Mark Dever
There are times when the gospel just seems to be powerfully at work in a nation, and thousands upon thousands are converted. If you think about what has happened in Latin America, Africa and East Asia all in the last hundred years, it is breathtaking. We have seen an expansion of the gospel as we have never seen before in the history of the church.Collection: Latin
We can't know at any given time how God will bless our faithful witness. So the apparent numerical growth of the church is never a good guide to how faithful we have been in evangelism.Collection: Faithful
The important thing when you are tied down is to continue to model Christ's love. This will ensure that your words, perhaps spoken long ago, will have fresh relevance, or it will help little ones to understand what it means to live the Christian life in days to come. A life well-lived in these circumstances can be hugely useful in evangelism.Collection: Christian
We are all called to have faith. So all of us are called to evangelize, while some are specially gifted for this ministry.Collection: Ministry
I guess I tend to see divine appointments everywhere. I am always on the alert for opportunities. So I prefer to err on the side of witnessing too often than not enough.Collection: Opportunity
Some believers are faithful in the way that they live, but at the end of the day, they will not share the gospel with as many people as someone else who has special gifts from God.Collection: People
What really concerns me is for Christians to understand the fundamentals of evangelism in a way that is helpful in the contemporary scene.Collection: Christian
Too often preachers want to deal with people simply at the level of publicly accessible reason. We participate with them in their own epistemology. But this is not New Testament preaching. We have a message that is not from this world; it is from God. We don't know it by our own cleverness; we know it because God has revealed it.Collection: People
Humility is not an 'added extra,' one of the lesser Christian virtues. If you don't have humility, you may be lost.Collection: Christian
Actually, having a few questions of your own shouldn't prevent you from sharing the gospel with others. You can explain to them that while you still have a few unresolved questions yourself, you don't have enough faith to not believe.Collection: Believe
Keep going until you get good counsel that is persuasive for you that you should go elsewhere.Collection: Persuasive
The more you come to know the Bible - both in reading it extensively and also meditating on it deeply - the more integrated your understanding of all of life will be. And this means that there will be fewer steps between what you are doing at work and sharing your faith in Christ.Collection: Reading
From the time of Cain until the last believer before Christ's return, we are all fundamentally in the same boat. We suffer the same spiritual afflictions and tendencies.Collection: Spiritual
Sometimes we have to wait a long time to see conversions.Collection: Long
There is simply so much reason to believe the good news of Jesus Christ in history, in Scripture, as well as in our own experience that it would take a leap of faith not to believe in the gospel.Collection: Jesus
Suffering can serve us. Suffering tests our trust in God's promises. And we have a great interest in knowing the truth about our trust in Him.Collection: Knowing
Indeed, some secularists are so worried about Christianity, they think Christians are about as dangerous as Muslim terrorists. They get really worried when we don't invest our lives in this-worldly concerns. They look on us as unpredictable free agents. When we reject their relativism and make absolutist spiritual claims, they look at us as nervously as they would a terrorist with a suicide bomb strapped to his back. Of course, Christians are not into coercion in any form. But it is very hard to persuade secularists of that.Collection: Christian
Worldliness in the church is a lot more pervasive than a lack of passion for evangelism. Nevertheless, one of the results of worldliness is a waning enthusiasm for evangelism.Collection: Passion
God can use even stray, honest comments to bring people to himself.Collection: People
Testimonies are great things about what the Lord has done for us, but no-one will be offended when you talk about what God has done for you. You need to be specific about sin, about Christ's death on the cross, about others' need for a saviour, and about their need to repent and trust in Christ.Collection: Needs
If you say that the gospel lays a claim upon people, then you are invading their personal space, and they feel as though you have no right to be there. Now we don't even begin preaching the gospel until we get into their personal space and they feel the demands of God upon them.Collection: Preaching The Gospel
I love people thinking about apologetics. I just think that we have to be careful. We need to realize that we can argue about evolution or the existence of God or any number of things, but until we tell people the message of the cross, we have not evangelized them.Collection: Thinking
Our culture is becoming more hostile to the gospel. This trend may be more established in Australia than in the USA, but it's now certainly the case that the postmodern mindset is dominant, particularly in the media. Therefore, when we start speaking in terms of certainties, we sound scary to other people.Collection: Media
