Author Archives: Kim Reisman

Your Cross to Bear

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.Luke 9:23 (NLT)

Deep and authentic faith is what God desires for each of us. Deep and authentic faith is meaningful; but can be costly, challenging, even frightening.

Jesus understands our difficulty. He never said it would be easy to follow him; in fact he warned us about the challenges when he described what it takes to be his follower—putting aside selfish ambition and shouldering our cross.

Rather than inviting us to something shallow, Jesus invites us to experience real, authentic faith – meaningful faith – by following, not at a distance, but by his side. He carries his cross, and we carry ours. How do you understand Jesus’ words that we must shoulder our cross and follow him (Luke 9:23)? How would you describe the crosses you feel you are bearing?

For many of us, Jesus’ words about shouldering our cross have come to represent the bad things in our lives. We see the bad things that we feel to be unique to our lives as the crosses that we have to bear. To be sure, there is an element of truth in this concept of shouldering our cross. Jesus does not want us to run from suffering. We must deal with it head on and look to God for strength as we persevere.

That truth, however, is only part of what Jesus means when he tells us that to be his followers we have to shoulder our cross. A deeper meaning lies in how we follow. We are to follow in the same way that Jesus leads. We abandon selfish ambition in favor of service in the Jesus way. As Jesus gave himself, we give ourselves. We reach out to others just as he reached out to others. As Jesus loved, so we love. As Jesus sacrificed himself for us, so we sacrifice ourselves for others. We follow by picking up the cross. Jesus’ cross becomes our cross; his love becomes our love; his sacrifice becomes our sacrifice.

As much as Peter fumbled and bumbled in following Jesus, when he finally realized that real faith required that he follow Jesus side by side rather than at a distance, his life was transformed. It wasn’t that difficulty suddenly disappeared; it was that power suddenly appeared.

Jesus promised the disciples the Holy Spirit. While Jesus’ followers were gathered together the Holy Spirit appeared and came upon them. Peter preached boldly and many people believed in Jesus as a result.

It can be challenging to carry the cross of Jesus. Yet when we take that risk and pick up that cross, we are promised the power necessary to meet the challenge. The power of the Spirit of Jesus enervates us, giving us not only the strength we need to carry the crosses that we encounter in our lives, but the boldness we need to live our lives fully, recognizable by all as followers of Jesus Christ.

What is your experience of power as you follow Jesus? Ask God to pour out the Holy Spirit upon you as you seek to shoulder the cross of discipleship.

What to Do with Your Shortcomings

Peter didn’t always know what it meant to follow Jesus.

When he witnessed the astonishing event of Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah on the mountain during Jesus’ transfiguration, all he could think to do was to offer to build shrines, places for each of them to live. When he sees Jesus walking on the water he boldly climbs out of the boat, seemingly full of confident faith, yet when the wind and waves appear too much, he flounders in fear.

When Jesus offered to wash Peter’s feet, he felt completely unworthy and so declined; yet when Jesus responded that it was necessary in order for Peter to be a part of him, Peter’s love poured forth: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (John 13:9, NRSV)

Peter was a searcher with a good heart. He stumbled but tried to follow as best as he could, always open to growing in his relationship with Jesus, even if that growth involved some pain. He was full of emotion, giving himself completely to Jesus at one moment, but then fearfully retreating from Jesus the next.

Peter was genuine in all of his interactions with Jesus. He boldly declared his belief that Jesus was the Messiah (Matthew 16:16), and then turned around and questioned and chastised Jesus for talking about the suffering that lay on the horizon (Matthew 16:22). It may have been bumbling and inappropriate, but it was genuine. Peter genuinely offered Jesus his entire being – the good and the bad.

Peter genuinely desired to follow Jesus, even if he didn’t always know exactly what that meant; and he was willing to offer his entire self, even his shortcomings.

If you reflect on your spiritual walk, how do Peter’s various responses to Jesus resonate with your experience? How willing are you to offer your entire self to God – including your shortcomings? Peter was willing to offer Jesus his entire self – shortcomings and all – because intuitively he knew that Jesus had created safe space between them. His intuition was correct. Jesus had created safe space, because Jesus understood Peter. He knew how truly human Peter was. He knew that deep down in his heart Peter desired to follow him, even though Peter’s understanding and capabilities were dramatically limited.

