Evangelism. A word I have dreaded for a while. I do not like rejection and I fear that people will reject me when I try to talk to them about God.
The model for this discipleship program is teaching on a topic, activation, debrief and redo.
We learned about evangelism and how we are called as disciples to go out into all the nations and spread the love of Christ. We were told to follow where the Holy Spirit leads us.
I started out the activation day already deciding that evangelism wasn’t for me and I would rather not be doing it. I told myself I would pray over everyone else that was out evangelizing instead of doing it myself.
As the morning progressed, I continued to feel like I was not doing as God was asking me to do, but was instead doing what I wanted to do out of that fear of rejection. The night before I had listened to a video where a girl had been sitting with God and asked Him, “If you could tell your church one thing, what would it be?” She heard God reply, “Fear Not. I have already overcome. I have won the battle. Fear not.” I knew God was speaking to me when I watched that video in regards to the next day’s evangelism activity and I immediately said “No thanks God.”
If we are honest, we tend to give that answer to God a lot more times than we realize. Whether due to busyness, not tuning into God’s voice or simply because we don’t want to.
It got close to the end of our activation time. I chose that exact time to speak out loud to my group that I felt like the morning was a failure because I was being disobedient and operating out of fear. I chose that moment to speak these words because time was up and I felt safe speaking this because I didn’t have to do anything about changing the failure into a success. To turn that around would take me laying down my fear and trusting God’s plan.
No doubt, God’s is constantly working because lucky for me, I was wrong about what time the activation lesson was over. There was still plenty of time and God was asking me to fear not and say yes to what He had next.
My group and I went to a coffee shop where I saw a college aged girl studying. I felt God telling me to go over and pray for her. I was almost in tears because of the fear that had overwhelmed me. I took a deep breath, turned around and put one foot in front of the other.
I walked over and asked if I could pray for the girl, Danielle, and I allowed for the Holy Spirit to speak through me because I did not know what to pray for. I began praying for this Danielle’s next season and that opportunities would open up for her. It seemed weird when I was praying this because it was the middle of the school year.
I looked up and Danielle was wiping away some tears. She informed me that she is graduating in December and those words rang so true to her. I began to tear up too. I was in complete awe of God and how good He is to me.
Danielle is a Christian and her fiance is a youth pastor at a church in Gainesville. She explained how she had been praying for someone like me that was following after Christ that she could be friends with. We have continued to keep in touch and she has come to our Monday morning worships at Adventures in Missions as well as coffee dates.
I would have missed out on an incredible friendship if I would have stayed in my fear and not trust in who my God is. I am so grateful for the God I serve because He is still at work all around us even if we say no, but He delights the most when we say yes because in those moments we get the privilege to be the vessels He uses to carry out His plans.
Next time you feel the Holy Spirit tugging on your heart and God calling you to do something, don’t hesitate because God is wanting to delight in using you as His vessel to bring about His plans!
Love always,
Rebekah
