While I love sharing amazing truths about God with His people, I’ve never been one to share the gospel with those who don’t know him. It wasn’t that I don’t think it’s important, or that I don’t care about them, or even that I’m too embarrassed, it’s that I’ve felt helpless as to how to communicate it. I’m familiar with the standard presentation of the gospel, but I’ve felt like there was an unbridgeable gap – a language barrier – that would prevent those words from making sense to one who didn’t already know them. I took comfort in 1 Corinthians 3:6 (I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow,) thinking that I was to water seeds that someone else had planted and didn’t need to worry about planting myself. However, studying Revelation this year has convicted me this is not the case. God has also graciously given me several images, revising what I saw before, that are changing me helpless heart and encouraging me that it is possible.

Though I had felt there was a language barrier, that any words I could speak would be meaningless, Acts 2:4-12 showed me that the Holy Spirit can transcend any language difference. The disciples spoke in tongues, languages they did not know, so that people from all over the world could understand them and ask, “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? …We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

I also pictured a huge brick wall between unbelief and belief, a wall no one could go over or around. But then God showed me there was a little door in that brick wall, a place where one could go through from unbelief to belief, and it was just a matter of patiently paying attention to find the door for a particular person. Then I would be able to introduce them to Jesus, who stands at the door (Revelation 3:20.)

And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.  Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Colossians 4:3-4