Natural Evangelism

1 John 1:1-4 NIV
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. which we have looked at and our hands have touched  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.  We write this to make our joy complete."

I don't know about you, but the way in which I have gone about evangelism (spreading the Good News of Jesus) in the past never felt natural.  Forcing memorized methods and arguments into unique situations (people) always rubbed me the wrong way.

Over the last couple years I have been challenged by God's Spirit speaking through Scripture to analyze my motives.  The result was a conviction to love people without an agenda...  that as I follow Christ and grow in my understanding of Him, I would love like Him and it would overflow into every area of my life.  God's love and grace would then be experienced through my words and actions in a much more natural way.  My confidence in talking to others about God wouldn't come from my confidence in knowledge, but would be from the evidence of His working in my life.

When I read, 'We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.' it backs up my conviction that evangelism is simply expressing what we have seen and heard in relationship to our fellowship with God.  There is a natural process of sharing Christ with others when it what we are saying has been lived out personally by us.  It then no longer becomes someone else's story, but belongs to us.  When we own it, it is more natural (therefore easier), it is real (therefore more believable), and is more impacting.

My prayer for our church family is that we would draw into deeper fellowship with Jesus so that His life and love would shine brighter in our everyday, natural, life.