Maybe you have shared your faith with someone, or many, who have appeared politely disinterested. Maybe someone even hurt your feelings after you prayerfully shared your testimony with them. We can eagerly and joyfully testify about our faith in Christ and be shot down by an unbeliever. It’s okay to be shot down; it is not okay to be shut down.
Measure the success of your witness by whether or not God spoke through you to someone else. Your success is measured by your obedience to God, not the other person’s response. Paul encouraged the witness of the church in Corinth telling them, “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
We aren’t responsible for a person’s spiritual growth. Truthfully, we can’t be responsible because we can’t judge what only God can know. That is between the person and God. We can judge whether or not we are faithfully telling others the gospel message. Our success, our accountability to God, is measured by how we step up to join the Holy Spirit in his work.
Christians have always been shot down and always will be. We shouldn’t be surprised, or even disappointed, because Jesus told us to expect that. Remember in Matthew 17 when his disciples returned from their mission disappointed? Remember when the apostle Paul preached to the men of Athens and very few came to faith? Most there mocked his words. If the apostle Paul, the great theologian of the New Testament, was mocked, we should expect to be treated the same. Paul learned not to measure his message by who didn’t believe. He measured success by those who did come to faith and by those willing to share their faith with others.
Wisdom is joyfully sharing Christ with others. Wisdom is knowing that we will often only be there to scatter a few more seeds. God’s job is to “give the growth.” Heaven will be full of people we thought we had failed to convince. God knew better. We aren’t accountable to people who shoot us down. We are accountable to God if we allow those people to shut us down.
