Nkiruka was in her final year of microbiology when her campus fellowship announced its harvest target for the semester. Every member was to bring at least three people to Christ before the exams. There was a chart on the wall of the fellowship hall with names and columns, and the coordinator read out the totals at the Friday meeting. Nkiruka was the prayer secretary. Her column was empty.
Her roommate, Fiyin, had grown up in church in Ibadan and drifted away from it in secondary school. Her mother had died the previous year after a long illness, and Fiyin had come back to campus quieter than before. Her allowance had become irregular, and for most of that semester Nkiruka had been quietly buying her food: rice and stew from the buka behind the hostel, sachets of water, sometimes a plate of beans when the money ran low for both of them.
So Nkiruka began. She left tracts on Fiyin’s pillow. She played sermons from her phone while they were getting ready for lectures. She told her, more than once, that it was dangerous to delay, and one evening, in a sentence she would regret for years, she said that perhaps God had allowed her mother’s death to get her attention. When Fiyin went silent, Nkiruka took it as conviction. When Fiyin asked her to lower the volume, she prayed louder.
One night, a little after one o’clock, with a test at eight the next morning, Fiyin sat up in bed and said, “Fine. I will pray the prayer. Lead me.” Nkiruka led her through it, word for word, in the dark. On Friday her column had a name in it.
The next morning Fiyin was sitting on the edge of her bed with her shoes in her hand. She did not look at Nkiruka when she spoke. “I said that prayer so you would let me sleep,” she said. “You have been feeding me for two months. I did not know how to say no to you. Please, Nkiruka, do not do that to me again.”
Nkiruka told me that she stood in front of the fellowship chart that afternoon for a long time. She had a name in her column and a roommate who now avoided her. Something had gone badly wrong.
This teaching is for every believer who wants to share Christ and has felt the pull towards pressure, cleverness or threat. The gospel deserves to be heard, and the person in front of you deserves to hear it freely.
Agreement is not the same as hearing
What Nkiruka received that night was agreement. What she wanted was faith. They can sound identical at one o’clock in the morning, but they come from different places.
Agreement can be produced by many things: tiredness, embarrassment, a sense of obligation to someone who has been kind to you, fear of what might happen if you keep refusing. A crowd can produce it. A clever argument can produce it too, the kind of agreement that says, “I cannot answer you right now, so I will stop arguing.”
Faith is different. Paul writes that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Faith is a response to something that has actually been heard and understood. It is the soul’s trust in Jesus Christ, awakened when the truth about Him reaches the heart. That is why pressure is so dangerous in evangelism. It can give us the words of a decision while the message itself remains unheard. Fiyin said the prayer. She had not yet heard the gospel. She had heard her roommate’s anxiety, her fellowship’s target and her own exhaustion.
Pressure often closes the very door it seems to open. A person pushed into a decision usually feels used afterwards, and the next time Christ is mentioned, he braces himself. Many adults carry memories like this: a meeting where nobody could leave until they came forward, a hospital visitor who took advantage of their weakness. Some have concluded that the gospel itself is a kind of trap.
PunchlinePressure can produce agreement. Only the light of God produces faith, and that light shines through truth that is clearly told and freely received.
So the way we share the gospel matters. Paul thought so, and he set boundaries for himself that he refused to cross.
Paul’s refusal of craftiness
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul was defending his ministry against critics who thought him unimpressive. Other teachers had arrived in Corinth with polished speech and strong personalities, and they made Paul look weak by comparison. He does not answer by competing with them. He describes the kind of ministry he has chosen:
Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Look at where Paul begins. “As we have received mercy, we faint not.” His ministry arose from mercy. He had once been a persecutor, dragging believers to prison, and Christ had met him on the road and forgiven him. A man who knows he has been shown mercy will not find it easy to bully others into the kingdom. He remembers how he himself was brought in.
Then Paul lists what he has renounced. “The hidden things of dishonesty” are the methods a person would be ashamed to have exposed. If you would not want the person you are speaking with to see your strategy written down, it is probably one of those hidden things. “Not walking in craftiness.” The Greek word is panourgia, which describes a person ready to do anything to get a result. “Nor handling the word of God deceitfully.” The word was used for adulterating something, like a trader who waters down the wine. Paul refused to change the message to make it easier to sell, and he refused to use dishonest means to get it accepted.
What did he do instead? “By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” He set the truth out in plain view and addressed it to the conscience. The conscience is the place where a person knows, before God, what is right. Paul wanted to reach that place honestly. He did not want to go around it through fear, flattery or fatigue.
