Witnessing: There Is No Cause For Shame

Yet I am not ashamed.

2 Timothy 1:12

The most difficult line to cross in conversation for the average Christian is the one which separates secular conversations from spiritual ones. Why is this so? When we give it some thought, nothing else really matters at all unless a person is born again.

So why do we often seem more interested in offering a person a tip about where to buy clothes at bargain prices than about where to find the greatest bargain of all—new life through our Lord and Savior? The sheer gravity of this question should weigh us down so heavily that we are immobilized from shifting to another topic until we have settled this issue.

Why are we ashamed of the Gospel? Is there something about Jesus you would rather not reveal? Has He disappointed you? Has He failed you in any way? Does He embarrass you? Are His commands to love others and make disciples somehow not applicable in our case?

The plain truth is that we are ashamed. But here is the idea to grasp: It is not Christ of whom we are ashamed; it is ourselves. We don’t yet know Him so intimately that our hearts are pierced by a pervasive passion for others to know Him, too. We are uneducated about the glories of His Word, and we feel inadequate to carry on a meaningful conversation. We are ashamed, not of Him, but of ourselves. For we are unprepared.

“Our Savior, Christ Jesus,…has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). If we believe this, and I mean really believe this, then let the scales fall from our eyes and see that Christ came into the world to save sinners. Yes, I may suffer some humiliation. Yes, I may suffer some embarrassment. “Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (2 Timothy 1:12).

I SURRENDER

Lord, I will water and fertilize the tiny seed of desire You have planted in me to win others to You. I will find the training I need to show others how to become Your disciples. I confess that though I am not ashamed of You, I am ashamed of my own inadequacies. It’s my own fault. Help me to tip my interests from the temporal to the eternal; let the pendulum swing that way. Amen.