When sharing the gospel with people..

[DRDS]

How should we inform them on why they should become a believer in Christ? As far as I know I should certainly mention the basics, that Christ saves us from God's judgement and from hell and allows us to spend eternity with Him.

But many times over the years I have seen where many pastors either in person or on television give people the false impression that if you recieve Christ your life will become so much better, you will be filled with peace and love all the time, and even have the gall to claim that you will even be healthy and wealthy for the rest of your life! Talk about false promises!

I certainly feel like I should never mention those things. But let's see what about having a true sense of meaning and purpose in your life, could I say that to people who are wondering about becomming a Christian? Is that a safe and biblical thing to mention while sharing the gospel, or should I only stress the getting out of hell thing? Thanks and God bless.

[neo-x]

getting out of hell thing is pretty cliched by now, so i wouldn't suggest it. I will simply tell them about God's love, about purpose, meaning, relationship with God, trying to understand his love and his desire for us, what it really means to follow God and a christian life. bad things happen all the time, that is true of christian life as well, just look at the early church, they got, tortured, burnt, thrown to wild beasts, had their families exiled and what not. Plus, a christian, living in Thailand or china or India or Pakistan or Afghanistan (and many more countries) will not agree with such pastors and their promises. Life is hard where Christians are a minority and are persecuted.

[DRDS]

That sounds good, but I wouldn't want to over stress the relationship with God part, because you don't want to give new believers or even lost people the false impression that God will literally start talking to you or cause you to experience supernatural occurances.

You see, back when I was a much younger believer I was given that false impression by chrismatic preachers and it was a major stumbling block for me. For many people, I suppose, when they try and try to get God to do something like that in their life and it does not happen, many of them would be tempted to give up God all together.

And that is something I don't want to see other people have to go through. I mean, God does want to have a relationship with us, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't expect it to be the exact same kind of relationship you have with parents, siblings, spouses or friends, it's much more distant than those at least for now while we live this current life.

[neo-x]

I agree, I would not stress God being literal but how the relationship makes us his children and what is expected of us. Things like that. What you mentioned was a stumbling block for me as well, so I would not stress on it, though I wont rule it out either but just mention it.

[Mariolee]

I would say the best way to share the gospel with people is to simply live life as a Christian. They'll only accept what you say when they want you to say it. It's like Inception. If you simply live an awesome intelligent Christian life that isn't extremist, but is what Jesus wants you to do, you may have someone thinking "Maybe there IS something to this whole Christian thing."

Don't hate mongor, don't scream damnation, don't even say it calmly with them if they don't ask for your advice; just act the way Christ does: wise and polite.

But if you force your beliefs on them, they will simply laugh. Mostly because if you tell them about Jesus loving you like his sons or whatever, they don't believe in that stuff. It has the same power as you telling them unicorns are real but you just have to believe. How in the world do you expect them to believe in something they already don't believe in by forcing it down their throats?

Imagine a world where Christians LIVED LIKE CHRISTIANS. Imagine them going out into the world and helped people with terrible disease or poverty and simply spreading the love of Jesus, instead of spreading hate or abusing the church system for your own greed or even just having random sex like so many of my "Christian" friends. If Christians lived like Christians, there would be more atheists willing to accept their ideas.

But for now, atheists know too many hypocritical crazy Christians to believe that. If you can show them that you're not crazy, you're logical, you're wise, you're loving, and you're open minded (without saying you are), then they will listen.