"You can do it -- you can share the gospel. Even someone like me can share the gospel. You all can do an even better job than me."
In-Tae Kim, a member of L.A. Full Gospel Church, shared these words at the evangelism seminar that took place at Love Korean Church on the evening of September 25. He said evangelism is not something one does, but something one makes. Kim has shared the gospel to at least 500 people since he moved to Los Angeles in 2002. What is his secret?
"Pray a prayer of commitment right now, and commit to sharing the gospel to someone close to you. And do good unto them even to the extent that it forces you to sacrifice," said Kim. "Don't tell them to believe in Jesus right away, but approach them first by eating with them. However long it takes, God is harvesting, so we just need to wait."
Kim grew up in a Catholic family. Less than six months after marrying his wife, however, Kim began persecuting her, sometimes even hitting her and hurting her severely. He ripped pages of the Bible to smoke. But even on days that Kim would come home late after drinking, his wife would never cease to pray early in the morning. Perhaps due to his wife's prayers, Kim encountered the God who brought him out of the miry pit.
"One day I rejected my wife's desperate request to go to the prayer mountain together to go fishing instead. It was during the winter time. The ice underneath my feet suddenly broke, and I fell into the water. I desperately flailed my arms trying to live, but it was no use."
The more he would move and flail his body, the more the ice would break, he said. And it was at that moment, when the shadow of death loomed, that he met the Lord. Kim said that he felt in just a fraction of a second, he saw his life flash before his eyes, and he thought, "I'm going to die," and felt most apologetic towards his wife. He remembered the seven Bibles that he ripped up, and the countless moments when he persecuted those who believed in Jesus. And in the depths of his soul, he cried out, "Jesus! