By Rick Carrol

I was at the CNE this year and I saw dozens of people who had walking sticks with the 5-coloured salvation beads designed to share the gospel. I asked someone who had a stick, and he laughed saying, “Some Christians are giving out sticks. I don’t remember anything they said, but I’m in for a free stick!”

Over the years, so much of the Churches efforts to share the gospel has been confrontational, entering someone else’s space or forcing a conversation that asks people to consider a major life change based on a single conversation.

The heart is right. We want people to know Jesus and we’ll go to any length to share this.

The method is questionable.

Peter wrote to believers who were living in a world that didn’t know Jesus and said that they should, “Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors… they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God”

Let’s always consider the impact of how a life of honour, righteousness and character can make just as much impact as a direct conversation.

Faith in Christ requires the ability to fight the instinct of loss aversion. 1 Peter 1: 3-8 says that the early Church believers were to be commended because they loved and trust God without ever seeing Him. Trusting God without full comprehension of how He is working, or what He thinks is a massive risk. But it’s also a risk we have to be comfortable with if we seek to live lives of faith.