The Secret to Sharing the Gospel – Even If You’re Afraid

Austin Huang:
So, David, it’s clear in scripture and you and I both know that the call to share the gospel is not just for pastors or missionaries. It’s for the everyday believer anywhere they are. But yet, so many people I think feel unqualified, or just afraid, or maybe they just don’t know where to start. So they might love Jesus deeply, but when it comes to sharing the gospel or just talking about Him, it’s like, “Man, my words freeze, my heart starts to race, and I just don’t know where to begin.”
So I think let’s unpack this one honestly. What would you say to a follower of Jesus who they want to share the gospel, but maybe they just feel too timid or afraid, or too introverted to do it? How do they start a spiritual conversation?

David Platt:
Well, if we’re having this conversation honestly, the reality is, and this may surprise some people, but pastors struggle with the same thing. And I’ll just even speak for me personally. So I’m even naturally more introverted, very introverted actually. Yeah, I do, I find it much easier to preach the gospel on the stage to a lot of people than to speak the gospel to somebody I’m sitting next to having a conversation with one-on-one. That feels far more challenging to me. So I will just mention that.
And I know some people might hear that and they think, “Yeah, but you’re still different than me, and you know more,” or this or that. So I don’t want … But I just want to put that out there. But actually, that leads to what I hope is an encouragement. I really think we’re all on the same page here. And the reason I would say that is because I go to Paul in the Bible and him asking for people to pray for him to have boldness and for him to speak the gospel clearly as he ought. I was in that in Colossians 4 the other day.
If the greatest missionary in the history of the church needed to ask other people to pray for his boldness, that clearly shows. And I think about it, in Act Chapter 18 when he’s in Corinth and Jesus comes to him and said, “Do not be afraid. Keep on speaking, do not be silent.” That clearly implies he was afraid to speak. There was a timidity in him, he was asking for … So if Paul needed it, we all need it. I just want to encourage everybody needs.
So what does that lead us to do? Well, we need to pray for boldness. This is a spiritual, supernatural activity, sharing the gospel so that means it doesn’t come naturally. So don’t be surprised that it’s not coming naturally, and so press into that. I need your help, I need your Holy Spirit to empower me to do this. I pray for boldness. Look at Acts Chapter 4, the church is praying for boldness. And then ask for others to pray for that for you. I think for every follower of Jesus, we need to be praying for boldness to share the gospel and we need to have other people who are praying for boldness in us. Praying that God will help us to speak the gospel clearly when we have opportunities. We all need that, so start there with praying.

Austin Huang:
Yeah. And the boldness is so important. I think another problem that people come across is I don’t want to feel fake when I’m talking to somebody. I don’t want to just sit next to somebody on a park bench and just strike up a gospel conversation because I’m feeling like I’m treating them like a project in that moment. So how should we approach people with more so an ideology of I’m seeing you as a person and not a project?

David Platt:
Yeah. Well, that’s good. The approach, even just our mentality. Because yeah, if we’re sharing the gospel because it’s obligation, it’s some kind of box I need to check off, or I want to have a story that I could be able to tell somebody else, yeah, then that’s going to feel project like. But think about the person on the park bench, or think about a friend, family member, classmate, coworker, whoever it might be. Do you love that person? Do you really love that person? Just ask that question.
And if you do and you know that the only way this person can experience eternal life is if somebody shares this gospel, the good news that Jesus is love for them, with them. If you know that, then okay, now instead of a posture of prideful, I’ve got all the answers to life, and I’ve got it all figured out, and I’m going to share this with you, that’s not sharing the gospel. It’s humbly loving somebody enough to say, “Hey, here’s how you can experience eternal life.” It’s, yeah, telling …
I remember really in my Christian life somebody said, “Just pray that you do not commit the sin of the desert, knowing where the water is and not telling people where to find it.” And so I just think that’s what we’re doing in sharing the gospel. We live in a desert. We live in a fallen world filled with sin, evil, and wickedness, and injustice. We live in a desert and we know where the water is. So we’re sitting next to somebody on a park bench or we’re talking to our coworker and just like, “Hey, can I share with you where the water is?” Just to view it that way with humility and a love for them, a desire to serve them.
Because I think that humility, one other thing I’ll add along those lines. Because I feel like sometimes it almost feels like I’m coming across as prideful. Who am I to tell somebody else what they should believe?

Austin Huang:
Yeah.

David Platt:
I’ve had people ask me that. “Who are you to tell me what you believe? That’s pretty arrogant to say what I believe is wrong, what you believe is right.” It’s like, “Is this arrogant?” I would say, ah, it is arrogant unless it’s true.

Austin Huang:
Right.

David Platt:
Unless the gospel is true. Then if the gospel is true, then the most arrogant thing I could do is not speak it, keep it to myself. That’s actually pride. Humility is what leads me to share the gospel because I know it’s true. It’s not that I came up with this message. It’s the message that God by His grace saved me through, and praise God, somebody was humble enough to share the gospel with me, so help me to be humble enough to lovingly share the gospel with somebody else.

