Talk to God About Your Fear

How many times have you heard believers confess to one another, “My biggest problem in evangelism is fear. I am so afraid of being rejected”? The problem is that they often tell scores of believers their fear but too rarely confess it to Christ. The difference should be obvious. As helpful as telling others may be, there is no one on earth who can lend the aid He can. He ought to be the first we express the difficulty to, not the last.

As we do so, what we are specifically asking God for is courage or boldness. The courage that makes us go ahead despite our fears. The courage that makes us speak up, not clam up. The courage that produces the “I want to” evangelize not just the “I should.”

After all, as we observed, that is what the apostles did in Acts 4. That is what Paul does in Ephesians 6. In fact, what is striking about the Ephesians 6 passage is that when Paul discusses his fear in evangelism, he does it not to complain or make excuses but simply to ask them to pray for him. We must first and foremost talk to God about our fears, not just to people.

As we do so, we must pray in faith. Nowhere in Scripture does God promise to answer prayer. He only promises to answer the prayer of faith. As we ask God in faith to give boldness we can do so with excitement and expectation because the Person we are talking to is the One “who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). If you ask God for boldness, He will provide.

What is Saving Faith?

It has two elements. The first is knowledge. It is self-evident that to believe in a person, you must know about the person. The fact that saving faith includes knowledge is not only evident from common sense. It is also plainly taught in Scripture. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (John 4:10). Similarly, Jesus told a crowd in Jerusalem, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life” (John 5:24). Other writers of the New Testament also told individuals’ hearing before they believed (Acts 18:8; Eph. 1:13). Saving faith is not without content or substance. Before one can believe in Him, one must know about Him.

The second element of saving faith is appropriation. Passages such as the ones studied earlier show that personal response is demanded. That response in essence is, “Believing that you have the gift of eternal life and You alone are able to give it , I willingly take what You have to offer.” To convey this idea in introducing others to Christ, many use the word “trust.” Not only is this consistent with what is meant by the Greek word translated “believe,” it also readily identifies in a lost person’s mind what God is asking him to do. Having heard the Good News of Christ’s substitutionary death and His resurrection, the sinner is asked by God to trust Christ as his only means of salvation. When people trust Christ for salvation, they are relying on Christ’s sacrificial work as their only means of right standing with God. It is then that the benefits of Christ’s death are applied to sinners they are saved by the grace of God. Some people “believe” in our English sense of the word. The mentally assent to the fact that Christ died and arose, while depending on their good works to save them. “Believe” in the biblical sense of the word means that if one mentally assents to the fact that Christ died for his or her sins and arose, they trust in Christ alone to save them.

A person is saved when he or she understands the ability Christ has to save and acts on that knowledge by trusting Christ. That is saving faith. One is not saved by simply understanding that Christ died and arose or even mentally assenting to that being a fact of history while depending on one’s good life for salvation. One is saved when as a sinner deserving of hell, on has trusted Christ alone for salvation.