Jesus knew Peter well enough to call him the rock upon which he would build his church; yet also knew him well enough to predict accurately that before the rooster crowed twice, Peter would deny three times that he even knew him at all.

We are like Peter. We too are truly human, with all of the frailties and limitations that brings. And just as he understood Peter, Jesus also understands us. Jesus knows that there are times when we want to follow; yet there are other times when we choose to shy away. But Jesus’ call to Peter was to follow, not at a distance—not in the shadows, afraid of what might happen next—but to move into the light and follow boldly, whatever came his way.

This is Jesus’ call to us as well. Jesus knows how limited our resources are. He knows that life is full of choices, temptations, complex situations where we become confused and frightened. Yet he desires our faith to be real and authentic, and he calls us to follow him anyway, closely and not at a distance.

Do you sense a “safe space” between you and God? If not, as you enter into a time of prayer, bring that experience honestly before God. Be open to the way the Holy Spirit might move in response to your need. Step out in courage, knowing Jesus understands that you are fully human, with all the frailties and limitations (but also with all the creativity and boldness) that brings.

The Risk of Following Closely

As my ministry has unfolded, I have come to realize that although those of us who live in the United States enjoy the privilege of worshiping without fear of reprisal, that privilege has often times contributed to a profound complacency in our faith experience. For many of us, the very ease with which we are able to attend worship blocks us from recognizing the hard work and risks involved in being a follower of Jesus. Believing faith to be a risk-free endeavor, we shy away from the hard work of the soul, and thus we frequently miss out on the deeply joyful and life-changing experience of being in a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ.

It’s not that we do not desire to follow Jesus. We want to follow, but we don’t always want to follow too closely. It’s safer to follow at a distance, never going deeper in our faith than surface religious activity; never stepping close to the fire where we might be recognized, where we will stand out because of the way we live and the commitments we make. We are like Peter, who on the night Jesus was arrested, stood in the courtyard awaiting news of Jesus’ fate. He lurked in the shadows away from the fire, trying to be invisible, trying to avoid too close a connection with the one who had changed him to his very core. Yet, for our faith to be real, for it to be authentic, we must risk moving out of the shadows. So the question is, how close to the fire will we get?

When God became human in Jesus, it was with the promise of abundant life, a life of radical transformation and deep meaning. Are you challenged to move toward that promised transformation by stepping out of the shadows and into the light and heat of the fire, by choosing the place right next to Jesus, by following him not at a distance but by his side?

Following Jesus, truly following him, is never easy. There are risks, unexpected twists and turns, surprises and events that we never dreamed could happen. There are moments when following seems meaningful, full of excitement and joy. However, there are other times, times of difficulty, even danger, when we become discouraged and afraid, and things don’t seem to be turning out at all the way we thought they would.

Faith – real faith, authentic faith – involves a daily process of choosing. In the midst of all those unexpected twists and turns, in the midst of the meaningful and in the midst of the difficulty, a faith that is authentic requires a daily choice.

What kind of choices are you facing as you seek to follow Jesus? What hurdles have you encountered recently? What confirmations have you received that you are on the right track? Be confident that God will accompany you when you take the risk of exploring an authentic faith.

The Difference Between Evangelism and Conversion by Kim Reisman

A common mistake that undermines our integrity and impinges on the integrity of the other is to equate evangelism with conversion; but they are not the same. Authentic evangelism is not conversion. The Faith Sharing New Testament gives us an excellent definition of conversion: Christian conversion is “the change that God works in us as we respond to God’s grace in repentance and faith.”1

God is responsible for conversion. When it comes to evangelism, we are only responsible for making the gospel known. This is a liberating concept. We are not responsible for making converts. We may desire conversion to happen, we may pray fervently as we discussed during our last session, but it is not within our power to make it happen.

It is better to stop worrying about the results of our evangelizing and instead worry about whether we have truly made the gospel known in our relationships with others. The results are in God’s hands. Releasing the responsibility for conversion also enables us to see that evangelism is never something we do to people. It is something we do with the gospel. We make the gospel known.

If we think of the evangelistic task as making the gospel known, the way in which we make it known is significant. When integrity is an essential value, we make the gospel known in a way that reflects the completeness of our lives. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we share the good news of Jesus Christ through our words, through our deeds, and through the signs that the Holy Spirit makes evident in our midst. And as the metaphor of embrace illustrates, we wait and watch in respectful humility and work with expectant hope.

