Evangelism is the kind of topic that often induces fear into the hearts of Christians – even mature Christians. Yet it is something that we are all called to – Acts 1:8 tells us that we are all called to be Jesus’ witnesses to the world. We often fall down in this area because we lack confidence. Some of us are just not outgoing people, we have different levels of biblical knowledge, and others of us have a real fear of rejection and don’t want to feel a sense of failure if the person we share our faith with reject Jesus. So how are we to overcome these reasons for our lack of evangelism? How are we to evangelise with real confidence? The beginning of Acts tells us that we can have confidence, but not in ourselves! Instead we can have confidence in our message, in the power behind the mission, and in the success of the mission.
So often as Christians we can forget where we came from. We can start to think of ourselves as superior to those around us in the church and in the world. The author of the first gospel invites us in to his own story – where he came from – and here, as Christians today we are given a reminder of where we came from too. We are sinners who have been miraculously called by Jesus. The more we ponder this wonderful and God glorifying truth, the more our own foolish pride is stripped away and we are readied as a church to go to the same uncomfortable places that Jesus went in his mission to save humanity.