This was such a great question posed to me today by email. I love it and I’m so excited to share the answer!!!
What if we share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others and we are rejected?
It’s not an easy thing to do, having courage to share the Word of God with others, and yet, God calls us to do it. What do we do? Let’s find out together…
What If People Reject Me When I Share God With Them?
First I think that you need to be careful WHEN you are sharing…
When to share and when not to share
Let’s say, for example, you have an acquaintance, and they are extremely hostile toward God. They constantly talk about how God is bad and all this bad stuff about Him. Should you share the gospel with them?
The answer to that will differ for each person and you need to go according to your conscience. If God is convicting you to share, then share, but if not, personally, I wouldn’t.
It would come off as antagonizing to them if you shared your love of Jesus to someone so outrightly hostile toward Him.
Does that mean you should be silent about your faith? Absolutely not. If they ask you, “Hey, what are your thoughts?” or they jeer you saying, “Am I right?” while dissing God, you can fully tell them no, in a gentle and loving way. But they probably aren’t going to listen.
So, how do you talk to others about Christ, how do you know WHO to talk to or when?
Just be yourself and be genuine
I would pray that God gives you an opportunity to share His message with the right people, the people that He wants them to hear it from you.
After all, it’s not your sole responsibility to evangelize the world. We share the message of Christ with those that God puts in our path.
For example with my blog, I share printables. People love my printables, but I ALSO talk about God. In fact, I talk about God A LOT! On my blog, in my normal day-to-day routine. I don’t shut up about God just because I’m online. This is how I am. I love God, He’s my life, and of course, I talk about Him.
I think that’s key…
Gently feel out the situation
If you just go up to someone and talk about God, you have no connection with them and it comes off as weird and uncomfortable. Usually, someone who is uncomfortable isn’t going to open up to you and so you do more harm than good, even though your motives are pure. Because to them, they are thinking like, “Wow, I wasn’t even asking about God, how’d that come up. They don’t know me, know my situation. They don’t care about me. It’s just their own personal agenda,” and it comes off wrong. Not the way you intend it to.
But if you, naturally bring it up in conversation when speaking to people, and you genuinely care about them and show you’re sincere, it will go a lot better. Sometimes, if I’m unsure if I can talk about God, I just talk about something normal like…
“I was praying the other day and…”
“Thank God that He didn’t allow that to happen…”
Things like that. Just mentioning God’s name or prayer in casual conversation and watch their response.
Do they squirm?
I was talking to one girl who claims to be Christian and I mentioned God like that just in passing conversation and she squirmed. She didn’t want to hear about God.
That doesn’t change who I am. I talk about it or I don’t, but I don’t press it. If they are squirming or not open to it subtly, I don’t press at all. I just pray that if God wants it to come up, it will come up in conversation, and it’s about making relationships, which brings me to the next point. 🙂
Making relationships is the most successful
God puts us here on Earth and doesn’t usher us directly to Heaven upon conversion because He WANTS us to share our faith.
You have a better chance of sharing your faith than most preachers do. Because preachers are busy in the word of God and they have a congregation to speak to. Their job somewhat limits them from meeting a lot of people who may want to hear about God, such as work. A firefighter, a receptionist, a teacher, all those occupations where you’re coming in contact with a lot of people and together, we all can reach the world, but not one person can reach everyone.
Even Jesus, when He walked the Earth did not travel the whole world. He focused on making relationships in His own backyard. He traveled yes, but not to distant lands. He was spreading the gospel where He was. Making relationships as He went.
Sharing God’s Word should be natural. It should be something that isn’t forced.
You can give someone a prayer card and that’s great, but you’ll get better results and do more for Christ by making relationships.
The next thing you need to know is that…
You will be rejected
There are no ifs about this, you will, absolutely, 100% BE rejected sometimes.
The world is full of evil people. Satan roars around like a lion seeking to destroy the hearts of men. He’s quite good at being evil and dragging lots of people down with him.
You will be rejected, BUT, the Bible says not to lose heart.
Think about it. Paul was rejected. For the love of Pete, Jesus Himself was rejected. He was crucified. If we think we can get out of being rejected, we fool ourselves!
John the Baptist was rejected. He lost his head. How many people died for their faith? MANY!
As Christians, we have to be WILLING to be rejected for His name. It’s going to happen. People will be mean to you, they will be rude, they will attack you. It’s part of being a Christian but the alternative is that you are not used for God because you never talk about your faith and just keep it to yourself. How is that godly? How is that God-honoring? How can God bless someone if they are hiding God under a basket?
We are called to be a light on a hill, the salt of the Earth. We are called to speak.
God will give us the confidence in Him to be able to speak and He will bring those to us that need the gospel as well, if we ask Him.
Pray that God helps you be more bold and confident in your faith that you don’t CARE if you are rejected. Really, they are rejecting God, not you, so you can’t take it personally. God is in you, they hate God, so they hate you. It’s just how it is. But doing something for God, being used by God, is such a precious thing and He takes people like you and I, broken people, and raises us up TO speak His truth!
He’s with you. He’s in you. You got this. Just do your absolute best, practice in front of the mirror having conversations so it’s more natural if you’d like. I used to do that a lot when I first started. It’s a great thing to do because the more you do that, the more comfortable you become. But don’t be shy or scared. God doesn’t give us a spirit of timidity. He gives us boldness and confidence in Him.
I pray that everyone reading this will have more boldness to share God’s truth with others, to be a light to the world as He’s asked us to be and to make more relationships and have more opportunities in order to share that faith.
