Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you.
Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.
Psalm 143:8

Read: Psalm 143:4-11, Acts 8:26-31
Pilgrim’s Progress: Stage 1 Part 3

Relate: Into Christian’s confusion comes a figure named Evangelist. He doesn’t arrive with a program or a pamphlet. He doesn’t convene a committee or offer Christian a seven-step plan. He simply asks a question, “Why are you crying?” And then, when Christian explains his terror, the weight on his back, the city doomed to burn, the desperate not-knowing of where to run, Evangelist points. He points toward a light in the distance, and beyond the light, toward a narrow gate. He doesn’t carry Christian there. He doesn’t promise the road will be easy. He simply says, “Go that way. The gate is there. Knock and it will be opened for you.”

Bunyan understood something that a many in modern ministry have forgotten. The role of the evangelist is not to do the journey for anyone. We just point the way. There is a temptation, when we see someone in genuine spiritual distress, to overwhelm them with information. We hand them a stack of books. We walk them through an entire systematic theology or self help plan before they’ve taken their first step. Evangelist does none of this. He asks. He listens. He points. Then he lets Christian decide. There is profound respect for human agency in that approach. There is a profound confidence in the God behind the gate. If someone genuinely heads that direction, the gate will do what it is supposed to do. After all, we know who that gate is. (John 10:7)

React: I have been on both sides of this exchange. There was a time at a Starbucks in the Philippines where I did nothing but ask a couple of questions where a young lady talked herself into going back to church for the first time in years. I sat on a bus showing a young Turkish man how to install the YouVersion Bible App on his phone. The girl sitting next to him did it and two months later showed up at a church after reading the Kutsal Kitap (the Turkish version of the Bible) and saying it was like a fire inside of her. But I have also “won” debates against Muslims that have lost friendships. I have “convinced” people of the superiority of Christianity over Islam. Only to never hear from them again. 

God’s Word,  that light in the distance, is sufficient for the journey. The gate, Christ himself, is open to those who knock. Our job, like Evangelist’s, is simply to point toward what we know is true.

Respond:

Dear God,
Give me the courage to point people to You. Give me the courage also to only point people to You. Sometimes my biggest problem is not speaking up. But sometimes also my biggest problem is not shutting up. Too often, I don’t do my job. But too often when I do, I then try to do Your job as well. Give me the courage and the wisdom to be an evangelist. Help me to point people to You, and then to get out of the way so that You can do Your thing.
Amen.