God is Too Good to Keep to Ourselves
One of the things I really appreciated about "God Shines Forth" by Daniel Hames and Michael Reeves is that it starts the conversation about mission and personal evangelism at a place where we probably don't start often enough: with God Himself.
When we talk about missions, evangelism, or sharing our faith, we usually begin with the command. Jesus told us to go. People need to hear the gospel. The church has a responsibility to reach the world. And obviously, all of that is true. But Hames and Reeves back up much further. Before mission is something God tells us to do, it flows out of who God is!
God shines forth!! That's the picture from the book that has stuck with me the most.
Think about the sun. It doesn't have to be convinced to shine. Light radiates from it because that's what it does. In a far greater way, God's goodness isn't something He keeps to Himself. He gives. He reveals Himself. He makes Himself known.
And ultimately, He has made Himself known to us in Jesus.
I think that changes the way we think about evangelism. We're not trying to convince people to become interested in a distant God. We're just telling people about God who has already moved toward us in Christ.
I think Christians can sometimes make evangelism feel like an obligation we'd rather avoid. We know we're supposed to tell people about Jesus, so we feel guilty when we don't. We try harder for a while. Maybe we have a few awkward conversations. Eventually, the whole thing starts to feel like another Christian responsibility we're not doing very well.
"God Shines Forth" gives us a much better place to begin. What if one of our biggest problems with evangelism isn't that we don't know enough techniques? What if we just don't see clearly enough how good God actually is?
Because when you really begin to see and experience God's goodness, His beauty, His generosity, His grace—it makes sense that you would want other people to know Him too.
We do this all the time. We tell people about a restaurant we loved. I'm doing it right now by recommending this book. We tell somebody about a place we've visited because we want them to experience it too. When something is genuinely good, sharing it with someone else doesn't feel forced...it feels...RIGHT.
Why would knowing Jesus be any different? It shouldn't!
That's one of the challenges I took away from this book. What the church needs isn't simply more pressure to evangelize. Maybe we just need a clearer vision of the God we're telling people about.
That's really the heart of Christian mission. God has revealed Himself to us in Jesus, and now we have the privilege of helping others see what we have seen. Not because we're trying to win an argument or grow an organization. We simply believe we have encountered Someone worth knowing.
That's what I appreciated so much about "God Shines Forth". It reminded me that sharing Jesus doesn't have to begin with guilt or pressure. It can begin with simply seeing God for who He is—and then realizing He's too good to keep to ourselves.
Interested in reading it? Here's the link to it on amazon: God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church by Daniel Hames and Michael Reeves
When we talk about missions, evangelism, or sharing our faith, we usually begin with the command. Jesus told us to go. People need to hear the gospel. The church has a responsibility to reach the world. And obviously, all of that is true. But Hames and Reeves back up much further. Before mission is something God tells us to do, it flows out of who God is!
God shines forth!! That's the picture from the book that has stuck with me the most.
Think about the sun. It doesn't have to be convinced to shine. Light radiates from it because that's what it does. In a far greater way, God's goodness isn't something He keeps to Himself. He gives. He reveals Himself. He makes Himself known.
And ultimately, He has made Himself known to us in Jesus.
I think that changes the way we think about evangelism. We're not trying to convince people to become interested in a distant God. We're just telling people about God who has already moved toward us in Christ.
I think Christians can sometimes make evangelism feel like an obligation we'd rather avoid. We know we're supposed to tell people about Jesus, so we feel guilty when we don't. We try harder for a while. Maybe we have a few awkward conversations. Eventually, the whole thing starts to feel like another Christian responsibility we're not doing very well.
"God Shines Forth" gives us a much better place to begin. What if one of our biggest problems with evangelism isn't that we don't know enough techniques? What if we just don't see clearly enough how good God actually is?
Because when you really begin to see and experience God's goodness, His beauty, His generosity, His grace—it makes sense that you would want other people to know Him too.
We do this all the time. We tell people about a restaurant we loved. I'm doing it right now by recommending this book. We tell somebody about a place we've visited because we want them to experience it too. When something is genuinely good, sharing it with someone else doesn't feel forced...it feels...RIGHT.
Why would knowing Jesus be any different? It shouldn't!
That's one of the challenges I took away from this book. What the church needs isn't simply more pressure to evangelize. Maybe we just need a clearer vision of the God we're telling people about.
That's really the heart of Christian mission. God has revealed Himself to us in Jesus, and now we have the privilege of helping others see what we have seen. Not because we're trying to win an argument or grow an organization. We simply believe we have encountered Someone worth knowing.
That's what I appreciated so much about "God Shines Forth". It reminded me that sharing Jesus doesn't have to begin with guilt or pressure. It can begin with simply seeing God for who He is—and then realizing He's too good to keep to ourselves.
Interested in reading it? Here's the link to it on amazon: God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church by Daniel Hames and Michael Reeves
No Comments