Now What?
We are to be involved in the Lord’s command to fulfill the Great Commission. It’s as simple as ABC.
A—ASK
Ask the Lord to show you who in your life needs Jesus. God has put you in certain people’s lives to share the good news with them.
Lee Strobel concludes his book The Unexpected Adventure with this challenge: “Whose door is God telling you to knock on? What phone call do you need to make, or what email do you know you ought to send? Which neighbor . . . what relative . . . who is the old friend you need to reestablish contact with? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the steps to take—big or small—to engage in the unexpected adventure. Then step out and follow His lead today.”
Make a list of perhaps five or more friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, or social media connections who need Jesus, and commit them to the Lord in prayer.
B—BASIC STRATEGY
1. Get Trained
Learn how to share your faith at your church or from a parachurch ministry. Select a gospel method that you prefer and develop your personal testimony so you can share it at anytime and anywhere.
“We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life” (1 John 1:1 NLT).
2. Memorize Key Scriptures
Pick five or more of these 11 verses to memorize so you can share your faith and repeat them on a regular basis.
- Romans 3:23 (ESV): “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
- Romans 5:8 (ESV): “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
- Romans 6:23 (ESV): “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
- John 3:3 (ESV): Jesus said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
- John 14:6 (ESV): “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
- Romans 10:9–10 (ESV): “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
- John 3:16 (ESV): “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
- Revelation 3:20 (ESV): “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with Me.”
- John 1:12 (ESV): “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
- Ephesians 2:8–9 (ESV): “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
- I John 5:11–12 (ESV): “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
C—COMMIT Your Time and Resources to Fulfilling the Great Commission
Here are Jesus’s final words before ascending to the Father: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20).
Read a book on evangelism that includes discipleship as a strategy to fulfill the Great Commission. There are many ways to strategically reach people for Christ in our day and age. One of the most cost-effective ways is through the Internet. Today it’s possible to reach people with the gospel in nearly every country of the world for as little as three cents. A ministry my wife and I personally support—JesusOnline.com—is seeing people indicate decisions for Christ for under 50 cents each.
Phil Wiegand, a business investor and author, wrote, “Whenever I invest my treasure in His Kingdom, I am storing up treasure in heaven that will last for eternity. A few years ago, I became aware of the tremendously effective outreach JesusOnline is having around the world on the Internet. . . . It took me a nano-second to decide I wanted to get in on this eternal investment opportunity.”
Whatever ministry you choose, invest your financial resources to proclaim the extravagant news of the gospel that will echo into eternity.
It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going
Have you ever heard of Mordecai Ham? Mordecai came to Charlotte, North Carolina, to put on an evangelistic crusade. A sandy-haired young man named Billy Frank heard Mordecai preach. Frank responded to the invitation, was converted, and became known as Billy Franklin Graham who probably preached to more people than any other person who has ever lived.
Who knows? The next Billy Graham may be someone you share Christ with and later gives their life to Christ. God has placed you and me at a certain place at a certain time to make an eternal impact for others.
The Story of Charles Peace
Charlie Peace was an English burglar and murderer who embarked on a life of crime. In 1879, he was arrested and taken on the death-walk to be hung. A prison chaplain routinely read some Bible verses, and Charlie Peace was shocked at the way the chaplain showed no emotion when reading about hell. Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire? This was too much for Charlie Peace. “Sir,” he said, addressing the preacher, “if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!”
Our salvation and the gospel are “things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:12). Angels who have a front-row seat to God’s power and miraculous works are awestruck by the fact that the Son of God laid down His life to save us. There is nothing on earth or in God’s universe that can compare to the gospel. During Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:39–40). Let’s not become silent. Let’s proclaim the most amazing news ever to the world.
In Luke 14:15–24 Jesus tells the parable of the great banquet to show how God is graciously extending His invitation to everyone. Many of those invited to the banquet made excuses not to come. The head of the household then invited “the poor and crippled and blind and lame” so that his house would be filled. God is inviting everyone to His eternal home. Someday perhaps very soon, the entry door to God’s great invitation into Heaven will be closed.
Revelation 22:17 says: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes would take the water of life without cost.”
May God grant us the courage to faithfully witness to those who don’t know Christ before the door to heaven is eternally closed.