these days. It is probably my 3rd time to read this book. There are so many really good books on evangelism, but in my opinion this is one of the best. And I could give several reasons why this book is so good, but the one that stands out here is the following statement:
These days, I’m more convinced than ever that the absolute highest value in personal evangelism is staying attuned to and cooperation with the Holy Spirit.
You read it right. The only thing you need in order to sustain an effective approach to evangelism year after year after year is an ear fine-tuned to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I couldn’t agree with him more. Here are some follow up quotes that elaborate on what he is trying to say:
The key is this: my objective is not to contrive ways to “get someone saved”; rather, my objective is to walk when he prompts me to walk, talk when he says to talk, fall silent when I’m at risk of saying too much, and stay put when he leads me to stay put.
After telling a story of praying for an opening in a conversation that didn’t materialize, he said,
I had been willing to see, hear, and feel what the Spirit wanted me to see, hear, and feel, but frankly I saw, heard, and felt … nothing.
Friends, sometimes there will be a wide-open door, and sometimes there won’t. Remember, being walk-across-the-room people means that we walk when the Spirit tells us to walk, and we don’t walk when the Spirit says not to.
For each touching illustration I offer about walking across a room and witnessing something miraculous unfold, I could recount several hundred occasions when walks across rooms never left even a wrinkle. Times when I invested in people — loved, served, and cared for them; shared the gospel with them; put my heart on a platter on their behalf — and absolutely nothing productive happened.
I love that. Why? First of all, I love his honesty. Having read a lot of books on evangelism lately, it gets a bit frustrating to read all the success stories that leave one feeling that the author just has a gift that the rest of us don’t have. Hybels is a successful evangelist both on the personal one-to-one level as well as in public speaking. But he tells it like it is. But secondly, depending upon the Holy Spirit is so freeing. As another author said, the two biggest enemies of evangelism are guilt and pressure. One of my greatest challenges is learning to wait upon the Lord, and not be pushy.