How to Overcome Being a Chicken When it Comes to Sharing Your Faith

There I was sitting nervously with my knee shaking up and down, with my heart beating a thousand beats a minute, and with my sweaty palms bleeding water.

My mind was thinking about all the different outcomes that could result from what I was about to do.

I had walked into Denny’s planning on having a peaceful dinner so that I can go back to my church to serve in the Welcome Center.

At least that was the plan until I saw Ed sitting at a table not far from where I was eating my peaceful dinner.

Ed was the mail carrier that delivered mail to our church (where I also work).  He was well-known on our staff for being an extremely helpful and nice guy.

However, he didn’t believe in God and nor did he seem to care very much about the subject.

It was a few weeks before Easter and our church always hands out fliers to an outreach event that we have every year on Easter Sunday at the Home Depot Tennis Stadium in Dominguez Hills, CA.

It’s a great event where we have a Christian band play music, followed by an anointed message from our Pastor who preaches about sin and invites people to come to Christ.

It’s a major evangelistic event and there’s a heavy emphasis on people getting saved.

 The Problem: I Was Afraid

So half-way through my meal, I realized that Ed was sitting just a couple of tables away from me and all of a sudden, I had a heavy burden to give him one of the Easter fliers that I had with me.

If Ed came to Christ, then I would be privileged to have given him his ticket to heaven.

Sometimes we are so afraid to share Jesus with others

I was motivated but I was afraid.

As I was thinking about how to best approach Ed, I thought of all the possibilities of how things could go.

He could think I was a weirdo.

What if he tore up the flier right in front of me? I would feel pretty stupid.

I don’t even know what to say, what if I said something stupid that made him think that all Christian’s were dumber than a brick?

I don’t want to be the guy that keeps Ed away from coming to Christ, do I?

My thoughts were all negative, there wasn’t a single positive one.  The more I dwelled about it, the more that I began to feel anxious and even a little nauseous.

Man, I was such a chicken and I began to feel the condemnation of the enemy as I felt like the worst Christian in the universe.

 I Had a Great Idea, or So I Thought

I reached the conclusion that it was better to not face Ed and to find another way to give him the flier.

So if I wasn’t going to give Ed the flier, the least that I could do was to put it in the door of his car.

That way, he could see the flier and who knows, maybe the Holy Spirit would use it even though I was a Christian chicken paralyzed with fear.

So I paid for my dinner, took the flier that I had and I went over to his car.  Ed was sitting near a glass window and he was able to see his car through the window at Denny’s.

I went over to his car and tried to put the flier near the door handle of his car but it just wasn’t sticking.

I tried to put it near the rubber that held the windshield together but I wasn’t able to fit it in there either.

I kept on fiddling around with the flier, trying to get it to fit somewhere noticeable on his car when all of a sudden I heard a voice yell, “Hey!!! What are you doing with my car?!!!”

Oh man, it was Ed and from the sound of it, he thought I was breaking into his car!

I don’t know why I did this, but my first instinct was to run!  Yep, I ran and I got out of there.  Thank God he didn’t run after me.

 I Had to Make This Right

When I realized that he wasn’t running after me, I sat down on the sidewalk, out of breath, shaking my head at the terrible outcome of my evangelistic efforts.

How is it that I went from being a fearful Christian evangelist, to being chief suspect of a car theft that didn’t happen?

“Aww man, I am so stupid,” I said to myself.

Now I felt guilty and I was going to have to confess my sin to him.

I didn’t want him to think that I was trying to break into his car, especially because I was pretty sure that he recognized me and that he knew where I worked.

Talk about being a bad ambassador for Christ.

So I went back into Denny’s and I walked straight to Ed’s table.

Oh by the way, when Ed yelled outside in the parking lot when he thought I was breaking into his car, all the customers and the waiters and waitresses apparently looked outside the glass windows to see what was going on.

They recognized me as I walked back into Denny’s so all of their eyes were on me now.

I walked up to Ed and I saw him squint his eyes at me as I was approaching his table.

“Ed, I’m so sorry about what just happened.  You thought I was breaking into your car but all I was trying to do was to put this flier on your car.  Uhm…it’s an invitation to an Easter event that our church is putting on,” I said sheepishly as I handed him the flier.

