When He goes before

I got a troubled start in my Christian life, at least when it comes to evangelism. In my early teens I really wanted to be a good Christian and tried to apply what I learned in church and the youth campaigns I participated in. However, I distinctly remember the task of “personal evangelism” more as a burden then an opportunity. My feeling of it, not that anyone actually said it like that, was that we had been delivered a parcel, a product, and now it was up to us to “sell” it, present it pretty much on our own. And you had to present the whole parcel as well, preferably at the same time, for example by using the famous “bridge-illustration”. Such was my feeling and as a young teenager it was quite a lot to carry. Sadly I’ve discovered I’m not the only one who has had that feeling.

But now when we are entering a new work, I have a different feeling. Instead of feeling left alone with a difficult task, I feel like we’re following someone else, looking for what is already prepared. Instead of feeling that I have to deliver something prepacked, I understand that I am part of a process that I neither started nor will see the end of. Clearly, this is quite a different scenario.

Let me give you some biblical background that encourages me to see it this way:

• In several stories in both the Old and the New Testament God has prepared people, without the main character knowing it. We find a classic example 1 Kings 17:9-16 where God had already prepared a person to provide for Elijah. Later in the book the same prophet feels very much alone, but God has 7000 men already in mind, 1 Kings 19:18.

• We cannot come to know God without God pulling us first (John 6:44). God has the initiative all the way through the salvation process. He is the one that is looking, pulling, searching, we might experience it a different way, but in the reality that’s the way it is.

•  Jesus instruction to his disciples in Luke 10, especially verse 6, indicates that people are prepared or not, but that is not the disciples worry. If they get a good reception they stay, if not they move on. Jesus teaching on the four soils, for example in Matthew 13, presupposes that people’s hearts are different and therefore reacts differently to the gospel. But it’s not the disciple’s job to prepare the soil, only to sow the seed. The preparation is obviously someone else’s work.

We could go on. Really it’s about having a big view of God and understanding the process of salvation, neither which I had as a younger me. But know when we enter this work we are looking out for the ones God has prepared, for the people where he has already worked the soil. And that’s a wholly different experience.