Come and See

Every child of God should desire to see others come to know Christ as Savior and Lord. That being said, we must always realize that “winning” someone to the Lord is not our job; yes we may get to participate in the process and the Lord certainly does desire to use us to that end, but ultimately the ministry of the Holy Spirit is what brings others to faith, not us (Titus 3:5; John. 3:3-7).

Sadly though, George Barna says that only 6 out of 100 Christians will ever share their faith in their lifetime. Wow, what a sad statistic. To be honest, it begs the question as to whether they are truly saved, but I’ll save that discussion for another time.

I don’t think may folks understand today what the purpose of the filling of the Holy Spirit is. There is so much bad teaching on this subject that is mostly turned inward. When in reality, it is about empowerment. It is empowerment to preach the gospel. Look at what Acts 1:8 says, “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." Did you see that? The purpose of the filling of the Holy Spirit was to empower them to be his witnesses from Jerusalem to the remotest part of the earth.

A witness is someone who merely testifies to what he knows to be true. The woman at the well was a witness when she said "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done” (John 4:39). Notice that she did not “win” anyone to the Lord, instead the people simply “believed on him” as a result of her sharing her witness (John 4:39-42). As a matter of fact, there are many examples in the Scriptures of people coming to the Lord because of the testimony of a witness (Mark 1:40-45; 5:18-20).

Truth be told, we all have a testimony or a witness and there are two ways that we can share that testimony: with our lives and with our lips. It was St. Frances of Assisi who once said “Share your faith with all men, and if necessary, use words.” Our lives are our greatest testimony.

Sadly, too many Christians (real or not) say one thing and do another. I believe that it is the reason many do not come to the faith today. They have actually become a stumbling stone to those outside of the faith. It was Mahatma Gandhi, the famous Hindu who once said when asked what he thought of Christianity and he said, “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians.” It’s sad that so many Christians have a problem with putting their feet to their faith. They are all lip with no life.

Acts 1:8 says, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Notice that Jesus said “you shall be (that is in the imperative) witnesses to Me”.

There are many examples of people coming to Jesus simply because of the testimony of a witness who told them what Jesus had done for him (e.g., the leper in Mark 1:44-45, the demon possessed man in Mark 5:18-20, the lame man in Acts 3:8-11, Zaccheus in Luke 19:5-10, and there are many more.

We all have a testimony as to what the Lord has done in our lives. The trouble is that we have been so intimidated by "what to say" that we haven’t been saying anything at all.  

The truth is that soul winners are always talking about Jesus. They are testifying to his miraculous power to save. Not only because of what He has done in other people’s lives, but because of what he has done in their own. It’s not secondhand knowledge. We just need to start telling folks what Jesus has done for us and maybe they will want to come and see for themselves (John 4:29).