“I’ve been examining Buddhism, and recently I was meditating, but as I was doing so, I saw a terrible image of a man on a cross, like Jesus. It terrified me, so I stopped.”
I had not expected this. The young lady I was talking to was one of the very first Central Asians I had ever met. I had been in her country for less than a month (a place I would eventually make my home for decades) and I thought she was supposed to be a Muslim. I had trained to work among her people. I had spent years at Southwestern Seminary preparing. I never thought during all those grueling classes and days of preparation that the first person I would meet in my new field of service would say that they had seen Jesus while pursuing Buddhism living in a Muslim country.
There are times in my many years on this earth where I have not found the words to say. Or, when responding to a surprising statement, later thought of all the ways I could have expressed something quite differently. Perhaps you know that feeling, lying awake at night re-living a moment saying, “Why didn’t I say it this way??” or “If I had only said _____.” In this instance, however, the words came out quickly, smoothly, and even with boldness: “That’s God saying you don’t need to seek him in meditation, you need to seek him in Jesus.”
Because it was so long ago, I do not recall the ensuing conversation over the dinner table that night, but I do recall the eventual results. A month or two after that amazing statement and my unexpectedly rapid reply, I learned from my friend who hosted us that night, that this woman had put her faith in Christ and was baptized in the newly planted church.
How Evangelism Happens
While my response was almost instantaneous, it came from a previously laid wellspring—not just from knowledge obtained in the classroom, but from plentiful time spent in prayer, the Word, and the pew. Even more importantly, it was Spirit-prompted. My words hit their mark, not because I was clever or smart, but because the Lord had them ready to be used for His purposes and glory.
Peter reminded the “elect exiles,” in a place eventually called Turkey, that even in settings of persecution or when others speak badly of us, we should be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” (I Pt 3:15b). Sharing the Gospel can take so many different forms, but it always comes to life at the intersection of three things: preparation (which is our response of faithful obedience) meets opportunity (which is placing ourselves in the Lord’s harvest fields) and is empowered by His Spirit (which is all His work). That is a potent combination.
Weakness is often God’s channel when sharing the Gospel.
However, lest we think we must be perfect, eloquent, having the pithy word just at the right time, keep in mind that weakness is often God’s channel when sharing the Gospel. In fact, we may think that what we often attempt in Jesus’ name falls flat, is ineffective, or even a complete failure. Sometimes, though, God shows us what really happens.
A Study in “Caveman” Evangelism
Before I went to the mission field, I sat under Roy Fish, the legendary evangelism professor for whom the Fish School of Evangelism and Missions at Southwestern is named. Dr. Fish preached the Gospel in America and around the globe. He trained thousands and thousands of Southwesterners how to share the Gospel. Yet, for all the things he taught, the one statement from him I remember most probably did not originate from him. It’s a proverb that I hear attributed to several, but I remember the day he said it in my Evangelism PhD seminar in 1992: “God hits straight licks with crooked sticks.” I think that was his Arkansas way of saying what God said to Paul when he suffered under the infamous thorn of his flesh, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It seems that Paul understood the Lord’s reply to his “unanswered prayer” when the Apostle continued, “Therefore, I [Paul] will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (II Cor 12:9).
The strong statement I had made to the woman I mentioned above was spoken in English. I had not even used a translator, because she knew English and even served as a translator for our personnel in the earliest days of their arrival. The Central Asian language that my wife and I had gone to learn at that time had no formal textbooks and is considered one of the harder languages to learn by linguists who know such things. More than half a year in, I knew they were right! I had gone from studying on the PhD level to feeling like a preschooler overnight. The new church (one of the very first to exist in the country) worshipped in that language, and most Sundays it was a chore to merely piece together sentences and occasional phrases that painfully came into my clouded mind. Then came the request: “Brian, will you preach for us next week?”
Perhaps I was just too young, perhaps culture shock had me within a state of temporary insanity, but for some reason, I said ‘yes!!’ This was a decision I immediately regretted. I suffered over the next week trying to put together a message in a language I could barely speak. I could hardly read a menu by that time, so what was I going to say? I decided I would do the basic “Navigator’s wheel.” This was a presentation that provides the six basic steps for the disciple: Abide (the central hub of the wheel); providing as a centerpiece for the four spokes of the Word, prayer, fellowship, and witnessing; and finally, the rim of the wheel as obedience. I diligently searched the dictionary (which had only been published the year before) for the correct words, wrote the wheel with the corresponding vocabulary on a big poster board, and then waited for the dreaded moment….
It went about as expected: It was terrible. I sat in the room of this apartment, around a low table with bowls of tea, as I tripped over every word I said. While I do not believe that cavemen who said “ugh” ever existed (ask me about my theory of linguistic anthropology sometime), if there ever was a caveman version of sharing the Gospel, that is what I did that day. Pretend you are a native speaker of my target language, and you hear, “Jesus…Jesus good. Live for Jesus. Bible…read Bible, Bible good. Pray. Talk God. Pray good…”. I’m sure as you read, you feel the awkwardness. I can assure you, it was worse. My new friends in the church were gracious, they let me come back the next week, where I properly sat in the corner, saying nothing. Weak. That was weakness.
As the years passed, my language improved and I often shook my head as I remembered that first message and eventually came to a place where I could laugh over the experience of “caveman discipling.” But, some seventeen years later, I attended a conference in a nearby country. In attendance was a believing lady from our country of service. She had walked with the Lord for many years and was part of a radio ministry that clearly proclaimed the Gospel now to every corner of her land. She had attended that initial church in the apartment with my very first, yet disastrous, sermon. By this time, however, she had moved to another city and I saw her infrequently. We caught up over a tea break and during conversation she told me something (in her language that I now could speak with some fluency) that has confirmed the words of Roy Fish and of sacred scripture to my very core:
“You know, Brian, you are my spiritual father.”
“Really, how’s that?”
“Do you remember the day you shared about the disciples wheel?”
I nodded my head and tried not to turn red.
“That was the day I gave my life to Christ.”
I almost fell on the floor. How? How could God take “caveman” and save someone? I was reminded once more that God really does not need our efforts. We are nothing special. He truly does all the work. He will take our preparation (even if our tools are limited and words are few), meet it with his opportunity (causing us to say our foolish ‘yes’), and empower it with His Spirit (which energizes our weakness and makes it strong).
God really does not need our efforts. We are nothing special. He truly does all the work.
Today, we live in a culture with slickly produced videos, Facebook Live, AI that answers every question, where weakness is ridiculed by a sea of comments from anonymous trolls. It can paralyze us. We will not take the risk until we know something is perfect. We fall for the lie that God will only use perfected saints. Remember: perfected saints are what we will be when Jesus returns in the “blink of an eye.” Until then, we are the crooked sticks, we are the weaklings. But, empowered by God’s Spirit, we can see where God is working, and be used by Him for His glory. Power is perfected in weakness.
