Evangelism and Prayer
I just got back from talking to Spanish speakers in Herndon, the next town over from ours. Herndon has been a hotbed of ethnic tensions in Northern Virginia, and it's the site of our second church plant for Spanish speakers.
Anyway, I spent a while with our new church planter (who blogs here) handing our fliers and talking with Spanish speakers (I don't speak Spanish, but I've been trained to say "esto es para usted" and smile warmly while handing out fliers). If you get out of the car and begin to walk toward a group loitering in a parking lot, immediately a crowd gathers to see if you are offering work for the day. Instead, Humberto would share the gospel with them boldly ("you don't need work as badly as you need to be reconciled to God").
As I was watching him share with the scoffers, mockers, and the half-interested, I was reminded how we must pray for our evangelism. It is always such a miracle when the gospel of grace takes hold in someone's life, and it always seems like God saves the least likely people by his grace. If that's true, then we must pray.
Speaking of prayer and evangelism, J.I. Packer put it well: God means us, in this as in other things, to recognize and confess our impotence, and to tell Him that we rely on Him alone, and to plead with him to glorify His name. It is His way regularly to withhold His blessings until His people start to pray. ‘Ye have not, because ye ask not.’ ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened’ But if you and I are too proud or lazy to ask, we need not expect to receive. This is the universal rule, in evangelism as elsewhere. God will make us pray before He blesses our labors in order that we may constantly learn afresh that we depend on God for everything. And then, when God permits us to see conversions, we shall not be tempted to ascribe them to our own gifts, or skill, or wisdom, or persuasiveness, but to His work alone, and so we shall know whom we out to thank for them.
-- Evangelism and Sovereignty of God, page 122
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