How important is Faith and Grace in evangelism?
Faith is the currency of the Kingdom of God. Without faith a person is poor in the Kingdom of God. Faith is an expression of God’s grace in a believer. A believer is a child of grace. His life is planned by grace, conceived by grace, carried by grace, and he born by grace. He is raised by grace and sustained by grace. His mother and father are grace. Faith in the life of a believer runs on the wheels of grace. So it is grace working through faith, faith expressing itself through love, and love fulfills the commandments. As such without faith it is impossible to please God. You can’t obey God’s commands if you don’t have faith that expresses itself through love for God. That love is an affair of the heart and engenders the proclivity of heart to obey God and please God not by works done outwardly but by the inclination of the believer’s heart which is then translated into fruits of works. To do the great commission in a manner that pleases God and gains his blessing, it has to come out of the overflow of one’s heart. Such overflow must by necessity be the product of God’s grace working through faith and faith expressing itself through love for God and for his work—the great commission. That pleases God and God blesses. From such faith flows agonizing and prevailing prayer & fasting for souls in accordance with God’s will. Revival is not too far from a group of people who agonize with such thoroughbred faith.
Faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God (Rom. 10:17) But you perceive faith not by hearing but by seeing. In Mark 2:5, Jesus saw faith. Faith is seen by what it does.
James 2:18 says “show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works” He is basically saying, you can’t do it. Faith is only seen by what it does. For people who have no works by which their faith can be seen, he says in verse 17 “faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”
In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul writes “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” The proof of Timothy’s faith in the great commission lies in what he does with the message. He must verbally teach it to others as he also models that faith to others. And the proof of the faith of those who hear Timothy lies in what they do with it. A person will have a hard time proving that he has faith in the great commission and in hell and yet does nothing about teaching and winning souls.
I believe genuine faith will lead him to model; it will engender passion in him, and help him develop vision for winning souls. The followers will see the leader’s faith by what he does and be inspired to buy into the vision of soul winning.
Research done by Dr. Towns of Liberty University has shown that the leaders of the greatest churches had the common thread of faith. From Genesis to revelation, if you see any person who was successful in anything, you will find that he received much grace. Grace worked through faith and faith expressed itself as love for God and that love for God enabled him to obey God.