Your Story is Worth Telling: Become a More Effective Witness by Writing and Sharing Your Salvation Story

By Kenneth J. MacKay III

Do you struggle to share the gospel?

If the answer is yes, you are not alone. God calls us to share the gospel with others, but many Christians struggle to do this effectively. What if you could share the gospel by doing something that you do every day?

Your Story Is Worth Telling will help you:

• Write your salvation story
• Integrate the gospel message into your story
• Help you prepare to share your story with the people around you

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth J. MacKay III
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019

Book preview

[e-mail].

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (AMP) are taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserve

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my wife, Jennifer, and my children Alyssa, Liliana & Gabriel thank you for all your love and support.

&

To my Papa, Howard Burgess, who was always proud of me no matter what I chose to do with my life.

tABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Have you ever spent time with a friend or family member and all of a sudden you have a feeling, a prompting in your spirit that you should share something about Jesus him or her? In your heart, you know that you should share. Deep down you know that this is a significant eternal moment for this person. But rather than taking the opportunity to say something you keep quiet.

Instead of obeying the prompting of the Holy Spirit, your mind races with questions. What if I don’t know what to say? What if they laugh at me? What if I lose them as a friend? What if they ask a question and I don’t know the answer? These thoughts and a hundred others just like them take over your mind and you ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit. You don’t share the life-changing message of salvation with your friend, you keep your mouth shut and leave without ever bringing it up.

If you are like me, you have been in a situation like this, or one pretty similar. As Christians, the Lord places us in situations where we have the opportunity to share the gospel with others. Each of these opportunities come with a choice to share or to stay silent. Sometimes we rise to the challenge and share this message with the person in front of us. Other times we don’t, and sometimes that can mean a person leaving our life and influence without ever hearing the message of Jesus from our mouths.

A while ago I noticed when I an opportunity came up for me to share with someone I would begin to second guess myself. No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to think of a good way to begin the conversation about Jesus. Despite this difficulty I was having, I had a strong desire to share with people.

Along with that desire to share came a desire to find a relevant and personal way to communicate the gospel to people. Which brought me to ask: what if I shared my story with others? Not just a story about my life, but a story filled with the message of the hope of Jesus.

Each of us has at least one story we can share with others about how God changed our lives, or what He has done in and through us. The idea for this book came from thinking about using my coming to faith story to share the gospel with others. I didn’t write this book because I had the latest and greatest method of evangelism. Nor did I write it to say that this is the only way to share the gospel with people. I don’t, and it’s not!

I believe that any method you choose to share the gospel has the potential to be successful. That being said, you have to believe that it will be a success. You can decide to pass out gospel tracts one day, all the while saying to yourself, this will never work. And guess what? It is not going to work. Proverbs 18:21 tells us, Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit. If you are speaking death, by speaking negatively over a particular avenue of witnessing, then you will have negative results.

The best way to share the gospel is to use whatever method God leads you to use. He knows the keys to people’s hearts. He knows what methods will be most effective with every single person on earth. Allow God to lead you no matter what method you use, and have faith that it will work. Trust God to use you to impact someone else’s life for eternity. Listen to the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and you will be a success in sharing the gospel.

There are people in your sphere of influence that are waiting for you to share the gospel message with them. The harvest is indeed plentiful, but the workers are few. Will you step up and allow God to use you to bring in that harvest of souls? If your answer is yes, I won’t promise you that people will respond positively every single time. But as you trust and obey God, you won’t regret it.

I believe that we are part of the generation that will play a significant role in spreading the message of Christ to the entire world and the almost 8 billion people who live in it. I genuinely believe that we can do this, if every Jesus-following Christian stepped out of their comfort zone and shared the life-changing message of Christ.

When the Apostles were spreading the gospel, they traveled far and wide for Christ. But, the Apostles are gone, it’s our turn to make the gospel known. We need to be a people who tenaciously seek the lost. I love this quote from Keith Green, This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls on the earth.

My hope for this book is to equip you with a tool that you can use to share the gospel in a personal way. I also hope that you will be encouraged to choose to share the next time an opportunity occurs in your life to be a witness.

1

My Road to Evangelism

Some people find peace in the silence. For them, it's calming, even comforting. But, for a long time, I hated it. When I was younger, anytime I found myself alone in the silence, memories of all the nights my father came home drunk would come flooding into my thoughts carrying with it a tsunami of feelings and emotions. It was as if it was happening all over again.

In the silence, I could hear the loud crashes as my father stumbled around knocking things over. The sound of glass smashing as it hit the floor.