Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - "This Changed My Life!"

You can't turn on the TV these days without seeing someone give their testimony of how a product or program changed their life. Just this past week I watched as participants on the reality show "The Biggest Loser" used statements describing their experience, such as "This changed my life!" or "I got my life back!" or "My life will never be the same!"

Without taking anything away from the individuals who have truly experienced life change on similar shows or by participating in a product, at the end of the day, the change is based on the implementation of physical disciplines, or the natural results of ingredients taken into the body, and sometimes a combination of both.

In much the same way, evangelicals have a way of emphasizing that when it comes to witnessing or sharing your faith, all you really need is to attend a class, develop a good technique and be willing to talk to people on faith issues. And before you know it, you will start to see people come to Christ as a result of your diligent personal evangelism efforts.

Along these same lines, there is much on the evangelism training market promoting the concept that sharing your faith can be as easy as taking your next breath. "Share your faith naturally" is a common catch-phrase used to encourage people to step out and have a spiritual conversation with a non-Christian.

While I am certainly one hundred percent in favor of encouraging believers to learn how to effectively share their faith and find ways to do it that best fits their personality, giftedness, etc, I want to swing the pendulum back in the other direction to remind us of the supernatural aspect of witnessing for Jesus. And while I would never erase God from the equation of having helped people reach certain health goals on a television show, there are some distinct applications of the supernatural when it comes to reaching out to non-Christians with the Gospel.

• An individual can only think about God and desire to know Him when God the Father begins to draw that person to Himself (John 6:44 ).
• It takes the convicting work of the Spirit of God to show a person that they are spiritually undone and in need of a Savior (John 16:8 ).
• When we interact in spiritual conversations with non-Christians, we are completely dependent on the Holy Spirit to give us the words to say (Luke 12:12 ).
• Faith to believe in God is a gift given by God to individuals. It is not something one can muster up or be talked into (Ephesians 2:8-9 ).
• Salvation is an act of God making the eternal part of us perfect before Him in heaven. It is also the process of making us more like Christ while we are here on earth (Hebrews 10:14 ).

So what are we saying? Salvation, being brought into a right relationship with Holy God, begins and ends with the work of God in a person's life. He just happens to allow us to be a part of His miracle work as mouth pieces of His message of hope to the world. If you and I are going to be effective witnesses for Christ to non-Christians,we must be found living, acting, and speaking in complete dependence on and obedience to God's Spirit.

We must pray and ask Him to be at work in the person's heart we are trying to reach, to give us opportunities to speak to them about spiritual things, to give us the courage and the words to say, and to take what is said and use it as a change agent in the heart of the person, bringing them to a saving faith in Jesus. Without the work of God, we are only having a religious conversation.