Click here to check out our Fall Healing for the Nations Newsletter.

By Tom Shanklin

Back in the ’70s, I met a man working at a sawmill where I was employed in southeast Minnesota. He was not a pastor or a preacher, just an ordinary worker like me, but he loved the Lord. He would talk to me about his church, a small fellowship of “Spirit-filled” Christians. “How do you know they are Spirit-filled?” I would tease him. He was always asking me to come to his church. Meanwhile, he was living the Christian life before me and sharing stories about what God had done in his life.

One night, he invited me, my wife, and our baby daughter Heidi for dinner at his home. His wife prepared a good meal. They both were warm and friendly, and they shared about some of the things that God had done in their lives. Like many of us at that time, they had come out of the long-haired hippie drug culture, but their lives had been transformed by the power of God. Once again that night, they invited us to visit their church. An evangelist was in town, and we should come, they said. Now, since they had been so nice to us, we felt obligated.

At the meeting, all the Christians (mostly young 20-somethings like ourselves) were singing lively Scripture choruses, jumping and shouting and praising God. We saw that God was real in their lives. During that meeting, my friend who had invited me went forward for prayer. He had suffered from Rheumatic Fever as a child and as a result had a deformity in one of the valves in his heart. After receiving prayer, he began to shout at the top of his lungs, “Hallelujah!” Then he testified that God had touched his heart, and he knew that he was healed.

The next day after the meeting, he went to the doctor and it was confirmed that he had been healed of the problem. Coincidentally, it seemed, I was the first person to see him after he left the doctor’s office and to hear the report of his miraculous healing. The doctor said that the heart murmur which he had before was nearly gone and his blood pressure was normal, a huge change. Several weeks later, he was at the doctor’s office once again and was told that the heart murmur was completely gone. That experience had a tremendous impact on our lives.

During the meeting with the evangelist, something had told me, “This is what you’ve been looking for.” I had been searching for spiritual peace through drugs, transcendental meditation, and eastern mysticism, but suddenly I sensed that I had found something real. We didn’t give our lives to Jesus that night, but a seed had been planted in our hearts. From that day, we never missed church. Within several months, both Susan and I surrendered our lives to Jesus and were water baptized.

We didn’t look the best or even smell the best, but the people in that little church showed us kindness. The women in that church would come to visit my wife. They would teach her the Bible. “Let’s open to the book of Ephesians,” they would say. And she would thumb through the Bible searching for Ephesians. We didn’t know much about the Bible, but we recognized the love of God in the people. That is what lifestyle evangelism is all about!

If we want to be successful reaching people for Christ, this is what we need to do. Sometimes Christians are so wrapped up in their own lives that they don’t pay attention to the people around them or even those that visit the church. But, if we are really following Jesus, we should care for the people who come into our midst.

Worldwide, it is estimated that only one third of all born again Christians ever do anything about the Great Commission. The greatest potential for evangelism is not in the preachers, but in the people. This work of evangelism is done in the trenches, out where people live and work everyday. It’s lifestyle evangelism, people reaching out to the people around them.

Think about it for a moment. If every Christian in the world would just win one person to the Lord per year and teach them to be disciples, then every year the Church would double, and before long we would reach the whole world for Jesus.

The above is an excerpt from Tom’s new book, “You Can Touch the World.” Click here for details about how you can order your copy and learn more about how to reach the world for Jesus Christ.