If you’re looking for new ways to share your faith or motivation to reach others for Christ, Just Between Us has compiled some articles here to help you. Take some time to look them over. We hope they will inspire you to “be prepared to give the reason for the hope that you have.”

"But in your heart revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15).

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When I think about sharing the Gospel with someone, my heart starts to pound and my palms get sweaty. Evangelism is not one of my spiritual gifts. Even though I’ve taken classes, like Evangelism Explosion, and memorized the Bridge Illustration and the Romans Road, it never gets any easier for me.

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Sharing my faith, on the other hand, is something I try to incorporate into my everyday life, mostly through living authentically. I want to make sure my actions match my words and my words match my professed faith, whether that’s through interactions with my neighbors, encounters with strangers in the grocery store, or conversations that happen on social media. I try to remember that, wherever I go, I am representing Christ to a watching world.

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You may have heard the famous quote: “Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words!” That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use words to proclaim the Gospel, but it’s a good reminder that our actions often speak louder than our words. If I share with a friend the message of Christ’s love for all people and that each of us is made in God’s image, and then I trash a stranger on social media because they have a different political persuasion than I do, my message becomes like a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1).

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Rather than looking at sharing my faith as an either/or proposition (either words or actions), I need to think of it as both/and. In his book The Next Christians, Gabe Lyons describes a new wave of believers, whom he calls Restorers, bringing the Gospel to an increasingly secular society. “They recognize from Scripture that faithfulness is displayed in both word and deed,” he writes. “The beauty of the Gospel is found in both proclamation and demonstration. Neither comes first; neither comes second. Like the perfect marriage, it’s the duty of the Christian to take on each, giving 100 percent to both.”

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That inspires me to try to do better. Like the perfect marriage, there is no perfect Christian, but Christ calls us to keep trying. So I will continue to work at making my life an example of Christ’s love to the world, and I will speak up when I can about why I live the way I do. Sweaty palms and all.

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