If you think that the gospel is all about what we can do, that the practice of it is optional, and that conversion is simply something that anyone can choose at any time, then I'm concerned that you'll think of evangelism as nothing more than a sales job where the prospect is to be won over to sign on the dotted line by praying a prayer, followed by an assurance that he is the proud owner of salvation.Collection: Jobs
It's fine to deal with people's doubts and explain why they have good reasons to believe in Christ. But until we tell them the good news of Jesus Christ, we haven't done our job. They need a saviour that God has provided them in Christ. Once they know that, we can do as much apologetics as we need to.Collection: Jesus
The difference between apologetics and evangelism is that in apologetics, you are answering objections that the world raises, whereas in evangelism, you are bringing the message that Christ brought. So unbelievers tend to set the agenda in apologetics, and you set the agenda in evangelism.Collection: Differences
Evangelists have absolutely no desire to physically or emotionally coerce anyone. In a sense, we are like doctors: we have a duty to tell you the truth, care for you, argue with you (if that is useful), but we can't compel you to do anything.Collection: Doctors
We may be sinking in the North Atlantic in the most famous ship disaster of all time, but God can still use us to reach out and save others through our witness.Collection: Use
I want to defend the right of employees to share the gospel in appropriate situations. Every situation requires wisdom and insight. I don't think it's wise to say, "Share the gospel every time you can". I can see all kinds of problems that come from that approach.Collection: Wise
Christians, like everyone else, are prone to be selfish and scared, and wanting others to think well of them. So, although we possess what one part of us knows is the greatest news in the world, we don't act as though it is. Consequently, we share the gospel less than we should.Collection: Christian
As a pastor, I have the opportunity every week to share the gospel publicly in a way that most of the members sitting in our church do not. However, that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility for reaching others with the gospel.Collection: Responsibility
I think we have to realize that God sometimes gives us more time to pray, and when he does this, we can pray that he will bless those who have opportunities to speak to others.Collection: Opportunity
Unfortunately, many of our churches calibrate their life to these nominal Christians. The predictable result is that you get fake, hypocritical churches that confuse the message of the gospel and make it hard for others who are trying to do genuine evangelism.Collection: Christian
It doesn't matter whether we live in the 19th or 21st centuries; we face the same basic problems that everyone who lives between the Fall and the return of Christ faces.Collection: Fall
I think it's unhelpful to suggest that the task of evangelism is essentially the responsibility of ministers.Collection: Responsibility
I assume that normally the Lord will be bringing people to himself through the instrumentality of the preached word. However, we have to be very careful that we don't assume that if we are 'X' faithful in evangelism, then we will see 'Y' results right now. It doesn't work like that.Collection: People
Prayer is the preview of God's action.Collection: Prayer
For a Christian, our fears about the future are rooted in those places where our will differs from God's will.Collection: Christian
We are all called to initiate involvement in each other’s lives... We covenant together to work and pray for unity, to walk together in love, to exercise care and watchfulness over each other, to faithfully admonish and entreat one another as occasion may require, to assemble together, to pray for each other, to rejoice and to bear with each other, and to pray for God’s help in all this.Collection: Exercise
Forgetfulness of God's grace is one of the greatest tools in the enemy's war against our souls.Collection: War
Our fears lie to us about how important they are.Collection: Lying
We should want to evangelize because of the joy that God puts in our hearts. Ultimately, that's the best reason for sharing our faith.Collection: Heart
Sin claims to free but in fact it kills.Collection: Facts
According to the New Testament, the church is primarily a body of people who profess and give evidence that they have been saved by God's grace alone, for His glory alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.Collection: People
Every believer should evangelize. I know some Christians think that evangelism is only for people with special gifts for it, but I don't believe the New Testament teaches that. While Paul does say that some believers have the call to be evangelists, all of us have the responsibility of evangelism.Collection: Christian
Once we see more of our need and understand more of what Christ has done for us, he will become more precious to us. And this, in turn, will enable our obedience far more than sheer grunt effort.Collection: Effort
I love Iain Murray's definition of worldliness: towards the end of Evangelicalism Divided, he says that worldliness consists of loving idols and being at war with God. I think that's true in the lives of too many professing Christians today.Collection: Christian
Christians are defined not by our heritage, but by our mission; not by our blood, but by His.Collection: Christian
Today is what the Lord has prepared you for.Collection: Today