I have always been a chameleon when it comes to evangelism and taking a visible stand for Jesus Christ in my daily life. I put this down to hating rejection. When I first started primary school I was a rank outsider with the group of children in my cohort. They had all attended play group together and I hadn't so I was the outsider. It was three years of absolute hell and I had the lifelong emotional scars to prove it.
My father died about eighteen months after I started school and that began a roller coaster ride of change in my life culminating in my attending boarding school for two years. The worst time of my life being separated from my family but the single best thing that ever happened to me from both an educational and Christian perspective.
In any case, as a result of experiences from that part of my life I have always tended to keep a low profile in social situations, stay out of activities where I can be compared to others and avoid groups of popular people like the plague. My mantra is that I have to have peace. The funny thing is that I have always thought that this resulted in my being poor witness.
In reality, I didn't realise and I have been completely oblivious to the fact that the Holy Spirit is always with me. That He is also very visible to others around me. No, they can't see Him but they speak of the calm and peace that I bring to the work space. If you know me well you know that I am far from peaceful. I often don't trust God as I should and so I am nervous, irritable and often agitated as a result. The opposite of peaceful actually. So, it is not I but Christ in me that these people are experiencing and He reaches them despite my best efforts to sabotage His will.
Someone, once said "The end of a mans life will be far different than on the day he came to know Jesus Christ." In other words when Christ Jesus comes into your heart and the Holy Spirit writes the Law on it and puts it into your mind. When the Holy Spirit sanctifies you through the course of your life and accompaines you through the journey that is your life. He will bring about a change that will make you unrecognisable to yourself and others as he conforms you to the image of Jesus Christ. This change is inevitable and inexorable. It cannot be stopped and it must occur if the only begotten Son of God is to present you blameless before the Father.
As, our Lord and Christ once said himself 'If I didn't proclaim that I am the Christ then these rocks would shout it out to all the World.' So when we believers accept Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit speaks through us even if we believe ourselves to be meek and quiet. Through our gentlest actions and words the Saviour enlists us to reach out to the poor and the lost. I would say that we can't help ourselves, regardless of how ineffective we believe ourselves to be, but I believe that the Holy Spirit commands our ship and uses us to far greater effect than we wil ever know in this life.
Finally, I would simply say that we need to consider the life of the serious minded Christian. We need to pray that the Spirit keeps our eyes on the goal of righteousness and that he leads us to place ourselves at His disposal as a vessel of the Almighty God. Walking in all humility and meekness but standing upright for the cause of goodness and mercey in the name of Jesus Christ