Austin Huang:
To tell them the truth.

David Platt:
Yeah. Yeah.

Austin Huang:
I heard and I saw this video the other day of an atheist who was just basically saying … He was proving the point of evangelism for us. He was like, “Well, if you Christians really, truly believe that there’s a human and that there’s a hell, and that the only way to get to heaven is through this one man Jesus Christ, then how much do you have to hate somebody to not share the gospel with them?” I was like, “Could I just repost this everywhere?” This is the message that we have that saves people.
I just think of Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel.” It is the power of God to bring salvation to everyone who believes, everyone. Not just a few, but it’s that truth telling that I think people have a hard time wrestling with.

David Platt:
Yeah. Man, if I could go … This is going to feel a little off the rails here, but it’s from my time at [inaudible 00:08:01]. I was in Isaiah where God calls him to go barefoot and naked proclaiming the word as an illustration. So just to be clear, where this is not going is not advocating that as a method of evangelism. But what was so good is I was reading this passage because you just used obviously Pauline language from Romans Chapter 1 about not being ashamed of the gospel. But I thought, “How shameful did that have to feel for him in the world?”

Austin Huang:
Right. That’s good.

David Platt:
To walk around and do what God was telling him to do in that case. But it was just honor before God, and there was just a very different picture. So I think one of the reasons why, so just to apply that here. I think one of the reasons why we don’t share the gospel is because we were afraid of awkwardness, afraid of what people might think of us, but we really do need an Isaiah-like spirit that says no, I will speak in a way that could be viewed as awkward or shameful even by some of the in the world, but not before God. I’m not ashamed of the gospel. Ashamed to do what God has called me to do? Yeah, I don’t want to be ashamed to do that no matter what that leads people in the world to think about me.

Austin Huang:
How do I overcome the fear? I know we’re talking about awkwardness and not wanting to make someone uncomfortable. But how do I overcome the fear of rejection? If someone looks at me and they actually hear me out, then they just say, “No, I’m good.” What do we do then?

David Platt:
One, a part of me, I want to share the gospel with anticipation of God showing His power and saving people, and expectation that in many cases, people will reject it. I would just say don’t be surprised. Look at Jesus’ ministry, look throughout the whole New Testament, there’s so many stories of rejection. And look at your own life. The likelihood is you didn’t receive the gospel the first time you heard it. There were multiple times, maybe over years.
Even for me, I came to faith in Jesus at a young age, but I didn’t come to Jesus the first time I heard the gospel. So don’t have this … Again, God can do it if somebody hears the gospel for the first time and sometimes God does do it. I think it’s probably even more unlikely that it’s the first time somebody hears the gospel that they believe it. And that’s also the beauty too, when I think about when somebody does trust in Jesus, you share the gospel with them, they trust in Jesus. The likelihood is there have been a ton of people who got rejected before you. Praise God, you got to experience the joy of that moment and all these other people didn’t. The Bible talks about others sowing and us reaping, and us sowing and others reaping. Just be happy to play your part in that conversation. So when somebody rejects, yeah, just trust the Lord. Pray intentionally for that person in the days to come and trust.
This is the beauty of all the Christian life is that it’s about faithfulness regardless. Trusting God will yield fruitfulness through our faithfulness in due time. I think about, again, one more Isaiah instance. He says, “Here am I; send me.” God sends him and says, “By the way, nobody’s going to listen to you.” And no matter how faithful he was, he couldn’t change that. So if you have been rejected, you’re in good company and trust that God’s working in ways you don’t see.

Austin Huang:
Oh, that’s so, so good. The way I think about it too is if you were ever at the mall and you’re walking and trying to enjoy your day, and you’re shopping, and then there’s people in the middle with those kiosks that are trying to sell you things that don’t matter. Shoe cleaner, or perfume that’s four bucks, you don’t need these things. We all feel so annoyed at those people because they’re trying to sell you something you don’t need. I’m afraid that a lot of Christians feel that way about the gospel. It’s like, “I don’t want to share the gospel because I am afraid I’m going to come across as someone whose offering something and selling something that people don’t need.”
But the truth is that we have a gift. It’s not for a price, the price has already been paid. And I get to joyfully do it in a way that, even if they reject me-

David Platt:
Yes, yeah.

Austin Huang:
… a will “to live is Christ, to die is gain,” and rejection will come along the way.

David Platt:
Man, that’s so good, Austin. Because I do think, I think a lot of our hesitancy to share the gospel often times does come back to, yeah, do we really believe the gospel? Do we believe this is a gift? Do we really love people? And we just need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds because there’s an … This is one other, underneath all the things we’re talking about. There is an adversary who does not want you to share the gospel. There is a devil and demons, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms that do not want you to speak the gospel, and they are working nonstop to keep you from spreading the gospel and to keep others from hearing the gospel. That is a spiritual reality.
So realize you’re in a spiritual battle when you’re doing this. So how do you fight spiritual war? You fight spiritual war with spiritual weapons, like prayer and the sword of the spirit. That’s where trust, trust, trust that when you speak the word, that it’s going to bear fruit in different ways. Again, like we’ve talked about, not every conversation is going to lead to somebody trusting in Jesus, but to trust that this spiritual word has spiritual power beyond anything else you could say. So why fill our conversation with just weather, politics, sport, news, when we can talk that which actually has spiritual power to totally transform people’s lives for the next 10 trillion years?

