Thursday, July 29, 2010

Quotables

"The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good."

I saw this quote the other day on the Lifehacker blog and I thought, that is true in sooo many areas of our lives! Lifehacker was, of course, speaking to all the perfectionists out there in relationship to their careers. But this quote can be applied in many other areas of our lives as well. The one I want to talk about today is Evangelism.

First of all, I want to point out that above all, I am writing this post to myself. I am terrible at evangelism. I get shy and nervous and stutter and basically end up making myself look ridiculous every time I attempt it. And I know very well how that reflects my heart. One of my biggest stumbling blocks in evangelism comes from looking for opportunities to witness to someone.

Honestly, I would LOVE it if someone just came up to me and said, "Hey, you're a Christian, right? Can you tell me what you believe please?" But that has only happened to me once and is probably not likely to happen again. More often than not we need to take advantages of situations and conversations as they come up. And, as 1st Peter 3:15 says, we need to"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have," when these moments happen.

But too often we wait for that 'perfect' opportunity until we share our faith. Too often we let 'good' opportunities pass us by thinking, "That was okay, but not great. I'll wait for a better opportunity." And then before we know it days, weeks, months, even YEARS have gone by while we have been faithfully cultivating relationships with unbelievers but never actually presenting the gospel.

I am not at all advocating shoving the gospel down a person's throat every time you see that person. I absolutely believe that we should look for good opportunities to share. But I also believe that we should not wait for the perfect opportunities.

"The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good"

1 comment:

C. Stirling Bartholomew said...

That was a truly an interesting post. Have been doing some work in 1st Peter, trying to get past the proof texts like 1pet 3:15 which is traditionally used (& abused) as an excuse for mounting massive philosophical siege works against the infidel. You have used the text here in the way it was intended, as a reference to giving a basis for your hope in a world which is full of hopelessness when the opportunity comes up. I share your experience. Having no gift for personal evangelism I have had neo-pagans throw Jesus in my teeth and all I did was smile and let the subject drop because I discerned no serious interest in the subject. I would much rather spend my energies on exploring and dead ends in the secular world views and exposing the despair the lies just below the surface.

anyway, this is getting to be a long comment so I will leave off.