When the Holy Spirit Reaches Us through Others

Early in my ministry, I was responsible for a Sunday worship service that met in a local theater. Because it was unconventional, it was attractive to many people who had for a variety of reasons felt unwelcome in or disaffected by the church. Many were only nominally Christian; others were not Christian but were interested in exploring faith. I ministered among these people for eight years, and many of them had a profound effect on me. As I sought to extend open arms to them, I felt their response, and it was often a surprising experience of “being held” by them as much as my “holding them.”

Several years after leaving that position, I encountered a woman who had attended regularly. As we spoke, she recalled that she was in a confused and unhealthy place in her life during those years and sensed that I knew this about her and in some ways disagreed with or even disapproved of some of the ways in which she was coping. Much to my relief, she continued that this was a good thing, because even though we might not have agreed, she felt there was a place for her no matter what. The security of that space had challenged her to seriously reevaluate her life. And, she added, it was important to her that despite our differences, I took her seriously, always open to the possibility that she might have something to offer me. Our embrace, physical and figurative, was reciprocal.

Have you experienced a relationship in which you did not feel reciprocity? How did the uneven nature of that relationship make you feel? Have you had a relationship in your life that was marked by reciprocity, in which you felt that you were both holding and being held?

In a full embrace, the identity of each self is both preserved and transformed. The integrity of each is intact. Each sees both themselves and the other in a new light. A gentle touch allows the other space to freely respond. Integrity as a core value of authentic evangelism is not only about our integrity, but about the integrity of others as well and allows space for the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

Most every Christian believes in the Holy Spirit’s power to transform; however, when we engage in evangelism, often we assume that the one being transformed is the other rather than us. We evangelize, spreading the gospel with expectant hope that others might be transformed, at the bare minimum, into persons who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. At times our assumptions can go a bit further and involve others being transformed into Christians who resemble us, thinking and believing exactly like we do. Thus, recognizing the transformative power of embrace for both selves is crucial. The will to embrace must always involve openness to the power of the Holy Spirit to continually work not only through us toward others, but also through others toward us. In this way God works for integrity and wholeness for all.

Interceding Evangelistically

When we intercede evangelistically, we are calling on God to act in the life of another person. There are several facets to this calling. First, because Christian prayer is conscious communication with God, we are sharing our deepest needs. Mystery pervades this process as we struggle to share our needs and then leave it to God’s wisdom to decide what to do about those needs.

And yet, leaving it to God does not mean we are passive. Believing God knows best and is ordering all things for the best does not mean we stop working for the best God has for us. It is the same with prayer. Our waiting is not passive, but active. We may believe God knows best and is ordering what is best for our loved one, but that does not mean we stop working and praying for our loved one.

Secondly, we pray that we will be sensitive to the urgent needs of those around us. When we combine the urgent need of others with the willing love that grounds evangelistic intercession, we begin to grasp the dynamic of this essential value. Jesus’ story about the man who went to his friend’s house at midnight to ask for bread illustrates this dynamic. The man asks for bread, not for himself, but for the guests who have arrived unexpectedly at his house. Their need, coupled with his willing love to meet that need, send him banging at his neighbor’s door in the middle of the night.

As we pray that we will be sensitive to the needs of those around us, we are praying not just about the need to be in relationship with God. We must love enough to desire what is best in the whole of a person’s life, not just in this one area. That is what brings integrity to our praying and to our evangelism, love that shows itself in the care for body, mind and spirit.

A third facet of evangelistic intercession is our helplessness. The man in Jesus’ story was willing to give his guests bread, but he did not have any. It was his inability to provide what his guests needed that sent him begging to his friend.

Our helplessness leads to supplication. Supplication is our feeling for, or wrestling with, that leads us to allow the Holy Spirit to pray for us. Supplication occurs when we come to a place of utter faith in God to do what we cannot do. Paul describes it in Romans when he says, “the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.” For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. (8:26-17, NLT)

Persistence is the third feature of evangelistic intercession. In Jesus’ story the man gets the bread because of his persistence. He keeps on asking. We press, urge and beg with troublesome persistence. We pray again and again and again. We persist, not because we do not trust God. Nor do we keep asking because God needs us to do ask repeatedly. We persist because there is a cumulative effect of repetition in prayer. Praying, again and again, allows us to see new facets of need or new facets of our own experience that we might otherwise miss if we had not persevered in our praying.

