Three Ways to Share Our Joy in Jesus

A Faith Worth Sharing by C. John Miller — his friends called him Jack — is the best resource I’ve found on gospel-telling. It is his deathbed narration of “a lifetime of conversations about Christ.” 

Reading Jack is a great way to seek fresh evangelistic grace as the warmer weather, and various manifestation of post-COVID life, approaches and to be encouraged and equipped to speak the gospel to friends, family, and neighbors. 

Ordinary Jack

What makes A Faith Worth Sharing unique and memorable is its narrative format and ordinary author. It’s inspiring to read stories of how an average Jack began to share his faith as a new Christian and continued to do so in simple but significant ways during his lifetime. Jack is honest about the many mistakes he made, and he shares many lessons he learned the hard way. 

Jack, who died in 1996, was not the talk-to-anyone, boisterous extrovert we sometimes picture when we think “evangelist.” He was normal, like most of us, and frequently fearful, like most of us. And yet he learned to share the gospel naturally and authentically—even fruitfully. 

Evangelism in Story Form

Reading A Faith Worth Sharing is like being mentored by Jack. Watch him model gospel-telling. Read accounts of how Jack gave himself to communicating the gospel message to others in the context of genuine and deepening relationships. Jack admirably holds up the importance of both word and deed, message and mercy, without compromise. 

The book is brimming with profound evangelistic principles ready to spill over into practical applications. So to whet your appetite for more, here’s one central principle and three points of application for personal evangelism from Jack’s stories. 

Feeding Daily on the Gospel

Jack learned early on in his Christian walk that “the only way I could survive was to go over and over the gospel message until it became the central focus of my life” (28). He rehearses this principle—and sums up the main theme of the book—as he talks about the conversion of a friend named Stan. 

Stan . . . became another weak person receiving grace through the promises, and his joy in the message of the cross stimulated others to seek grace too. (96, emphasis added) 

Jack’s recurring angle is that “evangelism is . . . one hungry beggar eagerly eating the bread and being changed by it, and then telling the other poor beggars to eat of the same bread” (98). Evangelists who don’t feed their own souls on the message of the gospel are misguided at best and hypocritical at worst. If we are to communicate the gospel to others for the feeding of their souls, we must first feed daily on the gospel ourselves. 

The reason that we would want to call other beggars to eat the life-giving and life-sustaining bread of the gospel is because we’ve already tasted it—and are continuing to eat it—and we know personally how good the good news is. Preaching the gospel daily to our own souls precedes and powers communicating that gospel to others. And the more we articulate the profound truths of the gospel to ourselves, and then to our believing friends, the more easily we’ll be able to share the message to nonbelievers. 

Sharing the Gospel

Here are three practicals (among many more!) from the pages of Jack’s book for how to share our joy in Jesus with others. 

1. Study the Bible with Someone. 

Jack asked a guy called Big John to read Romans with him. This brought the breakthrough. Not only might we try to get the Bible into the hands of nonbelievers, but also seek to study the Bible with them. What a potent combination—the written words of God and an in-the-flesh follower of Jesus to lead and direct and help explain those written words! 

2. Invite Unbelievers into Community. 

For Gus the breakthrough came in the midst of God’s people. When Jack brought Gus around other Christians, his perspective began to change. The genuineness of other believers’ lives confirmed what Gus saw in Jack and helped bring Gus closer to Jesus. Bringing our unbelieving friends and family around winsome community of Christians can be a significant strategy in gospel-telling. It can demonstrate for them not only the love we have for one another but also how vital community is in the Christian life. 

3. Be Honest About Your Weaknesses 

The apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that Jesus said to him, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” Jack speaks about the potency of this truth in his life. He writes about trying to reach people with the gospel with what he calls “weakness evangelism.” All humans have weaknesses—weaknesses that we typically try to hide—and when we are honest and authentic to relate our weaknesses to others, that may be what initially captures someone. 

Most of us go to great lengths to accentuate our strengths. But someone who is honest about their weaknesses may discover common ground and shared needs and open a door for telling Jesus’s story. Our weaknesses can actually be a kind of strength in evangelism. 

Thank God for Jack

God was good to give us Jack Miller and to extend his days just long enough to tell this collection of stories before departing this life. Let’s pray that God would make us more like Jack in taking evangelistic risks, being authentic gospel-tellers in genuine relationships, and having a faith worth sharing.