Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.
Acts 9:20

As we saw last time, all believers are called to “talk about” Jesus. We are not all preachers, in the formal sense, but if the Lord has saved us, we ought to want to talk about Him. And since others come to faith in Christ when the Holy Spirit regenerates us as we hear Christ and the gospel “talked about,” we ought to want to talk about Him, shouldn’t we? So why is it so hard for many of us to talk about Jesus to non-believers?

We fear people more than we love God. That’s a pretty tough statement, but it is true. We are afraid that people will think we are weird and that we may be rejected. It is not really even a fear that they will reject Christ, mind you. It is a fear that they will reject us!

What is the remedy for this fear? Love God more than we love ourselves than we fear being rejected by people. The only way to accomplish this is to fall more deeply in love with Christ so that His approval and the proclamation of His name means more to us, than the fear that people may dislike us. The simple way to do that, is to immerse ourselves in the Word of God—particularly passages that remind us of (1) how wonderful Christ, the Gospel and salvation are; (2) how horrible it is for the people we know, who do not know Christ, to suffer the eternal wrath of God.

If the only gospel we know is that God wants us to be happy (which is not the gospel!), and if our idea of happiness is for people to like us, and if talking about Jesus may result in a lack of happiness—we will never talk about Christ to non-believers.

So let us be reminded that those who deny Christ (even by tacit silence) will be denied by Him. And also that the lost are truly lost and headed for damnation. And let us talk about Jesus. How? Next time…