The final two attributes of our calling on God are unselfishness and confidence. We are not praying for what we want but for what God knows is best for the other person. Our unselfishness is measured by our willingness to extend ourselves in love, at whatever cost, that our prayers may be answered. It is also measured by how we guard ourselves from unconsciously designing an answer for our prayers. We may pray that another would claim faith in Jesus Christ, but we cannot know exactly what that will to look like in the life of the other person. Unselfishness calls for a willingness to let go of our predetermined expectations of an answer and a willingness to accept the answer that comes, acknowledging that we are not in control.

This leads to the last attribute, confidence. Though we are not in control of how God is shaping the life of another, we can be confident that God is indeed at work, because we trust God’s nature. We can be confident that God will respond and that confidence is rooted in our faith in God’s power, God’s love, and God’s willingness to do what we can’t do.

Praying Persistently

Authentic evangelism begins with prayer. Prayer saturates our waiting. But it is not prayer in general. Authentic evangelism begins with intercessory prayer, the kind of prayer that takes us out of ourselves, moves us out of the bubble of our own lives. If we are not actively praying for people, we will never be able to effectively share the gospel with them.

This idea runs much deeper than simply praying that someone accept Christ – even though that is important. Like the longing that is part of human nature, prayer is also a distinctively human thing. The need to pray is as natural as our need for food or water. It is the instinctive way we seek to ease our restlessness and attempt to fill the hole within our hearts.

In prayer, as we reach out to something greater than ourselves, it does not take long for our minds to turn to the needs of others. This is because we are made in the image of a Triune God. Because our God is relational, so our praying is relational; it is how we are wired.

Yet though it is natural, prayer remains filled with mystery. At the heart of this mystery is the truth that for Christians, prayer is about the movement of God in our lives and in the lives of others. This may seem strange to some of us. It is tempting to associate prayer with getting an answer, especially the answer we have in our minds before we begin to pray. It is easy to reduce prayer to a process of getting what we want, when we want it; however, when we succumb to that temptation, we often become disappointed, even disillusioned, when things do not turn out as we had hoped. But prayer is about God’s movement in our lives and in the lives of others, and that understanding grounds everything else we say about it.

When we begin to make the connection between prayer as a movement of God in the lives of others with the call to be available to the Holy Spirit, the significance of prayer as an essential value of evangelism becomes evident. Because the need to be in relationship is a human need, not only a Christian need, prayer and authentic evangelism converge at our most human point of need – the need for relationship, the need for connection with God and others.

Like prayer, evangelism is about relationship; more specifically, it is about relationships of trust. People need to trust that we care, trust that we love them the way we say we love them – trust that we are not targeting them or judging them or trying to manipulate them.

The best foundation for authentic evangelism is a trusting, caring relationship. Relationships of trust and care allow us the space to share our faith and space for the Holy Spirit to work for transformation in our lives and in the lives of those we care about. Relationships of trust and care are fostered by prayer. As we pray for others we come to see them in a new light and our care for them deepens. Faith can only be shared when a depth of care and trust exists. If we do not care enough about the people we hope to reach for Christ to pray for them, then our commitment to sharing the gospel with them is likely not as deeply rooted as we think.

Incorporating those outside our community of faith into our prayers is not simply praying that they come to know Jesus Christ. Yes, that is our ultimate hope and that desire undergirds our praying. Yet we do not pray that others would accept Christ and then sit back and wait for that to happen. There is much more to intercessory prayer as an essential value of evangelism than that. Recognizing this points to the importance of immersing ourselves in the dynamics of intercessory prayer.

Authentic evangelism is not about browbeating or arguing with another person to wear them down; that change of heart comes only through the power of the Holy Spirit. In like manner, we do not pray to persuade or convince God. God does not need to be convinced that someone we know needs to become a Christian. God already knows that. In fact, God is likely already at work in that person’s life before we ever get involved.

Thus, our praying is not to convince God of the “right or best answer” – whether that be in the life of another or in our own lives. Because we are human, we do not have the wisdom to know what the truly right or best answer is. We can have inklings, we can have intellectual insight, but that is as close as we can come. More often, however, though we may not know that is right or best, we are quite clear about what we want. Unfortunately, what we want, at the moment we want it, is not always the wisest answer.

