How to Give Away Your Faith

Paul E. Little

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780830834211
• eBook ISBN: 9780830898374
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

"So you want to witness! I did too, but I didn't have a clue about how to do it without stubbing my toe in the process." So begins the book that has helped more than a million people give their faith to others. Paul Little's humor and down-to-earth approach help show how friendly and natural evangelism can really be. "Impossible!" you may say. "I just don't know what I'd tell people. What if I can't answer their questions? What if they think I'm just strange?" Paul Little has faced these sames fears and found effective and bibilcal ways to overcome them.

Thoroughly revised by Marie Little and featuring a study guide for individuals or groups, How to Give Away Your Faith is as current as it is classic. Now more than ever, here is the book to excite you about giving away your faith.

1

The Essential Foundation

So you want to witness! I did too, but I didn’t have a clue how to do it without stubbing my toe in the process.

How about you? Do you know how to make the good news relevant? Do you know how to communicate to people to whom the gospel seems alien? How do you talk about Jesus Christ to . . .

• the religion major who mocks your defense of biblical teachings with, “But this is the twentieth century, John!”?
• the hard-working manager of the local service station?
• that office worker who’s just been replaced by a thinking machine?
• the junior who’s ready to drop out of school because of drug abuse?
• the “who cares” party boy across the hall?
• that girl you know who’s gotten everything she’s ever wanted?
• those nearest to you: your family, your friends, your next-door neighbors?
• the man on the street who would be one of the 150 million casualties during the first eighteen hours of a nuclear war?
• the trapped housewife struggling to keep up with small children, the Joneses and a dozen civic demands?
• the victim of divorce or abuse who can’t trust anyone?
• the doctor who has fertilized a human egg in a test tube and successfully transplanted it in a surrogate mother?
• the upwardly mobile professional next to you in the office?

It’s easy to quote “God so loved the world . . . ,” but what do the words mean? What can you say that will make sense to these people in their everyday lives?

REALISM IS ESSENTIAL

To begin with, we must be realistic about the world we live in. Times are changing faster than ever before in history. Although Jesus Christ remains the same yesterday, today and forever, these changes significantly color the attitudes and receptivity of those to whom we witness.

My generation grew up playing cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, paper dolls and store. Today’s children live their lives with a ceaseless background of TV while playing out elaborate fantasies with “supernaturals,” ghosts and transformers. As they get older, children are becoming all but submerged in an ocean of video games and electronic music.

Today’s adults have their own sets of electronic toys; each year new ones arrive, outdating last year’s. In addition, the information explosion has turned the entire world into a single “global village” and given everyone a front seat at major events around the world. As a result people are exposed to a cafeteria of cultures and mores; all they have to do is choose what to believe. Along with this, the ever-present media spew out images of a future of genetic mapping, brain-code exploration and “green machines” to produce food from sunlight and air alone. Far and away the most universal change in recent years has been the computerization and miniaturization of every area of life.

But while we have made quantum leaps in our hopes to mold and conquer the universe, the future of civilization seems less and less certain. Is it inevitable that nuclear war will wipe out the whole human race? Will environmental damage threaten the future habitability of the earth? Or will the spread of AIDS bring slow, painful death even if we conquer other threats? And what is the future of the disintegrating American family?

All this reminds us of the little boy’s statement, “If I live to be a man, I’ll . . .” Inherent in his statement is the crucial question, Will we all survive and will America make it? Until recently, the trend has been to turn to the gee-whiz wonders of science and technology. High tech is everywhere we look—in the factory, office and home. Its plastic, miracle-working boxes have seduced us into thinking that technology can solve everything. But the truth is, it fails in the most crucial aspect, our need for personal concern and touch. We cannot live by technology alone! Nor can our obsessive consumerism bring hoped-for solace. As a film star once observed, “How many toasters can one person use?”

Now an alarming number of people are looking for honest answers in the new self-help or human potential movements. On close inspection, these are far from innocent twenty-four-hour cures. They promise personal effectiveness and motivational training through Eastern-influenced “mind control” techniques that on the surface appear harmless. Underneath, their values are alien to Christianity. In their groups they spin tales about past lives by using trance channelers, mantras and divining crystals while their Hindu and occultist roots go undetected. Along with this they foster moral anarchy, each person seeking his own truth, blithely bypassing God’s revealed truth. Philosophically, their base is monism; we are all gods, humanity is god and all religions are one. The fact that the movement has attracted so many followers reveals a yawning vacuum in the lives of people who are reaching and searching for a possible source of salvation.

