Want to Evangelize? 3 Reasons to Start with Prayer

Last week we wrote about God’s joy in our evangelism—that when God tells us to spread His good news of hope, He’s really inviting us to join Him in doing His favorite thing. Because that’s the case, the absolute most important thing we can do to evangelize (regularly, effectively, lovingly, wisely, and so on) is to pray. Here are three quick observations about the importance of prayer for evangelism:

1. We pray when we evangelize because it helps us remember that God is really the one doing the evangelism.

Our prayer helps us remember the fact that God is already at work in the world and in the lives we’re looking to touch. It also helps us to remember that every time someone comes to believe in Jesus, it’s a miracle. The Bible describes it as a new-found type of sight, like developing a sixth sense. It’s like your mind has been remade. It’s like your entire way of viewing the world has changed. It’s like, as Jesus says, God has mysteriously revealed something that no flesh or blood could have effectively taught you. No amount of smooth talking or pressure or explaining on our part is powerful enough to convert someone. I know some of us fear that our evangelism won’t be good enough to be effective—and we’re exactly right to have these fears because there’s no way we can, of our own power, perform the miracle of bringing someone to new life. But God is powerful enough to do this miracle, and He graciously makes our ineffective preaching of His grace effective. So we should pray more; maybe we’d see more miracles. This brings us to our next reason:

2. We pray when we evangelize because God responds to prayer.

So we pray because it helps us remember these things, but we also pray because we have a God who is overwhelmingly loving and attentive—He responds when we pray because He loves us. On top of that, we know that God loves people, so when we pray evangelistically we're doubly invoking His love, once because He loves us enough to respond to us and again because He already loves the people we're praying for. If we need God's help in evangelism (see #1) and if He responds when we pray, then our proper conclusion is that we must pray when we evangelize.

3. We pray when we evangelize because it’s the pattern of the Bible.

This priority of prayer for evangelism is confirmed repeatedly in the New Testament. For example, in Acts 4:23-31, the early church prayed for continued boldness as they preached good news in face of great opposition (listen to Todd's recent sermon about this here). Similarly, in Ephesians 6:18-20, Paul asks his readers to pray for words to be given to him so that he might boldly proclaim hope in Jesus to non-Jewish people throughout the world. And then in Colossian 4:3-4, Paul asks for his readers to pray that God might open doors for them to preach the word and also to pray that he might be able to offer this hope in Christ clearly. These are the kinds of prayers the early church prayed, and these are the kinds of prayers that we should pray too—because they’re the kinds of prayers that will empower us to see the transformation all around us that we so long for.

So who are you praying for?

Who are the people in your life that are farther from Jesus than you’d like? Are you praying for them? Are you praying for opportunities to share hope with them? Are you praying for boldness and courage and clarity? Let us know who you're praying for—we'd be honored to pray with you.