IDEAS FOR WITNESSING

I'm wondering if anyone has any effective ideas for Witnessing? I get the impression that a lot of people these days are blaming the behaviour of religious people in general, for not being Born Again and therefore accepting JESUS CHRIST as their LORD AND SAVIOUR!

And I'm finding this to be rather frustrating.

What do you all think about this?

Best way I've found, more effective than any church outreach program I've ever seen, is just being a friend.

If you're a friend to people you become friends with people. Then the deep questions come later. You don't even have to look for opportunities. They will bring up issues on their own.

Remember Zacchaeus? Jesus never did any great miracles for him. All Jesus ever did was go have lunch with him. By the end of the visit he was swearing he'd straighten up and start dealing fairly in tax collecting, and even repay anybody he had cheated before.

I suspect that those who reject the gospel will reject it regardless of the estate of the messenger. While an obviously hypocritical messenger provides an easy excuse, someone who is looking for excuses generally has no shortage of excuses.

John 5:19 says Jesus always did what He saw the Father doing. A better way to witness might be to just wait until one sees God at work and join Him in it.

I'm not suggesting that a life of piety and faith is unimportant. I believe it is. Living well through the difficulties of life is often the impetus for someone in their own difficulties seeking such a person out. I just don't believe people who refuse the good news lack for excuses.

Witnessing?
You mean miracles? Miracles are my favorite part of my faith but for many (especially Protestants) they don’t like them because they think they’re from Satan or something. This is a common theme with a lot of people in general not just this forum.
‘Some others think that miracles don’t exist anymore or something like that.


But I have created a miracle thread here.

https://christianchat.com/bible-discussion-forum/the-miracles-thread.208717/

Probably not every Christian is called to this type of evangelism, but I think Ray Comfort's (Living Waters) method is very clear and effective. I love watching his witnessing videos.

I think I'm in complete agreement with Cameron here, and I think he summed it up nicely.

Here's another way to look at the same issue:
1.) Everyone is accountable for their own actions.
2.) The Christian is accountable for his actions... accountable to God.
3.) The lost person is also accountable for HIS actions... regardless of the actions of anyone else.
4.) It doesn't help the lost man if we allow him to blame his actions on someone else; he is responsible for his beliefs.
5.) It's ok for us to be sympathetic, as long as we eventually get back to the lost man's accountability.
Example:
"I'm sorry some Christians have hurt you, and maybe we should talk about that. But ultimately, the actions of another person have NOTHING to do with whether or not there is a God. So let's talk about the real issues."



You guys have a great weekend.

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Israel now being back in the land and its prophetical implications. That's where I always seem to start. Bona fide irrefutable facts that could only have been the result of God's superintending Hand. Then to the fact that God Himself was dealing with His people Israel for almost a couple thousand years, maintaining records of this interaction.

Another launching point: the fact that the copies we possess of Paul's letters and writings are irrefutably authentic, genuine and factual. And that what we have today is a near-flawless record of precisely what happened during his ministry 2000 years ago. Coupled with the fact that Paul had a near 20 year writing ministry. If he was a fraud, it would be impossible for him to have persisted so long.

Yes, Ray is very good, isn't he!

No, actually I mean witnessing, as in trying to draw people to JESUS CHRIST as our LORD AND SAVIOUR, so that they become BORN AGAIN.

Oh I see. Yeah there’s a lot of cultural and language barriers here between people, regions and customs so maybe you should have said Evangelizing?
A few other members have given good advice about evangelizing already so I won’t add anything else.

No worries, @Eli1 Thanks for your comments.

A big THANK YOU to everyone for their wonderful replies; I've found them to be very helpful indeed, so thank you, once again; I really appreciate them.

Hello @OLDMANBORNAGAIN, I believe that you may find the approach to witnessing that is taught in this book interesting, I know that I have Basically, it teaches you how to formulate and then ask leading questions about the God and the Gospel to help the people who you are witnessing to come to their own (correct) conclusions (instead of us simply feeding all of it to them).

I think that it is an especially helpful method for discussing the Christian faith with unsaved family members, friends and colleagues.

Tactics, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions - Kindle edition by Koukl, Gregory, Strobel, Lee. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
God bless you!!

~Deuteronomy
p.s. - I believe that Dr. Koukl has a YouTube Channel, and he is involved with a number of parachurch ministries as well, like Ligonier, for instance.

Over a year ago I dreamed that I was witnessing, and the way I explained the gospel to who I was talking to was something like, "In the Old Testament, people had to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins. Now Jesus was the sacrifice once for all and we can put our faith in His sacrifice." It just all of a sudden seemed like such a clear way to present the gospel. Then only a day or so later I was at a park and felt the Lord leading me to witness to a few young people that were hanging out there, and was able to share with them pretty much like I'd dreamed I'd done with someone in my dream! I hope the seeds will sprout.

Whoops, sorry about the mistaken wording in post #13 above, specifically, "ask leading questions about ~the God~ and the Gospel". Oh well, too late to fix it now

Thank you so much for this! I'll probably end up buying this book! GOD BLESS you always, my dear brother.

Yes, I can understand, I also got very upset with the behaviour of some Christians. I learnt a very hard lesson not to look at people. When someone treats me wrong now I tell the Lord, what are you trying to teach me. After all this is our training ground.

Back to the topic,
tomorrow some of us will go on the streets and offer gospel tracts to the people. When they see us in the vehicle they look again, because each one is from a different country.
we find it a good way to meet and talk to people & share the good news.

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I'd also recommend this book.


It helps you know HOW to talk to people with strange and contrary views.
As the world gets crazier, this actually gets harder and harder.

Koukl actually does a strange thing with this book: he takes very sophisticated philosophical concepts, and puts them all into very understandable language and methods that actually seem perfectly normal. It contains academic principles, but it's not an academic book.

The book goes through things like epistemic arguments, dialectical arguments, self referential claims, basic principles of propositional logic, debate tactics like circumventions, and even some of Francis Shaeffer's World View Apologetics.... all without the reader even realizing what's happening.
You'll learn a lot of sophisticated concepts without even realizing it - it will just seem very understandable and practical.

BTW, Jesus did the same thing.
Some of Jesus' arguments were extraordinarily layered and complex philosophically... and yet he just spoke in normal language that everyone could understand.

Final Thought:
Some of the things in Koukl's book are methods that trained atheists also use to attack Christians.
So you'll also gain a grasp of how and why atheists attack you in the particular ways they do.

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yes, i do. especially in the summer, if your outside, talking to someone, use nature to start your witnessing. a flower, the sunshine, trees, great weather, etc. always speak with a "real" smile & an upbeat tone in your voice. associate it with a memory from your past. a John 7:7 says, "the world can not hate you, but me it hateth, because i testify of it that the works thereof are evil". the more ungodly;y a person is, the more they don't want their lives changed. if you witness to someone who doesn't accept Jesus, its not your fault, you did what you were suppose to do. you shouldn't feel guilty.

* Karlon makes a great point, from the 2nd half of the verse: that the world hates Jesus, and so we shouldn't be surprised if people reject the message or even reject us.

* However, we need to be careful with the first half of the verse.
When Jesus said, "The world cannot hate you," he was not talking to believers, he was talking to his unbelieving brethren.
His point was that the world does not hate the people who are in agreement with the world, but the world certainly does hate those who disagree with the world.


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