EvangelismCoach

Holy Spirit

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30 Days of Prayer: Day 12 – The mystery of conversion

This entry is part 12 of 23 in the series 30 Days of Prayer

Mystery of Christian Conversion“Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” – Mark 4:27

How does the seed grow?

I remember science projects I did in elementary school to make seeds sprout.

We played with the variables of soil, light, water, and even gravity (by using a record player) to see what might happen.

I recall the wonder and marvel that the seeds sprouted.

My children have repeated similar experiments with guandu and papaya seeds, and I got joy at watching their excitement over the shoots peaking out from the soil.

Watching a seed actually sprout and turn into something else provokes awe in my spirit at the great marvel of God’s design.

Scientists can probably describe

  • the mechanics of how a seed grows,
  • the right elements that contribute to helping a seed spout
  • how a seed shoots forth it’s roots
  • how genetics help it turn into the right plant,
  • how the chemical interactions with water, soil, and light make the seed sprout.

But the inner workings remain a mystery of wonder to me that seeds sprout and change into something beautiful.

Even without my attention, my care, seeds grow once they are activated.

Silently.

Mysteriously.

Over time.

Transforming into what they were designed to become.

The mystery of Christian conversion

As evangelists, we sow the seed of the word, but God makes it grow.

How the individual seed grows in the life of the person who receives it remains the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit.

How did you come to surrender your life to Christ?

Can you remember a day or even a particular moment?  You had come to place in your life where the invitation to follow Christ became irresistible and you surrendered your life.

Or maybe it was more of a gradual awareness and personal ownership.  You grew up surrounded by Christians, in a Christian environment, and somewhere along the way, you owned your own faith.

Either way, your conversion and surrender to Christ was at the end of a quest, a journey, a path of spiritual restlessness and need that led you to see your need for Christ.

A seed had been planted.

The journey began.

Eventually, it led to your conversion.

That mysterious inward journey is the Holy Spirit drawing you faith: “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

That journey is unique

That seed cast by the evangelist or sower fell on the unique soil of your life:

  • the circumstances of your life at the time,
  • the people of spiritual influence around you,
  • your own background, upbringing, and personality.

These elements all make for a totally unique and mysterious process of conversion under the sovereign guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique to each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  There is no on/off conversion switch.

There is a mystery of the journey that we must acknowledge.

Today’s Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for helping me place my faith in You as my Lord and Savior.

I eventually saw my need for You.  Thank You for that drawing work of the Holy Spirit, bringing me to the place where I have found forgiveness, longing, and a peace that passes understanding.

I thank You for the circumstances that led me to surrender my life into the joy of following You, those trials and inner questions that helped me see my need for you.

Thank You for the people who influenced me to follow You: for their conversations with me, their patient answering of my questions, their trustworthy representation of a Christ follower.

I pray for my friends today that you would help the seeds that have been planted in their life to sprout.

Amen.

Today’s Action

Take some time to day to journal about your journey to faith in Christ.

  1. What circumstances in your life helped you see your need for Christ?
  2. Who were people of significant influence in your journey and what did they do to have that significance?
  3. What was in your upbringing and background that helped you see your need for Christ?

Spend some time writing out your answers.

Image Source: Morguefile.

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Experiencing a Christian Conversion

Last night, I watched a deeply powerful film.

Faith Like Potatoes

[Read more…] about Experiencing a Christian Conversion

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2 Keys for Reaching a City for Christ

Keys to City ReachingNot to long ago, I spoke at a Missions Congress on Cross Cultural Missions.

The event was awesome and I shared the stage with expositors from Costa Rica and Honduras.

The organizers wanted me to share on the theme of “Reaching my city for Christ.”

Reaching my City for Christ

For two to three weeks, I meditated on that theme, praying, reading Scripture, and pondering all that I had learned and done in my evangelism training.

“Reaching my city” is a big theme to cover in a 3 hour workshop, but as I reflected on it, it really boils down to personal evangelism on a massive scale.

One conversation by one conversation.

The funnel can widen out into things like churches working together with organized strategies, church planting, simple or organic churches, pastors cooperating, and strategic planning and stuff like that.  Books have been written on the subject, but what I haven’t seen yet is this theme boiled down to

One conversation at a time.

Key 1: Evangelism in cooperation with the Holy Spirit

Conversational evangelism is a personal work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit who Prepares the Way.

Evangelism seems to have the greatest impact one personal conversation at a time.  Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch is the best example in my book of a one to one conversation where Phillip cooperated with the advance work of the Holy spirit.

Other examples that strike me are

  • Peter and Cornelius
  • Paul and Ananias
  • Paul and Lydia

In each of the examples, the Holy Spirit had guided led the Evangelist to the right place at the right time to find a prepared heart.  Little churches got started.  Churches grew.

If we can learn how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, I believe most of us will discover that evangelism is much easier.

Key 2: Cooperating with the Holy Spirit is rooted in Prayer.

DSCF2744There are plenty of articles on prayer here.

In fact, I did a brief case study on a church that is rapidly growing through high adult conversion rates because of prayer (read 3 Keys to Church Growth — Case Study)

But to plow the field for evangelism, consider How to Lead a Prayer Meeting Focused on Evangelism.