Early in my marriage, as I was completing my Masters of Divinity at Yale, I believed that God was calling me to pursue a PhD in Theological Ethics. Because my husband was in the middle of his surgical residency, I was limited in my choice of schools so I applied only to Yale. I fully believed I was following God’s leading by pursuing doctoral studies and prayed fervently that God would grant my desire to begin this work. When the acceptance letters were mailed, however, I did not receive one. My application was denied.

Prayer as an essential value of evangelism then is not about persuasion. It is about joining in God’s movement, in our own lives and in the lives of others. When we pray for others, we become connected to what God is doing in their lives. That connection propels our minds and hearts toward God. We become willing to create space for God’s Spirit to flow through our prayers and to others, speaking to them directly. This is key when we think about authentic evangelism.

It is not a matter of cut and dried petitions – God please make my friend a Christian, God please let me be accepted to graduate school. It is about being open to the way the Holy Spirit may be working through our prayers, not only to move others, but to move us. When we pray for others, we open ourselves to the working of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, not just in the lives of those we pray for.

Prayer is asking. It is a request. But here is the difficult truth: all prayer is answered but not all requests are granted. The mystery here is that there may be a discrepancy between the answer we receive and the answer we want. That was my painful discovery when praying about graduate school.

Yet, Karl Barth has said that God cleanses our prayers. God’s wisdom permeates the answer we receive. The wisest answer for me and graduate school was to not go at that time, even though I badly wanted to and passionately asked God to make it so. The wisest answer was no, so my request was denied. I did not get what I wanted.

God’s no was a crisis for me as I tried to discern my path in ministry. About a month later, however, I realized the wisdom in that answer when I discovered I was pregnant with our third child. The prospects of beginning a PhD program, pregnant, with two children under five, while married to a surgical resident were overwhelming. No was indeed the wisest answer.

This is a crucial point for authentic evangelism. We are not in control of the times or the seasons. God has granted each of us free will, so all our efforts to reach out to others with the love of Jesus Christ must respect that freedom. As we discussed in our last session, God never forces or coerces and neither do we. We may not see our supplication for another person granted; we may not see the dramatic change we are pleading for. And yet, as I mentioned earlier, when we pray for others, we come to see them in a new light. That is a transformation that takes place within us. It is a change in our perspective and attitudes; and that is often the most significant first step in God’s answer to our prayers. God answers by changing us, which is an answer we do not always recognize.

Embracing Trust and Obedience

Our response to the Christian faith must be one of trust and obedience. In many ways, Christian faith can be better understood as trust, because often it is not what we believe that makes the difference (even though that is important), it is who we trust. It is possible to believe something rationally but still not trust the person of Jesus Christ.

Yet, faith is about trust. It is about responding to God’s gracious love with trust. We trust that God is at work in the world. We trust that through Jesus Christ God does have a plan to save the whole world, including us.

The dynamics of trust and obedience define the relational and personal dimensions of faith. We tend to treasure what we trust and trust what we treasure. In the end, whether we are Christ followers does not depend on where we live or where we worship but on whom we trust. Our trust is part of our response to God.

Trust leads to obedience, which is the ethical outworking of trust. Our response becomes our responsibility. If we truly trust God, we begin to realign the configuration of the different trusts that make us who we are. When God becomes our ultimate trust, we begin to realign all our other trusts accordingly.

Understanding Christian faith as a centered, personal, relational response involving trust and obedience provides us with a level of clarity that is essential to authentic evangelism. As we open our arms to initiate embrace, we open them with a keen sense of humility, as those who know their brokenness. And yet we also open them with clarity, unwavering in our knowledge of the source of our healing and hope.

Standing on the essential values of humility and clarity, when we engage in authentic evangelism, we take the form of a witness. A witness is someone who tells the truth about what they have seen, heard and experienced. Often we feel we need to have all the answers about faith, but we will never have all the answers. On this side of glory, no human being will every have all the answers regarding life or faith. We may be able to have some of the answers, and those answers are likely to be helpful. But there will always be mystery.

The Humility of Interdependence

To grasp the depth of the humility that infuses authentic evangelism, it is helpful to explore human identity and the nature of sin. Though these are vast subjects, there are a few basic things that are important for our understanding of evangelism.

