Why Evangelism Demands Patience

I recently interviewed a Turkish pastor who grew up in a nominal Muslim home. He memorized parts of the Quran for schoolwork, but he never embraced its message. By adulthood, he was an atheist and a mountain climber, searching for meaning by scaling some of the highest peaks in the world.

Until one day, he fell. And for the first time in his life, he prayed. He asked God to help. Not long after, a couple of hikers showed up in a spot where few people tread. Now the atheist mountain climber was on a quest to seek the God who rescued him.

He searched out other religions and found them lacking, until he remembered a gift he received a long time ago: When he was a child, a couple of missionaries had given him a book. It was the Gospel of John.

That little book was the start of a new life for Pastor Kerem Koc. Many other believers eventually played a part in his conversion and discipleship, but it all started with a couple of missionaries giving a little kid a short book. A tiny seed that lay buried for years. Until one day, it took root.

Kerem’s story reminds me of a remarkable fact I once read about seeds: “A seed knows how to wait.”

Hope Jahren, a scientist who studies trees, writes that most seeds wait for at least a year before they start to grow, and that a cherry tree “can wait for a hundred years with no problem.” This is possible for one important reason: “A seed is alive while it waits.”

Is that how we think about the seeds we’re planting in Christ’s kingdom? How often do we speak a word, or pray a prayer, or have a conversation, or invite a friend to church, and it seems like it falls to the ground with a thud? Like it withers where it lands?

Instead, what if we remembered that a seed is alive while it waits? That no seed planted is hopeless or pointless?

Another pastor I once met grew up the Indian son of a Hindu priest. When he was a child, a couple of Christians gave him a Bible as he passed by on the street. He read it in secret. And he loved this man called Jesus. When he came to Christ’s crucifixion, the boy was stunned. Why would anyone kill a man like this?

For years, he wondered about Jesus and what it all meant. When friends in college invited him to a Christian prayer meeting, he went. The seed was still there, alive and waiting. By the end of the night, he knew he wanted to follow Jesus forever. Today, he preaches the gospel in his hard-to-reach homeland.

The Christians he briefly encountered years before never knew what came of the seed they planted in a little boy who passed by. And neither do we. We don’t know what might come of the conversation we initiate. The comment. The prayer. The invitation. Who knows how God might use them? Who knows how he already has?

This makes evangelism less a strategy and more a lifestyle. Yes, we need to be intentional about seeking specific opportunities to share the gospel with unbelievers. We need to be deliberate about gospel conversations. But we also need to live our whole lives sowing seeds in a thousand different ways. 

Sometimes those seeds will fall on rocky ground. Sometimes they’ll get choked by thorns. But sometimes, they’ll fall on soil made good by God’s grace. And those seeds will bear fruit, whether we ever know it on this side of heaven.

Some plant. Some water. But God gives the growth. Let’s spend our days planting seeds and watering the ones that might already be waiting. Sometimes we may not really know whether we’re planting or watering as we go. But God does.

Because a seed knows how to wait. And God knows how to give growth. 

This article first appeared in The Commission, Radical’s biweekly newsletter featuring global gospel stories and encouragement from David Platt and others to help you follow Jesus and make him known. Subscribe today.