Build an Evangelism Prayer List of people you are praying for regularly.

Read Ten Prayer Points For your Friends if you don’t know what to pray for.

If you want to be involved in reaching your city for Christ, prayer is the foundational work.

Paul wrote in 1 Tim 2:1

I urge then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone. (NIV)

Prayer should be our priority (urged, first of all).  Our first priority, rather than our last resort.

Prayer should be for everyone – that could be the whole group collectively, or each one in a group individually.

At the end of our workshop in the congress, we spent time interceding for the city, and crying out to God for those whom we know personally who do not yet know the Lord.

I believe that as we pray for the city, as we pray for those who don’t know Christ, as we cultivate listening to the Holy Spirit, we will reach our city for Christ, one conversation at a time.

Evangelism in the 21st Century

DVD Evangelism Conversations

Evangelism in the 21st century will not be solely dependent on the church.  The growing number of “spiritual but not religious” people means that more people will need to hear the gospel through conversations with Christians.

You’ll need to be able to comfortably talk about your faith in Christ without being obnoxious about it.

I have a DVD set that focuses on a conversational style evangelism that would be effective in:

  • casual conversation between friends
  • causal conversation between strangers

Read more about the Effective Evangelism Conversations in the store.

It is a recording of a live seminar I gave in 2012.

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4 Ways The Holy Spirit Prepares the Way for Jesus

One of the questions that I have received frequently via “Ask Evangelism Coach” has been on the role of the Holy Spirit in Evangelism.

That as a topic is broad, so I’ll begin a series of posts on that topic.   Here is an older post I wrote: Role Of The Holy Spirit In Evangelism that speaks of the actual conversation moment.

Prepare the way

The focus of this post will be on the work of the Holy Spirit in your life before you came to faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus makes this claim: “No one comes unto me unless the Father draws him.”

That drawing, that wooing is accomplished by the activity of the Holy Spirit.

To use the cultivation imagery as found the in the New Testament, one might say the Holy Spirit prepares the soil, waters the seed, and prepares the seed for harvest.

Various tools

Think about your own conversion journey.  Or if you don’t have a season in time where you know you became a Christian, think about the early influences upon your life that shaped your faith.

  • How many individual conversations about God did you have?
  • How many different individuals helped you talk about your faith while exploring Christianity?
  • How many different sermons did you hear?
  • Where there songs, art, poetry, or music that moved you to explore Christianity more?
  • Did you have some late nights pondering life issues such as is there life after death, how do you find meaning, how can you ?
  • How many times did you look at the beauty of nature and wonder about the nature of God?

As I have coached people in developing their personal faith story or testimony, I have seen a few common tools that the Holy Spirit uses to draw people to Jesus.

1.  Conversations

These conversations between friends, and sometimes between strangers, add up over the course of time.

friends

Some people can point to specific conversations that set them on a journey to find the truth about Jesus, or presented plausible explanations for their questions.

Some people can point to several conversations that had a cumulative effect of helping them deciding to follow Jesus.

Individually, these conversations may not cover all topics related to a faith journey, but over a period of time, they gather the collective weight to help one examine the Christian faith and make an intelligent and informed choice to follow Jesus.

I think of causal conversations over a bar-b-que at a picnic, friendly chatter at a stay at home dad’s group, or casual chit-chat while playing golf.

In your life, you might be able to recall several individual conversations that eventually pointed you to faith in Christ.

2.  God’s self revelation

God sometimes will reveal Himself in some way to the person seeking to find Him.

This might come in the form of an answered prayer, a clear act of guidance, or an encounter in worship.  This might come while reading the Bible for the first or second time, or while admiring the beauty of nature.

In my journey to faith, there were two distinct moments where I was aware of God’s self-revelation.  One was an answered prayer, and the other was the night I decided to follow Jesus with my life.

I have coached people (see: Do you Need Evangelism coaching?) who have similar stories, where a self-revelation of God is part of their journey to faith, often helping the individual discover that God is not only real, but wants to be involved in their life.

3.  Contemplations or Reflections

I am convinced that many go through times in their life when their brain mulls over spiritual things.

  • What happens when I die?
  • How can I find peace in the face of death?
  • How can I know forgiveness?
  • How can I find purpose and direction in life?
  • Is life here on earth meaningful, or purposeless?

These life questions pop into our minds from time to time.  Sometimes during major life transitions, other times when things seem the be falling apart.   They come when one is backpacking up a mountain and takes in the vista from the peak.  They come when on a small boat, out in the middle of the Pacific ocean under the star light sky when the moon is not out.

These questions burden our soul and sometimes keep us awake at 2 in the morning.  Other times, they dance in our brain as when we feel the need to think about life at that level.

I am convinced that the Holy Spirit uses these contemplations to point out our spiritual yearnings, our desire to connect with God, and our desire to participate in God’s plan for our life.

4.  Sermons

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the proclamation of the Word of God.

I have met many people that started going to church because of the first three tools here.  A small diet of excellent preaching is often used by the Holy Spirit to help people discover their faith.  The Holy Spirit empowers the preaching to communicate to the deep areas of the human heart.

Let me ask you this?

What would you add to this list?  What helped you come to faith in Christ?

Share it with us in the comment section below.  I’d like to come up with a list of 10 and could use your help.

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