I don’t know about you, but my life has been full of evangelistic disappointment. With person after person I’ve got my hopes up as they’ve moved towards Jesus, but then somehow it’s all petered out into awkward nothingness.
If I’m honest, I sometimes wonder whether all the time and emotional effort was actually worth it.
An unexpected twist
But I heard a story recently that encouraged me. Someone, let’s call him Josh, told me about his old best friend from school, who we’ll call Alex. As teenagers they had loads of chats about faith. For years it was just an interesting disagreement; but then, in an unexpected moment at a CU event, Alex turned to Josh and said, 'You know, I think I believe this stuff.' Josh was so excited, he lent him books, invited him to church, and for a while it was all pretty encouraging. But when Alex went to uni he never really tried to find a church. He played rugby a lot, went out a lot, but didn’t respond to Josh’s messages much at all. Josh eventually wrote him a letter, pleading with him to take Jesus seriously. No response. A few years after uni Alex moved abroad for a lucrative job opportunity.
