Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Witnessing

Where I live, the most common thing I run into are people who once attended church but do so no longer. They are familiar with church people and church life. Many were once very active in church. For some reason, they walked away from it all. The bigger problem, of course, is that they have often walked away from God, too. Sometimes God gets the blame for the pain caused by people. These types can be a tough sell. In their minds, they may wonder why they should get involved again when they believe nothing has changed. Why go back to something they have rejected? If they were wounded, why should they take another chance at being hurt? If they lost faith in the whole process, why should they now change their minds? Why should they trust us again?  They are the lost sheep about whom Jesus spoke. It is imperative that we look for God’s lost sheep and, when we find them, help them recover their relationship with Him and with us. We may even have to examine ourselves and make necessary changes to fix the problems that may have caused them to walk away.
     Actually, I was once such a person. I was the little lost sheep. I sincerely believe that my passion for witnessing stems from the fact that I was once out there with them, and nobody came looking for me. When Jesus asks in Matthew 18:12, “How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?” my answer is always an emphatic, “No!” We do not leave the “ninety and nine” and seek “that which is gone astray.” What a shame. For approximately ten years, I stayed away from the church. Why I did so will become clear throughout this chapter. The point that I’m trying to make here is that nobody looked for me. I was just wasting away.
     Oh, I was hungry for God. Very hungry. I wasn’t hungry, though, for the God that had been represented to me. In fact, I felt rejected by Him. I could never live up to His expectations. I could never please Him for any length of time. I tried and tried and finally gave up. Little did I realize that I had been presented with a caricature of God, not the authentic God. Now I know, but then I didn’t. I found myself out there among the other lost sheep, longing for God, but thinking He was unapproachable. I was confused. I felt I was hopelessly lost. After all, how does one approach an unapproachable God?
     So, there I sat in my home, day after day. God, however, as Ezekiel 34:11-12 describes, (see below) came looking for me and found me. In reality, He responded to my broken and pleading heart, silent though the pleading may have been. He responded to my cries to know Him, to understand Him, and to have a relationship with Him. “Why can’t you be the God of my dreams?” I would cry out. “Why do you have to be so hard?” Praise God, He responded.
 
Ezekiel 34:11-12 “For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.”

     Though the church world may not have, God saw my potential. He saw me as worth His effort. He saw great things in my future. He had a great work for me. Maybe the church couldn’t use me, but He could. God has shown Himself to be the God of my dreams! Since He found me, I have not only written this book on witnessing, I have also founded two separate ministries, promoted dozens of contemporary Christian concerts in my county, hosted free dinner presentations to the community on vital topics, flown in Christian experts and dignitaries from around the country to address areas lacking in our churches, spoken in a number of churches, developed and taught an eight-week witnessing course in several churches, taken scores of people out witnessing with me in order to train them, and, of course, I’ve knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors myself.
     Am I bragging? No. A million times, no! What I’ve done pales in comparison with what thousands of other Christians have done. What is my point, you may ask. My point is that there is a ton of potential out there in those homes. When I knock on a door, I see me in the people who answer the door. I see people who are confused and deceived. I see people who are away from God and feel the heaviness that accompanies such a position. I also see them through God’s eyes, the way He saw me. God sees their hunger, their brokenness, their pain, their confusion, their loneliness, and, yes, their tremendous potential.  He wants to know them in a personal way and do great things in their lives. Though the church may be reluctant to use them, God will not hesitate. I have an overwhelming desire for them to know the God that found me. I want them to know how He sees them. I want to introduce them to the authentic God and dispel the caricature to which they have been exposed. And...I want to change the answer to Jesus’ question in Matthew 18:12 to an emphatic, “Yes!” I want to look for that lost sheep, leaving the ninety-nine behind. Let them continue to congregate, but let me go “into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray.” And by writing this book, may I encourage and help you to do so, too.
     Let’s take a look at some possible memory obstacles that have caused people to walk away from God and how we might attempt to convince them to give Him (and maybe us) another chance.

Lack of Purpose
I am struck by how little purpose we seem to possess. I’ve attended thousands of church services; I was always fairly active in them. I sang, played an instrument, led youth groups, led praise and worship, taught Sunday School classes, conducted choirs…you get the idea. I never just sat. I remember back when I was around 16 years old, I began to get honest with myself right there in the church pew with a bass guitar in my hands and people making a lot of noise all around me. As the people loudly sang and clapped with the music, I was sitting right smack in the middle of all of that, deep in thought. I don’t know if one could say I was a million miles away, but I was, at least, somewhat removed from everything going on around me.
     Is this all there is?, I was thinking to myself. Is this really what God wants from me? Does He just want me to attend all the church services that I can cram into one lifetime? If true, it seemed pretty empty to me. Surely, I found myself thinking, there was more than this. But, what? Why did this seem to be enough for others? Was there something wrong with me? Was I back-sliding? I approached a much older Christian than myself with this dilemma. What did he think about these questions and had he ever pondered them? Could he shed any insight? Could he provide me with some direction? “It seems there should be more.” I blurted out to him. “All we seem to do is go to church services.” His response set me back a little. “What else is there?” he asked, looking at me like my question irritated him. The conversation ended with that. We both went on about our business. What else is there, indeed?