Then comes the explanation of why some do not believe: “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” This verse is sobering, and it is also freeing. The barrier between a person and faith is deeper than our powers of persuasion. No amount of volume cures spiritual blindness. Something has to happen that only God can do.
And Paul tells us what that is. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts.” He reaches back to Genesis, when the world was dark and God said, “Let there be light.” Conversion is a work of the same Creator. The light shines “in the face of Jesus Christ.” Our task is to hold up that face. God gives the light.
Notice, too, that Paul calls himself and his companions “your servants for Jesus’ sake.” The evangelist serves the people he speaks to. When the conversation becomes about my target, my success, my need to win, I have started preaching myself.
Explanation that respects the hearer
If we renounce pressure, what do we do instead? We explain. Look at how Luke describes Paul’s work in Thessalonica:
And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.
“Reasoned with them out of the scriptures.” Paul spent three weeks in conversation and discussion. Then Luke uses two telling words. Opening means unfolding something that was closed, the way you would open a document to let someone read it. Alleging translates a word meaning to set beside, to lay out the evidence for examination. Paul opened the Scriptures and laid the evidence beside them: the Christ had to suffer and rise again, and this Jesus is that Christ.
That is respectful work. It treats the listener’s mind as worth engaging. It takes time. And it leaves the response with the hearer: “some of them believed.” Others became violently opposed. Nobody could say that Paul had tricked them.
Clear explanation means telling people what the gospel actually says. Many believers can describe their church or their testimony and still struggle to explain the message itself. The gospel is news about Jesus Christ: that God’s Son became man, lived without sin, died for our sins on the cross and rose bodily from the dead, and that whoever trusts in Him is forgiven and made right with God as a free gift. Paul puts the heart of it into one sentence: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). If you can explain that verse simply to a friend, you can share the gospel.
It also means explaining our church language. “Are you washed in the blood?” is precious to you. To a colleague who has never read the Bible, it may sound frightening. Keep speaking of the blood of Christ, and explain what His death accomplished, so that the phrase carries its meaning.
And explanation requires listening. James tells us, “let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19). Proverbs is blunter: “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Proverbs 18:13). Before you explain the gospel to someone, find out what they already believe, what they have been told, what they fear and what has hurt them. Fiyin had heard sermons all her childhood. What she had never been asked was what her mother’s death had done to her picture of God. Nkiruka was answering questions Fiyin had not asked and ignoring the one that was breaking her heart.
Questions deserve answers, not humiliation
Peter wrote to believers who were being spoken against by their neighbours, and he told them how to respond when people asked about their faith: “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).
Two things in that sentence are worth holding together. Peter expects believers to be ready. The word answer is apologia, a reasoned explanation. Christians should think about the questions people actually ask. Why does God allow suffering? How can Jesus be the only way? Can the Bible be trusted? What about people who have never heard? These are serious questions, and many people who ask them are sincere. A believer who brushes them aside with “Just believe” has not respected the person or the question.
But Peter also insists on the manner: “with meekness and fear.” Meekness is strength under control. Fear here is reverence, the awareness that God is present in the conversation and that the person asking is precious to Him. You can give a strong answer meekly. You cannot give a Christlike answer contemptuously.
Here is where many of us fail. Some believers love argument for its own sake, and they know they have won when the other person falls silent or walks away flustered. Social media has made this worse. A believer posts a clever reply that makes a sceptic look foolish, and two hundred people like it. Winning that kind of contest usually loses the person.
It is perfectly acceptable to say, “That is a good question. I need to think about it, and I will come back to you.” That sentence has opened more doors than many confident speeches. It shows that you take the other person seriously and that your faith does not depend on having every answer immediately.
Humiliation has no place in this, including humiliation of other faiths. If your Muslim colleague asks you about the Trinity, he deserves a careful, gentle explanation and no mocking remark about his own beliefs. If your uncle asks why you will not take part in a family rite, he deserves an honest and respectful reason. You may disagree profoundly with what someone believes. Never ridicule them for it, or misrepresent their beliefs to make your own look stronger. People can tell the difference between being disagreed with and being despised.
The Lord’s servant must not strive
Paul’s second letter to Timothy was written near the end of his life. Timothy was leading the church in Ephesus, where false teachers were stirring up controversy. Just before our passage, Paul warns him, “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes” (2 Timothy 2:23). Then he describes what the Lord’s servant should be like:
And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men , apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
“The servant of the Lord must not strive.” The word means to fight, to quarrel, like a brawler. The same letter tells Timothy to preach the word and hold fast to sound doctrine, so Paul is hardly asking for silence. He is telling him never to turn the truth into a fight.