From the very beginning, God’s creative process has been a practice of separating and joining. God separates the light from the darkness to create day and night, and joins all the waters together into one place to create dry land. In like fashion, human identity is formed as we navigate a process of separating and joining. We become most fully who we are, not when we reach independence, but when we understand our interdependence and recognize that we are both separate and connected to those around us. As Miroslav Volf has said, “The boundaries that mark our identities are both barriers and bridges.”

Though God desires us to discover our interdependence, the reality of human sin makes us more inclined to focus on our independence. If we think of God’s creative process as separating and joining, there is a meaningful sense in which sin disconnects what God has bound together and unites what God has separated. It disrupts God’s pattern of interdependence, making us estranged from one another and from God.

Yet as Christians, we believe in the one God of Abraham. A significant point flowing from that is reflected in the Scripture passage that began this session – the belief that all of humanity will receive God’s blessings. Through Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed. N. T. Wright calls this “God’s covenant-with-Abraham-for-the-blessing-of-all.” It signals that in keeping this promise, God plans to redeem the overarching situation of estrangement that affects every human being.

Considering these ideas about identity and sin, cultivating humility as an essential value of evangelism involves remembering Jesus’ remarkable practice of both renaming and remaking. He renamed people and things that had been falsely labeled unclean, thus reconnecting people and things that sin had wrongly separated. (Mark 7:14-23) Jesus also remade people and things. He took truly unclean things and made them clean through forgiveness, spiritual transformation, and healing. In this way, Jesus tore down barriers created by wrongdoing. (Mark 5:1-20, Mark 2:15-17)

The humility that lies at the heart of all evangelism is rooted in an acute awareness of the reality of sin in our world. We recognize the brokenness and woundedness that marks human life. We confess that we are no more immune to that brokenness than anyone else, whether within or outside the church. We acknowledge we are unable to redeem our situation of estrangement. We admit we are unable to rename or remake ourselves.

This humility undergirds our way of being in the world and is vividly illustrated in the metaphor of embrace, particularly in open arms. When we open our arms to initiate embrace we indicate a desire for the other; they signal that, “I want you to be part of who I am and I want to be part of you.” Open arms point to the deeper truth that a void exists because of the absence of the other. In signaling desire, our open arms also show that in a real sense the other is somehow already present to fill the void, even before an embrace occurs.

The messages of open arms are significant for evangelism and the humility that is an essential value. Open arms point to the void created by the absence of some from the divinely promised one family of Abraham. They indicate that the boundaries surrounding the one family of Abraham have been made passable and that there is an invitation to shared life, which flows in two directions

Embracing Holy Spirit Power

From the Wesleyan perspective, the transcendent Creator God, the one who at times seems larger than our ability to understand, is also the ever-present, enabling God, the one who at other times seems closer to us than our breath. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to continue Jesus’ mission of self-sacrificing love in the world. Without Holy Spirit power, we lack the boldness and courage necessary to live in the “not yet” of the kingdom.

That enabling God – the Holy Spirit – inspires our prophetic witness to Jesus Christ (Luke/Acts), and resides within each of us (John). Yet the Holy Spirit, though focused in Jesus Christ and concentrated in those who follow him, is not contained solely within the church. The Holy Spirit is present, active, and involved with all of creation in a life-giving way. (Psalm 139.7; 2 Corinthians 3.6; Romans 8.1-27). The Holy Spirit is the Person of the Trinity through whom God gives Godself away to us, sharing our sufferings, joining us in our misery, binding Godself to us in joy and sorrow, conforming us into the image of Christ.

The grace of the indwelling Spirit allows us to participate in and gives us power through the life of God. This grace is our saving strength. When we ground evangelism in the Trinity, we open ourselves to being both transformed by the indwelling of the Spirit of God, and to becoming vehicles for that transformative power in others. In the space created within us, and between us and others, the Holy Spirit is invited to act for the transformation, not only of the other, but of us as well.

Because God’s kingdom has not yet been made fully known, our experiences of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are presently incomplete. Yet, these experiences lead to our hope for the future, when God will indeed live completely and fully in God’s creation. As we are enlivened by the Spirit, we have hope that everything God created – human beings, nature, all creation – will be able to share in the fullness of God’s eternal life. The presence of the Holy Spirit, then, gives evangelism its future focus. We look forward to the future, already begun in Jesus Christ, when God will be all in all.

Adapted from Dr. Kim Reisman’s “Embrace” faith-sharing study.