ex. 4:13).

When I read this account, I think of Moses as pretty pathetic. At best, he’s unbelievable. God Himself showed up and said He’ll talk for Moses, and Moses still refuses to go.

But I do the same thing. I was wishing God had chosen some eloquent speaker instead of me to talk to my friend about Him.

I was trying to figure a way out. Because, like Moses, I’m afraid when I need to speak to an unbelieving, sometimes hostile world, about Christ and my faith.

And like Moses, I fall into the trap of believing fear instead of believing God.

God has told us, just as he promised Moses, that He will give us the words to say about Him when we need them. Even in times of outright persecution, we’re promised:

When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. – Matthew 10:19

God also promises us that His word when it goes out will never return void, but will always accomplish His purpose (Is. 55:11).

We have promise upon promise that God will use us for His purpose when He calls us to do something, especially when we tell others about Him. We have guarantees from the God of heaven and earth, our Savior, that obedience to His call will see success and reward.

Which will we believe? Our fears or God?

Yes, that’s the real question, because when I’m thinking there would be so many other people better than I to share the truth with my friend, my thoughts are revealing doubt in God Himself. He’s the one who picked me for this purpose at this time. And, yet, I respond like Moses and question that God really knows what He’s doing.

But if I acknowledge the truth, I have to admit that there was no one better at that moment than I to share about Christ and the Gospel with my friend. I know that because God chose me. God sent me.

I need to stop believing my fear and start believing God. We all do. Only then will we be able to say with the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6:8, “Here I am! Send me.”

Will you say it with me?

Here I am, Lord. Send me.

Does talking about Christ and Christianity to non-believers make you anxious? How have you battled fear of sharing the Gospel with others? Please share!

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Just for fun, I’m giving away a free print copy of Ronie Kendig’s Conspiracy of Silence to one of you! Simply leave a comment below to enter the giveaway! (Winner to be selected October 29, 2018; winner must have continental U. S. mailing address.)

Four years after a tragic mission decimated his career and his team, Cole “Tox” Russell is persona non grata to the United States. And that’s fine–he just wants to be left alone. But when a dormant, centuries-old disease is unleashed, Tox is lured back into action.

Partnered with FBI agent Kasey Cortes, Tox has to pull together a team to begin a globe-spanning search for answers–and a cure. As their quest leads them from continent to continent, it slowly becomes clear they’re not just fighting a plague–but battling against an ancient secret society whose true goals remain hidden.

With time running out and opposition growing on every side, the key to everything may rest in an antique codex, the Crown of Jerusalem–but will Tox and his team be able to trust each other enough to break this century-spanning conspiracy of silence?