In many Bible courses, in this world of my God, I often ask a question which I extend to you: “Who here promotes evangelization?” Many, if not most, raise their hands. Then, the second question comes: “When we evangelize, whose story do we preach?”. The answer comes in the form of a chorus: “From Jesus!”. The third question is easy: “And where is the story of Jesus written?” “In the Bible,” they reply.
The last question is tougher: “And who here reads the Bible?” Generally, people laugh, but the reality is hard! Today, our Christians are losing the habit of praying with Sacred Scripture, and the truth is that there is no way to evangelize if we do not know the Word of God and relate to it. Dedicating yourself in half is certain death!
Illustrative photo: Daniel Mafra / cancaonova.com
What do you mean by evangelism?
The Book of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 4,36-5,11) tells a strong and very catechetical story. It features Barnabas, one of the early Christians, originally from Cyprus, who shows his support for the Church , which was born selling a field and offering the money to the apostles to support evangelization. Sign of true love! Then, a couple of those very complicated appear: Ananias and Safira. They also sell property, but when it comes to offering the money to the apostles, they say that they offer everything, but the “mattress at home” kept a part of the money. The film has no happy ending: the two die for trying to deceive the apostles.
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The narrative is full of meaning, but please do not think that it wants to teach that God punishes, because He is a Father of love. The message goes deeper: when our experience with Him embraces only part of our hearts, death is certain. In biblical terms, if we only know a few stories of Jesus and do not even read the four Gospels, believe me: there will come a time when spirituality will begin to fail.
The self-service evangelizer
It is common that, when we dedicate ourselves little to the reading of the Word , for laziness, for lack of formators or as many other excuses that we can think, our evangelization is a little “limp”. Do you know why? Because we only know about a couple of biblical passages that we know: the parable of the prodigal son, the sower, the beatitudes… It is the self-service evangelizer, who chooses only French fries to eat, but forgets to feed his soul the complete banquet of the Kingdom! In times of difficulty, the soul asks for more and, if faith has no sustenance, it begins to die.
Here is an invitation: Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God with his life and His speeches. To evangelize, let yourself be reached by this preaching of the Lord, feed on the Word of God, which gives rise to a profound charm with this Kingdom project. From this comes conversion, which reaches the soul and touches the heart with depth. It grows, little by little, as a good seed and takes root by walking with Christ along the roads of the Gospel and learning from Him how to live and be happy.
With each page of Scripture, with love or correction, affection or exhortation, we lose the cinematic image of Jesus and gaining the biblical image of the Master, who teaches how to be a true Christian. Something that only those who lose the laziness of donating in half for evangelization can do it.