Salvation? From what? Loneliness and isolation is the answer we hear from young people. In the sixties, young people began their search with demonstrations and revolutions. They hoped to find meaning in doing their own thing. In the seventies, a spent generation turned into the narcissistic “me” generation. And that spawned the generation of the eighties which seems to be content, by and large, with a materialistic, value-free society.

Listen to a description of the university world of this decade:

Almost every student entering university believes or says he believes that truth is relative. They fear not error, but intolerance. They ask, “What right do I or anyone else have to say one (culture or religion) is better than another?” . . . Spiritual entropy or an evaporation of the soul’s boiling blood is taking place. . . . Respect for the sacred, real religion and knowledge of the Bible have diminished to the vanishing point.1

This comes not from an evangelical preacher but from University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom.

This spiritual entropy, as Bloom puts it, has penetrated every level of our society. For instance, American high school students have all but stated that for them, celebrity counts for everything. A 1987 World Almanac poll listed their ten heroes. In order of preference the winners were Bill Cosby, Sylvester Stallone, Eddie Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Don Johnson.2 With the exception of President Ronald Reagan, they are all entertainers or actors. For the high schoolers, the conclusion is unmistakable: if you are not famous (or not in show business), you are nothing. And the implication is that they also admire and would like to imitate their lifestyles.

Adults are not immune to this spiritual entropy either. Time magazine’s cover story of May 25, 1987, tells of more than a hundred government officials who have ethical or legal charges against them. Time also named Wall Street pinstriped millionaires who are under indictment for illegally manipulating millions of dollars to their own benefit. Besides that, Time describes an appalling list of marines, televangelists and presidential candidates indicted or dethroned because of illicit relationships. The writers of Time (not the preachers) headline their story with “Whatever happened to ethics?”

Students, Ph.D.’s, blue-collar and white-collar workers, parents, doctors, statesmen, your neighbors and mine are all mired in the same bog of shifting values.

Today’s adults

• are hard-working.
• are struggling for financial security.
• can be generous and helpful to neighbors.
• make pleasure and leisure priorities.
• are committed to causes that generally line up with their self-interests.
• hate to be patronized.
• can easily detect a hidden agenda in relationships.
• will resist high pressure from any group.
• if single, may flock to bars for human contact and solace.

Religiously, these adults

• see science as more reliable than religion.
• consider Christianity’s claim to uniqueness to be bigoted in the extreme.
• find their moral certainty has either shifted downward or vanished entirely.
• believe psychology probably has as many answers as religion.
• view God as a stern judge or a benign, distant grandfather.
• believe God is probably irrelevant to their existence.
• rarely see the Bible as a source of help.
• vaguely wonder if there isn’t some truth to the new cults.
• see Christians as judgmental killjoys.
• will quickly point to the hypocrisy of so-called people of God on TV who bilk money from supporters.

These same adults

• if graduating from college, fear that they won’t find a job.
• worry about the risks of marital commitments.
• doubt that their family relationships will ever be stable and satisfying.
• are tempted to abandon traditional values.
• face relentless competition for success.
• fear that they will be part of the grim statistics of people pushed out of their jobs after age forty.
• wonder if they will lose their looks and be rejected.
• worry that old age will find them alone and disabled.

This picture, although not comprehensive, is not pretty. It describes, nonetheless, the kind of soil in which we sow the truth of Jesus Christ. These trends and pressures affect Christians as well as those who have not yet trusted Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I have not intended to imply by this picture that Christians are a holy breed free from any flaws. Far from it! We, too, can be caught up by the same pressures and cultural drifts.

CHRISTIANITY IS REALISTIC

We Christians cannot live with our heads in a bucket and ignore the truth of this picture. It should be no surprise to us when we hear stories of abuse and violence happening in our own neighborhoods. More important, we must be convinced beyond all doubt that the Christian faith has a message for all facets of this world, that its truth has transformed our lives and that it is of supreme value for everyone.

Any temptation to avoid understanding our world is comparable to the philosophies claiming all reality (including sin) is in the mind. The Christian faith is not so spiritual and otherworldly that it denies this world’s reality or the existence of matter. The Christian faith affirms material things; yet it sees beyond them to spiritual things, the ultimate reality.

Jesus Christ dealt with the crux of this reality question when he fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. Jesus saw th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword by James F. Nyquist
• Foreword by Leighton Ford
• Preface
• 1 The Essential Foundation
• 2 The Effective Ambassador
• 3 How to Witness
• 4 Hurdling Social Barriers
• 5 What Is Our Message?
• 6 Why We Believe
• 7 Christ Is Relevant Today
• 8 Worldliness: External or Internal?
• 9 Living by Faith
• 10 Feeding the Spring
• Notes
• Praise for How to Give Away Your Faith
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright