Ambassadors for Christ

Little, Paul E., How to Give Away Your Faith. Downers Groves, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1966, 1989. 191 pages. Introduction Paul Little’s classic work, How to Give Away Your Faith, offers a simple yet often times profound look at one of the “hardest” tasks of the Christian life: evangelism. Witnessing is hard. Most Christians try to stay away from it and those who do evangelize often prove to be more of an embarrassment to the faith than a witness. How are we to faithfully proclaim the gospel of Christ to a world in need? How do broken clay jars carry an eternal message of hope and life to the thirsty and starving? In seeking to answer such questions, Little charts a helpful course for those who seek to be Christ’s ambassadors to the world. Summary Be Real! The world’s need for Christ is real and his help is a necessity. Christ and Christianity are the only real answers to the world’s need. We must be aware of this need and we must sincerely and truthfully proclaim the wonders of his name. It is our duty to live a life of genuine faith and sincerity of mission because superficial Christianity is empty and meaningless. Our focus should be ultimately placed on things eternal while seeking to remedy things material. Our goal is to have others not just assent to the facts of Christianity but to believe in the Christ of Christianity. How then are we to witness? First, Little highlights the necessity of evangelism for our own personal spiritual growth. It is necessary to witness the power of the gospel. Then we must obey. Evangelism is a matter of obedience. Obedience to Christ brings forth proclamation of his truth. Little proceeds to list seven steps toward active evangelism. First, we must have contact with others in a social context. Secondly, we must seek to establish a common interest with the purpose of bridging communication. Then we must provoke an interest in spiritual things. Fourthly, we must recognize when we should stop and when we should continue on sharing. We also must not condemn those whom we are witnessing too for their various sins. Sixthly, we must not become sidetracked. We must stick to the main message. Lastly, we must call them to repentance. We must call them to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that they might be saved. How do we handle those “ticklish” awkward situations? Our desire is to have the unbelievers with whom we are in contact to begin to respect us even though we are different. As they begin to respect us so they will also begin to listen to us instead of viewing us as weird or insane. But awkward moments will come and the best thing we can do is to be prepared for them. We should anticipate difficult situations and have alternatives to comfortably work through them. As ambassadors of Christ it is our duty to proclaim his message. The messenger must know and understand the message for the purpose of being a faithful and knowledgeable ambassador. Little sums up the gospel message in Jesus Christ himself – “who He is, what He has done, and how He can be known in personal experience” (56). He suggests following the pattern of problem, diagnosis, cure for setting forth the message of the gospel. Further, ambassadors cannot just know the message but they must also believe it and live it. We don’t have all the answers, but we nonetheless must be ready to give a reason for the hope within us. There are many questions, which non-believers have, but their basic problem is one of moral unbelief. They have rejected their creator and traded his truth in for a lie. Christ is the answer to those questions, which are asked. However, he has left it as our duty to show the helpless and lost the importance and relevance of Christ in answering those questions. Christianity is true because Jesus is the truth. He is the relevant truth the world needs. So how are Christians to witness to a corrupted world without compromising our holiness? It is our duty to reach out to the world, but we must not succumb to worldliness. We must recognize that all of our life is God’s and we are to live as unto him and for his purposes. We should live all of life cognizant of being stewards of God’s time and we must strive to live a life of constant witness to the truth. The gospel is not just for a one-time salvation event; the gospel is for life. Faith in Christ, the object of our salvation, must continue throughout the Christian life. We are in a daily battle but with Christ it is a victorious battle. We battle against our secret self; against sins both external and internal. This battle must be fought with the Sword of the Spirit and it must be waged through the power of prayer. We also battle over time and priorities, which must be aligned with God’s prerogative. In doing so we will have fought a victorious battle. Evaluation It is hard to summarize the gospel. It encompasses the totality of the person and work of Christ. It cannot be easily reduced; yet, all gospel presentations in one-way or another do so. Little summed the message of the gospel up briefly in five points (or three facts: problem, diagnosis, cure). The gospel by no means is limited to these five points or four spiritual laws. Because the gospel is the message and motivation for evangelism it would have been helpful to spend more time on explicating the basics of the gospel message. He does offer good suggestions in helping us better understand the gospel: write it out, tell other Christians, tell non-Christians. I began reading Little’s “Seven Basic Questions” which non-Christians ask with the thought of seeing how postmodernism has changed those questions (67-81). Surprisingly, many of the questions being asked back in the 60’s and 70’s are the same ones being asked in the 21st Century. The destiny of the lost, the exclusivity of Christ, the problem of evil, miracles, and the veracity of the Bible are all questions still being pondered today. However, one will have to look elsewhere to find more comprehensive answers to these questions. Chapters 7-9 seem a little disconnected from the whole of the work. While they do relate in many ways to evangelism they don’t seem to relate as much as previous chapters. They do relate, but it seems that Little could have done a better job in integrating them together into a coherent whole. These later chapters seem to move away from teaching about evangelism toward various basics of the Christian life. It probably would have proven more helpful to have those chapters under a heading of what to do after evangelism. Maybe it would have been more worthwhile to have those chapters in the beginning to discuss the character and duties of the evangelist. Another factor which Little did not really deal with was the role of Scripture memorization in evangelism. Maybe this would fall under a general knowledge of God’s Word, but it seems important enough to warrant a separate discussion. The one who has hide God’s Word in their heart will have a great arsenal at their disposal when it comes to the battle of witnessing. Being able to go to the Bible will help show the non-Christian the importance to Scripture and that it contains the hope for this life and the next. Conclusion Witnessing is not optional for the Christian. In fact, as Little has shown, it is vital to the Christian life. It is a matter of obedience to our Creator and Redeemer. Little, offers a helpful guide toward developing better witnesses. While he offers various witnessing helps he goes beyond the task of evangelism and hits the witness himself. This is where Little is most valuable and while this work will be used for some years to come.