We’ve all felt it. The rush of anxiety at the thought of sharing our faith with another human being - eek! It can be so daunting, I mean, what will they think?! What will they say? Will they think I’m weird? These are all normal reactions for anyone starting to challenge themselves to be bold with outreach. I felt the very same way, and then Holy Spirit lent over and gently whispered to me, “since when was this about you?” Ha! Yeah, okay, fair point.
If I had to list just two things I have learnt outreach requires; it’s not an amazing gift of evangelism, or having a charismatic or extroverted personality.
It’s a surrendered heart and a burden for the lost.
To see the fruit of outreach in your life, there first and foremost needs to be transformation in your own heart. It’s a choice to surrender and put yourself aside (with all of your insecurities!) to let God speak and act through you.
At the core of our being, and with Jesus as our source, we must have a heart that says “God, use me!” otherwise we will not have the sustenance to reach those who are lost and hopeless in our communities. God is speaking to us daily about people around us that He wants us to reach, the question is, are we listening? I mean, how can He use us if we are never actually AVAILABLE! Romans 10:14-15 says “But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?”
SOMEONE needs to tell them. And for the lost in your life, that someone is probably you! The question is, are you willing to surrender space in your life for God to use you?
Each single act of obedience activates God’s presence and power.
Whether it’s a pancake that you serve to a uni student at a UniLodge YA outreach event or a sandwich that you give to a homeless person outside the grocery store, God can use your willing heart and obedient deed to do a miracle in someone’s soul. You might or might not have shared the Gospel message, but that my friend, is still outreach.
Surrender is the first step to building a lifestyle of outreach, but we then need to constantly foster a heart that is burdened for the lost. How can we claim to be intimate with God and yet have no burden for the lost? And how can we claim to have a burden for the lost yet do nothing to reach them? My prayer to the Lord is constant: “break my heart for what breaks yours”.
Complacency kills action, but compassion compels it.
Honestly, for me, outreach isn’t about how many souls I can “win”. It’s about how many people I can touch with the love of Christ. How many people can I make feel seen, heard and accepted. It can be a slow burn - I have uni students I have been walking through life with for 4 or 5 years and they still don’t have a full revelation of who Jesus is in their life, but I won’t give up! Because I know God’s timing is perfect, and my job is to simply keep planting seeds that he can use.
1 Corinthians 3:6 NLT
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.”
God is looking across the earth for people who are willing to partner with him to plant seeds. To leave the ninety-nine for the one (Matt 18:12-14). I might never know the fruit of the seeds I plant, but I don’t need to. Because I trust that God will do SOMETHING with every single one that I sow.
Ladies, with a surrendered heart and a deep compassion that moves us towards people - let us never grow weary of planting seeds.
Bek x
About the Author
With an undeniable love for people and a willingness to share the gospel, Bek’s adventurous spirit and passion for life has blessed our iSEE family for over a decade now. Along with her husband Brenton and fur-baby Badger, Bek is hoping to travel Australia one day (very soon) in their near completed bus-home.
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