“Oh,” Ed said, “I thought you were trying to break into my car.  It just got broken into twice in the last month.”

“No man, I wasn’t.  I’m soooo sorry about all of this.  Please forgive me.”

He was having dinner with a blonde woman who had turned her expression from anger to relief after she had just heard my confession.

“Ok, no problem.”

I walked out of Denny’s wishing that I could just disappear.

All of this happened about 4 years ago.

 Have You Ever Felt That Way?

Have you ever felt afraid to share your faith?

Have you every wanted to tell someone about Jesus but just when you thought about how you would do it, you were overwhelmed with the fear of being rejected?

The fear of rejection is the number one reason that Christians say is why they don’t share their faith.

We’re all afraid to share our faith because we like to be liked.  Most of us like it when people give us a pat on the back and we do care about what others think of us.

I too am still like that but I’ve also changed a lot.  Now, I share my faith regularly both online and in the streets with complete strangers.

Can you believe it?

I went from being a Christian chicken to being a disciple who is following the command of the Lord to go and create disciples.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t turned into to some super evangelist that’s fearless by any means.  No, not at all.

But I have taken steps of faith to overcome my fear of evangelism and they have been the biggest blessing from the Lord!

 7 Truths to Help You Overcome Your Fear of Rejection

As we start a new series about how to share your faith, here are 7 truths that will help you get started.

If you want to make sure that you don’t miss any of the evangelism blog posts, you can enter your email address and you’ll get a weekly blog post about how to share your faith and overcome your fears.

So here are the 7 truths:

1.  No one will show up in heaven thinking they shared Jesus too much.   Tweet

When you show up in heaven you’re never going to say, “Oh man, I told too many people about Jesus, I should have spent my time doing other things.”

In fact, just the opposite is true.  Many will show up in heaven thinking they shared Jesus too little.

2.  We are partners with Christ.

Mark 16:20 says, “And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.”

The Lord Himself is a partner with you and with all of His disciples.  Could you have anyone better to partner with when it comes to sharing your faith?

3.  God isn’t going to speak to you in a small still voice every time He wants you to share your faith because He has commanded it in the scriptures.

God has certain expectations of you as His disciple.

For example, God isn’t going to speak to you in a small still voice every time He wants you to love your neighbor.  He’s already commanded you to do that in Scriptures.

Likewise, if you are waiting for the small still voice of the Holy Spirit to speak to you every time God wants you to share your faith then you are missing the point.

4. Every soul is of infinite value to God.

Once we understand that, it will keep us on the edge of our seat and on the tips of our toes to share the Gospel with every lost soul that we meet.

How valuable is a soul to God? He’s willing to pay His Son’s life for it.  Tweet

5. The more you step out in faith and trust Him, the more amazing things you will see God do.

If you want to have the same experiences like in the book of Acts, then you’ll need to act like they did.  Tweet

They shared their faith boldly with everyone they met.  We should do the same if we want to follow in their footsteps.

6. It doesn’t matter if people don’t like us, it matters that we are living a life that’s pleasing to the Lord.

Sometimes we get so worried that if we stand up for Jesus, people are not going to like us.

Jesus was perfect, loved everyone perfectly, and still got nailed to a cross ! (source: Mark Cahill’s book)

Remember, the fear of man brings a snare (or trap) but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe (Proverbs 29:25).

7.  If you let your fear overcome your faith, it will lead to a life of regret.  

You know what it’s like to have wished you had done something that you didn’t do.  Evangelism and sharing your faith is one of those things that you’ll regret later when you don’t see your beloved family and friends in heaven.

Do Something About It

There’s a journey that God wants you to take.  It’s a journey of faith of sharing your faith with others.

You’re not alone, God is with you. And your brothers and sisters here at the Not Ashamed of the Gospel community are with you.

Let’s go on this journey together. Sign up to get the weekly evangelism post delivered to your email inbox.

You’ll get practical tips that show you how to overcome your fear, live a life without regret, and give you detailed instructions on how to share Jesus with the lost.