The True Witness

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1:8

There is a sense in which every Christian, whether or not he talks about Christ, is a witness. It is literally true that if we have been born again by the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ, we are witnesses. Everything we do, the attitudes we take, the opinions we express, the reactions we have to situations, all are telling people what kind of Christian we are, or whether or not we are really Christians. The question is not, shall we be witnesses. The question is, what kind of witness are we?

Notice who is the soul winner. In all of history there has only been one soul winner, and it is not us. It is the Holy Spirit. He is the only one who has any capability of winning souls. We are not salesmen for God with a mandate to talk people into buying something. No salesman is dependent upon a person working with him to do the job properly, yet that is who we are as witnesses for Christ. We are not the ones who do the soul winning, ever. We do not have the power to convince people to become Christians, nor is a person won to Christ by your trying to argue with them. This means we can relax in our approach, and if the Holy Spirit has not already prepared a heart and made them ready and willing to listen, there is nothing we can do to make them so, except to pray for them.

Remember what the scripture says is the condition of man without Christ? Dead! How far would you get if you took a sales course and went to graveyards to sell your product to corpses? When scripture says that men and women are dead in trespasses and sins, it isn't just using language lightly. That is exactly the condition they are in, and every attempt to try to argue or reason a person into salvation apart from the Holy Spirit is like arguing with a corpse. A corpse has only one great need, and that is life. You may get the most eloquent and erudite books in the library and read to it all the philosophical elements for life, but it will not give him life. You may shake a stick over him and demand he obey the law, but that won't help. He needs life. This is the reason only the great Life-giver can do the work of soul winning. You don't have to beg him to do it. He is far more willing to do it than you are, but he does it with the ones of his choice, not your choice.

Father, thank you that you have called me to be a witness. What a thrilling and joyful thing that is, when I remember that you are able to do it all through me.