If you want to know why your evangelism is awkward, it’s usually because there’s no action that precedes it. We think if we just bombard someone with truth, then that’s all that’s required of us. But when you see the early church, they took a different approach to evangelism entirely.

Look at the example in the book of Acts. Whenever you see a sermon in the book of Acts, it’s never the disciples just randomly walking up to strangers and throwing truth bombs. Sermons are always in response to something supernatural that just happened, in response to the disciples walking in the Spirit and loving others sacrificially. Don’t believe me? Go look for yourself.

In Acts 2, Peter preaches the first sermon of the Christian church, but he did it in response to the fact that the Holy Spirit just came down with tongues of fire and everyone was freaking out because people could hear them in their own language. There’s another great sermon by Peter and John in Acts 3-4, which was in response to a supernatural healing of a lame man sitting on the way to the temple. The apostles again share Jesus in Acts 5, but the Bible notes right before that that the apostles were performing miraculous signs.

In Acts 7, you have the famous sermon by Stephen, the first martyr, which was preceded by the statement that Stephen performed signs and wonders. Look at the ministry of Paul, who preached in the second half of the book of Acts and saw a genuine movement of God. He never preached in a vacuum, he was always walking in the Spirit, demonstrating the Spirit’s power and loving others sacrificially.

Interestingly enough, the one time that Paul just preached to preach was in Acts 17. He was hanging around Athens, some guys wanted to start a discussion and invited him to preach, and so he preached on Mars Hill. There was nothing that preceded it, no relationships, no acts of sacrificial love. He just presented the gospel. And look at what the result was:

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 A few of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Acts 17:32-34

A few people got saved. Now, anyone getting saved is great news, but compared to the rest of his ministry this was a bit of a dud. You can have random conversations with people and sometimes that works, but if you want to see genuine revival take place, it’s going to happen when it’s prefaced by a demonstration of the Spirit’s power resulting in an act of sacrificial love towards others.

If you don’t walk in the Spirit and love others sacrificially, then your witnessing isn’t going to have the same power. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you can talk to people and they’ll get saved based off the intellectual arguments for God, but those are few and far between. If by the end of this year you want to be able to look back and point to people that are going to heaven because of your influence, it will be because your witnessing has power and effectiveness.