Without words

by Samuel Thambusamy

I have realized that so much of our evangelism needs to be ‘without words’. In world driven by images ‘visuals’ attract our attention. And so, we need to be seen and not heard (to borrow words from a popular petra song). We are used to talking. Not just talking but talking loud. We say things that we don’t believe, things that we don’t practice and even things we don’t intend. It is easy to preach a sermon. You can google-search and pull it off the net. There are books that give you sermon outlines or you re-play a sermon that you have heard elsewhere. God has been gracious and even used our ctrl C + Ctrl v hermeneutics and copycat homelitics. But then, God want us to make a definite difference. He wants our lives to speak out the gospel ‘loud’ and ‘clear’. Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the light of the earth”. We must shine…shine….shine. If we are lit on the inside, it is difficult to hide it. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Jesus encouraged his disciples to shine the light for other people. He never asked us to be salesmen for lights and tubes. And often times, that is what we are. Mere salesmen roleplaying and mouthing big sales talk. Jesus asked us to live – and live a good/meaningful lives at that. Our lives are blogs that people read. They know how we live lives, how we find meaning, how we cherish relationships, how we are guided by godly wisdom, how good our values are, how consistent we are in living out our beliefs, how we are Jesus-like… etc. Those who see us would quickly spot the difference. Our ‘desires’, ‘needs’, ‘tastes’ ‘choices’ and ‘hungers’must be different – gospel informed and gospel transformed.

At the adventure camp that I went to, this was the particular challenge for the leadership team. How do we speak/share the gospel without words. How do we help people see God behind the scenic beauty? How do we help people listen to God? How do we help them experience God and set out on the adventure of knowing God? We recognized that we must help them join in our journey of knowing and following God. We decided to invite those young people to be our ‘friends’ and see us – our lives. Hopefully, our lives have spoken the gospel without words….

Jesus wanted us to be ‘lights’ so that as we shine in the dark corners of our world (at least the part of the world we step in day-in and day-out they will get a better understanding of God. So of them will also praise our father in heaven. How I live my life matters more than what I tell my friends, neighbours and casual accquaintances.

As an “emerging” new christian, living in the world of despair we must commit ourselves to missional living. We can (and must) shine ‘hope’ into their lives and situations…if only we live out the gospel! We must engage in evangelism. But as one follower of Jesus discovered,” use words only if necessary”. Let’s pray that we find grace to speak the gospel “without words”