When I started following Christ as a young adult I was pretty obnoxious. My experience with Jesus was genuine; I was filled with the Spirit and moved with compassion to share the gospel with others. What I needed to learn was some relational finesse. I was like a 180 pound puppy jumping up on everyone and trying to love them by slobbering all over them. I just came on too strong.
The reality of eternal things hit me so hard that I wanted to warn everyone about the dangers of hell. I knew deep down that the only way to make it to heaven was through knowing Christ personally. So I told people that. I told family members and friends. And I told coworkers and strangers. I told anyone who would listen—and those who wouldn’t listen!
It’s not that what I was saying was untrue. And it’s not that my motive for speaking so bluntly wasn’t motivated by love. It was. My problem was that I was ignorant of basic principles of relationship. My problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand the message of the gospel. My problem was that I didn’t understand people.
People don’t appreciate it when someone pushes something on them. We don’t like when car salesmen are aggressive. We don’t like when people pretend to be interested in us but really have an agenda to sell us something. It bothers us when someone is so zealous trying to push something on us that they don’t even let us talk.
Timeshares
It reminds me of the time we received an offer in the mail for two free nights at a beautiful hotel on Cape Cod and a gift certificate to one of the local restaurants. The only catch was that we’d have to attend a breakfast to hear about the joys of owning a timeshare. We weren’t in a place to purchase a timeshare, but we were interested in hearing about it. When we arrived at the breakfast we were seated at a table with a timeshare rep who told us everything we needed to know about owning a timeshare. We politely thanked him and let him know that we were not interested.
Well, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Any reason we had for not spending $12,000 on a timeshare—he had an answer for! It was really annoying. I feel like if I told him I had a month to live he would have still given me a reason I needed to buy the timeshare. It was pretty obvious that the guy got some kind of commission for selling a timeshare, so he relentlessly pushed us.
We would have walked out, but we had to get through the entire pitch in order to receive our $40 restaurant gift card (this was 20 years ago). Luckily, we had our two-year-old Tasmanian Devil with us. She was getting restless, and it was getting harder and harder to hold her back from whining and running all over the quiet poolside breakfast. An idea suddenly came to me that could get us out of the situation. I just let my daughter go wild until she was disrupting the atmosphere so terribly that the guy gave up and gave us our gift card.
It’s a funny memory, but it was extremely unpleasant at the time. It was actually pretty infuriating. When we told him kindly that we weren’t interested he should have respected that. When we finally got away from the high pressure sales pitch you know how we felt? We didn’t like the timeshare man. And we didn’t like timeshares. The very word “timeshare” brings up a negative feeling when we hear it even to this day.
Chocolate
This is exactly what can happen with the message of the gospel. By being too pushy we can turn something wonderful into something repulsive. Chocolate is wonderful, right? If we offered someone chocolate and they told us they didn’t like chocolate, or they weren’t hungry, how would they feel if we disregarded what they said and started shoving chocolate down their throat?
The Scriptures teach us to share the gospel with gentleness and respect. We are called to honor everyone. If we aggressively and obnoxiously push the gospel on people who don’t want to hear it—we will make them even more resistant. I did this a lot as a young Christian and with much regret. In my unbridled zeal I ended up pushing people away.
Be patient
What I eventually learned was that having a conversation with someone about God is a very vulnerable sacred thing. It can’t be rushed. We can’t force our way into it. Well, we can, but it almost always leads to an argument. It becomes nothing but a debate of ideas that goes in circles. It’s fruitless because the heart is not open. Fish aren’t caught by pouncing on them. They are caught by waiting patiently.
It’s a good and godly thing to urgently want people to hear the gospel. But we can’t push people into sharing their thoughts of God before they are ready. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try at all. We should. But if they aren’t open to it right now—leave it alone. Focus instead on being a good friend or a good coworker. If it’s your husband you want to share Christ with, just be the best wife you can be and wait until he wants to talk about God. We can let them know that we are ready to talk to them if they would like to talk about God. But never force it.
What we sometimes forget is that people remember how we treat them more than they remember what we say to them. We may have a tremendous grasp of the Bible and possess great skill in articulating the message. But if we are pushy, obnoxious and cantankerous, we send a message to people that the gospel we preach hasn’t made us better humans.
Love them
Before you start preaching to people, love them. If it’s your mom that you want to share Jesus with, then focus on being a good son or daughter. If it’s your little sister you want to share Christ with, then take a deep interest in her life. Listen to her. If it’s your best friend from high school that you feel burdened for, don’t call him up and vomit the gospel all over him. Catch up with him. Find out what’s happening with his life. Be an empathetic friend.
People aren’t stupid. They know when someone is spending time with them only because they want to convert them to their religion. If we are going to have any success talking with people openly about their thoughts of God, we need to treat them as people made in God’s image.
Think about it
Who do you share your deepest thoughts with? Even if you are someone who speaks with candor in casual conversations, who do you bear your soul to? Who do you confess sins to? Who do you trust enough to share your worst fears and insecurities with? If we are honest, there are very few people with which we share our deepest thoughts, right? It’s because there are very few people who have earned our deepest trust. Well, if we only open our deepest thoughts to certain trusted people, why do we expect spiritually lost people to open up their deepest thoughts to us? It just doesn’t work that way.
I understand that there are times when people we don’t know well open up to us. Those are special exceptions when the Holy Spirit is working supernaturally. But most of the time in our relationships we need to develop trust little by little. What I’m saying is that if we want people to open up their deepest thoughts about God to us, then we should strive to be the kind of people that people want to open up their deepest thoughts to. Be trustworthy. Be worthy of being trusted with the confessions, fears, struggles and trauma of others.
Set the tone
A good question to consider is this: Who do you open up your deepest soul to? Once you answer that question, consider this: What is it about that person that makes you so comfortable that you share things with them that you don’t share with most other people?
To share Christ effectively we need to be devoted to prayer and know the Bible. We need to be skilled at communicating the message of the gospel. We need to be filled with the Spirit. But all of these things won’t accomplish much if we don’t regard the basic principles of relationship. Do we want people to be honest, open and vulnerable with us? Then we need to be honest, open and vulnerable with them. That’s how relationships work.