So you want to talk with people about Jesus.
Well, no need to run out and get yourself a bullhorn. You won’t need it. Nor will you need any hand-painted signs about hell or the apocalypse. Also, you can leave your debate skills at home, for the most part.
Will you need a degree in theology? No.
The holiness of a saint? Nope.
How about a magnetic personality?
It probably couldn’t hurt, but no need for charm school.
What about toughness? Do you need to be the kind of hard-shelled person who can handle lots of rejection and yelling and spite?
Actually, not so much. You’ll almost certainly deal with less conflict than your average McDonald’s worker.
The truth is this: if you have met Jesus, if you have received the sacraments, and if you now live the life of faith, you already have almost everything you need to talk with anyone about Jesus.
What more do you need? Consider the conversion of the apostle Paul:
Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” (Acts 9:3-6).
When Paul followed this command, he met the Church in Damascus and received the help of Ananias. Certainly, there he received instruction and formation.
Like Paul, we who have received Jesus need to “get up and enter the city” so that we can be told what to do. We need basic instruction, and we need the community and sacraments of the Church. But lots of us have already received these things. And if we have this basic formation, we have most of what we need to share Jesus with others.
All we might need in that case is the confidence that comes from having a bit of instruction in the best methods. The good news is that for more than a century, the leaders of the Church, especially popes, have been calling on Catholics to get out and share the good news. And, because many people have heeded these calls, there is a good amount of contemporary experience for us to draw on as we consider how to evangelize today. We also have what might be the greatest possible help in the example of the great missionary saints throughout the ages.
With all that in mind, the first thing to know about talking with anyone about Jesus is that you—by virtue of your own Christian faith—have been called to do it. Having received Jesus and been brought into friendship with him, you, like Paul on the road to Damascus, have become enlisted in a great effort to bring the whole world to him so that the whole world can be saved from sin and death.
The second thing to know is that, though it might take you a while to get going, sharing Jesus is generally a pleasant activity, one you can do with friends, and one that can bring unexpected rewards.
The third thing to know is that you are not going to fail.
We can promise you that. You are guaranteed not to fail.
Are we telling you that every time you talk to someone about Jesus, that person will come to Jesus?
No.
Are we saying that most of the time the person will come to Jesus?
Nope.
So we’re saying that sometime, at least one time, some person will come to Jesus?
Not even that.
We don’t know what will happen once you start talking to others about Jesus. What we are telling you is that you are called to talk to others about Jesus, and all you have to do to be successful in answering this call is to talk to others about Jesus. What happens after that isn’t for you—or us, or anyone else—to worry about. If you do what you have been called to do, that is success. Anything that follows from your efforts is up to God.
Now, in our experience, you will find that some of the people you talk with do come to Jesus. Some will return to Mass. Some will turn from atheism. Lots of great things are likely to happen. But none of that is for you, or us, or anyone who talks about Jesus to worry about.
He is not asking us, nor has he ever asked us, to “convert” others, not even our family members. Whether people con- vert to the Faith or refuse the Faith is ultimately out of our hands. We are to carry the news, share the story, make sure that people have had a chance to hear it, and, if at all possible, to hear it in a personal and direct way.
Certainly, if they respond, there is much more we can do. We can help people to get their questions answered, to learn Scripture and Church Tradition, and many other things. What we cannot do is make anyone respond. Instead, we can propose.
Quite clearly one of the difficulties we will face as we propose Christ is that the fast-paced, media-saturated, and morally confused world we live in has, in many ways, hardened people against him. Vast numbers of people today believe that the age of Christianity has passed and the age of personal spiritualities has replaced it. Such people don’t like Christians telling them that Christianity is unique, and that having faith in Jesus is the only way to the fullness of truth and light—to eternal life.
Also, many people today believe that Christian morals are outdated, even offensive. To talk about Jesus in such an atmosphere thus poses challenges. It makes the transmission of the gospel harder. But the very features of our society that create these challenges for the gospel also create an urgency that should encourage us to talk about Jesus.
Great suffering has accompanied the modern world’s turn from Jesus. The world that hardens hearts against Jesus is also a wounded world, one in which the need for explicit talk of Jesus is all the more needed.
All around you, now, you see people who need healing but are unable to turn to the one who can heal because they have been convinced that any such turn to Jesus is a turn backward. These people need guidance, but they can no longer hear the voice of the one who can bring them to joy, peace, and love.
If compassion for the suffering in this world, and for the possibility of suffering in the next, were not motivation enough, we have the commands of Jesus himself and the constant exhortations of the Church to take up the work of sharing the Faith.
Matthew ends his Gospel with Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations” (28:19). This ending has the dual effect of making it clear, in a final sense, what Jesus has spent three years preparing his disciples for and, also, making it clear to us, who have just finished reading the Gospel, what we are now supposed to do.
The apostle Paul, having seen the risen Jesus, said “an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I don’t proclaim the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16).
This is true for everyone who has come to Christ. We must not receive the gospel of love and fail to love. Loving God, we must keep his commandment to go and make disciples; and, loving our neighbors, we must share with them the most precious gift: Jesus, who heals in this life and gives eternal life to all who accept him.
“We must keep his commandment to go and make disciples.” And we have a new book to teach you how. Get How to Talk About Jesus with Anyone today.