Then he lists what the Lord’s servant must be instead. “Gentle unto all men,” including the disagreeable. “Apt to teach,” which means skilled and willing to explain. “Patient,” a word that literally means bearing evil without resentment. It describes someone who can be wronged, mocked or misunderstood without retaliating. “In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.” Even when people actively oppose the message, the servant of the Lord instructs them gently.
Why? “If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” Repentance is God’s gift, and no force of argument can extract it. We can explain, plead and pray. The change of heart comes from God, and that frees us from the pressure to make it happen ourselves.
The last verse adds something that changes how we see the person who opposes us: “that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.” The phrase recover themselves translates a word meaning to return to soberness, like a man coming round after being drugged. Paul does not describe the opponent as the enemy. He describes him as a captive. The enemy is the one who set the snare. The person in front of you is someone who needs to be set free.
NuggetThat changes the tone of every conversation. You do not shout at a prisoner for being in prison. You speak to him with patience, because you want him to come home.
No fear tactics and no hooks
Writing to the Thessalonians about his first visit to their city, Paul describes his own conduct, and the first thing he mentions is the purity of his methods:
For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.
Three things he refused. “Not of deceit.” His message was true. “Nor of uncleanness.” His motives were pure, with no hidden agenda. “Nor in guile.” The word was originally used for bait, the thing a fisherman hides his hook inside. Paul did not dangle something attractive to catch people for another purpose. He spoke before “God, which trieth our hearts.”
This rules out two common forms of manipulation.
The first is fear tactics. Some believers use people’s sorrows as a lever. A man loses his job, and someone tells him it happened because he has not given his life to Christ. A woman miscarries, and a visitor suggests God is punishing her. Nkiruka’s sentence about Fiyin’s mother belonged here, and Fiyin heard it as cruelty, because it was.
Yet Scripture does speak about judgement, and we should not hide it. Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God “now commandeth all men every where to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:30-31). Jude speaks of believers saving others “with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 1:23). There is real urgency in the gospel, and a real danger from which Christ rescues. But there is a difference between telling someone the truth about judgement and using their pain to frighten them into a decision. Honest warning informs the conscience. Fear tactics try to bypass it. Paul announced judgement through the resurrection of Christ. He did not interpret a mourner’s bereavement as a divine threat.
The second is the exploitation of dependence. This is subtler, and it often comes from people who genuinely want to help. A believer pays a neighbour’s hospital bill and then expects her at church. A relative supports a nephew’s school fees and lets him know that the support depends on his conversion. Every time help comes with a spiritual hook, it compromises the gospel and cheapens the response.
Help should be given freely, as Christ gave Himself freely. If you buy your roommate food, buy it because she is hungry. Never let her feel that it is a down payment on her conversion. She must be free to receive your kindness and still say no to your faith.
Condemnation is not the gospel’s first word
Jesus said, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). That verse follows the most famous verse in the Bible, and it is almost as important. The Son came on a rescue mission.
Matthew gives us a portrait of the way Jesus carried out that mission. The Pharisees had begun plotting to destroy Him. He withdrew, and great crowds followed Him, and He healed them all and told them not to make Him known. Matthew says this fulfilled a prophecy from Isaiah:
Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.
Punchline“He shall not strive, nor cry.” Jesus preached openly and often, so this is no picture of silence. It describes a Messiah who did not need to shout down His opponents to establish His authority.
“A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.” A cracked reed was usually thrown away. Smoking flax was a lamp wick that had almost gone out, and most people would pinch it and replace it. Jesus takes the cracked reed and the smouldering wick and handles them with care.
Many people we speak to are bruised reeds, hurt by life, by family, sometimes by churches. Some have a faint flicker of interest in God that harshness could easily snuff out. We have no right to be rougher than the Saviour we represent.
The disciples had to learn this. When a Samaritan village refused Jesus, James and John asked whether they should call down fire from heaven. Jesus “turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of” (Luke 9:55). Then, Luke adds simply, they went to another village.
None of this means we pretend sin is unreal. A gospel without sin would make the cross unnecessary. Yet telling someone the truth about sin is a different act from standing over them as their judge. When we explain sin, we speak as forgiven sinners. Paul calls himself the chief of sinners. Could the person you are speaking with tell that you see yourself in the same need of mercy? Paul wrote that it is “the goodness of God” that “leadeth thee to repentance” (Romans 2:4). Kindness opens hearts that condemnation hardens.
Freedom to walk away
There is a moment in John’s Gospel that every evangelist should study. Jesus had given a hard teaching about Himself as the bread of life, and many disciples found it too much. “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:66). Jesus did not run after them with a softer version. He did not threaten them. He turned to the twelve and asked, “Will ye also go away?” (John 6:67).
He let people leave. That is one of the clearest signs that His invitation was real. An invitation that cannot be refused is not an invitation at all. Peter’s answer shows what freely chosen faith sounds like: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
Paul learned the same freedom. Near the end of Acts, he stood in chains before King Agrippa and the Roman governor Festus. He told his story, explained the gospel and spoke of the resurrection. Festus interrupted, calling him mad. Paul replied courteously and turned to the king:
King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.
Paul pressed his point. “Believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest.” He was not timid. But when Agrippa deflected, Paul did not corner him. He turned his longing into a prayer: “I would to God.” And then, with a gentle touch of humour, a man in chains added, “except these bonds.” He would not wish his suffering even on a king who held power over him.
As far as we know, Agrippa did not believe that day. Paul left the outcome with God. That is the freedom we need: to speak clearly and earnestly, and then to let the person go. “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Some of us plant seeds that someone else will see grow. Every honest conversation counts, even when nobody signs anything.
Nkiruka did not speak to Fiyin about God again that semester. She told me that was the hardest thing she had ever done. She apologised once, briefly, for what she had said about Fiyin’s mother, and Fiyin nodded and said nothing. They finished the year as polite strangers.
But Nkiruka kept buying the rice and stew. She stopped playing the sermons. She asked Fiyin about her mother sometimes, and listened. When the fellowship chart came up at the Friday meeting, she asked the coordinator to take Fiyin’s name out of her column. He was puzzled. She said, “I do not think it belongs to me.”
Two years later, during her service year in Kaduna, Nkiruka’s phone rang late one evening. It was Fiyin. “I need to ask you something,” she said. “Will you just answer me? Do not preach. Just answer.” Her question was the one that had been sitting underneath everything: “If God is good, why did He let my mother suffer like that?”
Nkiruka said she prayed silently and then said, “I do not know all of it, Fiyin. I am so sorry about what I said in the hostel. It was wrong, and it was not true. Can I tell you what I do know?” She told her about a God who entered suffering Himself, who wept at a friend’s grave and then went to a cross. She told her what Jesus’ death and resurrection meant. And then she stopped talking and let Fiyin ask the next question.
The conversations went on for months. Fiyin read the Gospel of Mark, slowly, with a pencil. She argued. She went silent for weeks at a time. Nkiruka did not chase her. One Sunday morning, a little before Easter, Fiyin sent a text message: “I believe now. And this time I am not saying it so that I can sleep.”
Nkiruka keeps that message. She told me it taught her what she had missed in the hostel. The gospel had been sufficient all along. What it needed was a messenger who would get out of its way.
Tell people about Jesus. Tell them clearly, and listen to them carefully. Answer their questions without belittling them. Be kind with no hook in your kindness. And when they walk away, let them go with your blessing and keep praying, because the light that shines in hearts is God’s to give.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you ever been pressured into a spiritual decision, or pressured someone else? What did that experience teach you?
- Which of Paul’s renounced methods, dishonesty, craftiness or distorting the message, are you most tempted towards?
- How clearly could you explain the gospel to a friend using 2 Corinthians 5:21, without church jargon?
- Is there someone who depends on you for help? How can you make sure your kindness carries no spiritual hook?
- Who in your life is a “bruised reed”? What would gentleness towards them look like this week?
This Week
Choose one person you would like to share Christ with. This week, instead of planning what to say, plan what to ask. Have a conversation in which you ask about their life and their beliefs, and listen without correcting. Afterwards, write down what you learned about their real questions and pray over it. Then, separately, write out a simple explanation of the gospel in five or six sentences, and practise saying it without church jargon until it sounds like you.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You did not strive or cry in the streets, and You never broke a bruised reed. Forgive me where I have pressed people, argued to win, or used their pain or their need of me to push them towards a decision. Teach me to explain the gospel clearly, to listen patiently and to answer questions with meekness and reverence. Keep my kindness free of hooks. Give me the courage to speak and the freedom to let people walk away. Shine Your light in the hearts of those I love, because I cannot do it and You can. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.