Austin Huang:
Do you have a story, either from your life or someone you know, of where one step of obedience and sharing the gospel resulted in amazing spread of God’s name and His glory among people or churches?

David Platt:
As you asked that, there are a couple of people coming to my mind that just …. Yeah. When I met them, they were, yeah, man, so far from God. The people who are coming to my mind, I had relationship with, there was ongoing relationship, so it wasn’t just meeting at the mall or wherever. So started sharing the gospel with them, walked through a process of, yeah, really discipling, but even more before they were a follower of Jesus. Sitting down and talking with them about questions they had. And then seeing them coming with Jesus, and then seeing them not coming with Jesus, but coming with Jesus in a way that they became disciples who made disciples. This is the way it’s designed. So they were like, “I’ve got to make this known.”
I think about one of them in particular who, God, now this person went on to become a pastor and has, yeah, led multiple churches, and is a leader among leaders of other pastors. Yeah. It just started with sitting across the table at a Chinese restaurant for lunch once every couple weeks and writing the gospel on napkins. It was just don’t underestimate what God might do in one conversation.
I just think about that. I was preaching on this a couple Sundays ago because I was like, just think, how awesome is this? Even maybe not even fully sharing the gospel, maybe it’s just inviting somebody to church. You in a classroom today, on the hall of the campus, in your workplace, you just at the water cooler just invite somebody to church. They say, “Yeah, I’ll come.” And imagine they come, they hear the gospel, and maybe they trust in Jesus or in the days to come they trust in Jesus. And the next 10 trillion years, their life is totally different, they’re experiencing eternal life. And you got to be a part of it with that conversation at the water cooler or in class.
How much meaning does that just infuse into your life today? Anticipation for today, you can have a conversation that could change forever somebody’s life. That’s amazing that we can be a part of this. Let’s not shrink back. Let’s pray, yes, for boldness to step into those conversations.

Austin Huang:
For the listener who is thinking that right now, they want to step out in faith and tell others about Jesus, what are some things that they can do in preparation for that moment when it comes?

David Platt:
Well, man, we got a resource called Gospel Threads that, one, I would encourage somebody to be able to summarize the gospel in 30, 60 seconds. If somebody were to ask you what is the gospel, and we’ve used that term so many times even in this conversation. What is the gospel? If you were to ask me that I’d be like, okay, it’s the good news that God loves us, has created us to form relationship with Him, we’ve all turned aside from God, sinned against Him. Turned from His ways to our own ways, we’re separated from God by our sin. If we die in the state of separation from God, we’ll spend eternity separated from Him, but God loves us so much that He sent Jesus to die on a cross. To live the life we couldn’t live of no sin, die the death we deserved to die on a cross for us, and arised from the dead so that anybody who trusts in Him will be forgiven of their sin and restored a relationship with God forever.
So I just think if we know anything well, we need to know the gospel well so that we can pick up at any point in that story and be able, and even be ready to, in conversations, not in a forced, but in conversations to be able to build bridges to that good news. That’s what so much of evangelism I view, and this is not the illustration that I would have come up with, but bridge building. You’re taking people from where they are, what they’re walking through, to Jesus, and who he is and what he’s done for them. And you’re always looking for opportunities to build bridges.
And what I talk a lot about in Gospel Threads is looking for opportunities to talk about all those truths that I just mentioned from gospel in the context of everyday life. Who God is, and who Jesus is, and who we are, and what faith is, and what grace is, and what matters forever.
Anyway, I think preparation is pray for boldness, make sure you’ve got clarity on the gospel. The other thing I would add is maybe to have a go-to if you’re in a situation where you can share the gospel and you’re not even sure how to get into it, or a go-to question to get into it.

Austin Huang:
Right, yeah. Yeah.

David Platt:
For me, that’s if I’m jumping in an Uber or a Lyft, I’m going to ask if something unexpected were to happen to you and you were to die today, do you know for sure that you’d go to heaven?

Austin Huang:
Yeah.

David Platt:
That’s my … Or one variation I heard on that was just, 0 to 10, how sure would you be that you’re going to heaven? Which I think is probably more helpful because it helps gauge a variety of different things. But I think it’s helpful for me to have that one question to be able to dive into. And I always go to my ready to share 1 John 5:13. “I write these things to you, believe in the name of the Son of the God, that you may know you have eternal life.” You can actually know you have eternal life and it’s not through your words, it’s through belief in the Son of God, and then just going into the gospel from there.

Austin Huang:
Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us today on Everyday Radical. We pray that this conversation stirred your heart and strengthened your faith. There’s so much more ahead, so go back and catch any episodes you might have missed and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s ahead. Let’s keep making Jesus known everywhere. Until next time.