1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (NIV)

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (NIV)
2 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

God’s Simple Message – Devotion

This might be one of the most encouraging passages to any of us who have tried to be a witness as a Christian. Sharing our faith is an important part of the Christian life. That is the way others come to know Jesus Christ. But how are we to communicate this good news? Speaking about Christ and the reality of God is easy when you are gathered with Christian friends because nobody objects to what you are saying. However, when you try to talk about these things with unbelievers (I like to call them pre-believers), people who are committed to taking care of themselves and being number one, you find it very difficult. You feel much personal weakness and fear and trembling. Often when God opens a door for a spiritual conversation, we’re unsure what to say and wonder if our message will be rejected. If the other person is a family member or coworker, we may worry that being forthright about our beliefs will strain the relationship.

I think that may be the way Paul felt about Corinth, and that should be an encouragement to us. The reason he felt this way is because what he was saying to them was not in line with what they wanted to hear. Paul felt fearful, weak, and ineffective. He felt his words were not outstanding; he felt he did not impress anybody by the approach that he took. Have you ever felt that way? I have, many times. I have sat down with somebody to share with them, and I felt as if I had two tongues and they were twisting around each other. I did not seem to have the right answers to things. I could only talk about how it affected me; I felt like I was doing nothing effective. Yet when I read about Paul, he pressed on. In the book of Acts we are told that after he had been in Corinth for a few months, Jesus appeared to him in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, and no one shall attack you to harm you” (Acts 18:9-10). Paul was afraid of being branded as a religious fanatic, but he faithfully began to talk about Jesus Christ.

As Paul fought this great sense of weakness, relying on God’s power of spirit, he told the facts and the story out of the simple passion of his heart. God’s spirit began to work and people started coming to Christ. Hundreds of the common, ordinary, plain people of Corinth began to become Christians. Soon there was a great spiritual awakening, and before the city of Corinth knew what had happened, a church had been planted. I believe that working through our human inadequacy is God’s continuous and perennial way of evangelism.

Does that encourage you? It does me. You may sit down with somebody over a cup of coffee and hardly know how to say it, but you stammer out some word about what Jesus Christ has meant to you, and the earnestness in your face and the love and compassion in your heart comes through in that simple way, and somebody is touched who would never have been reached by eloquent rhetoric. That is what Paul was talking about, the simplicity of the approach. He knew what he was doing because he was simply being honest with them.

That’s exactly how we should approach sharing our faith, by getting our mind off ourselves and trusting the Lord to use us in our fear and weakness. We should stop focusing on how we might be perceived or whether we’ll be rejected. Instead, remember that as we share the gospel, keep it simple, and God will lead us through.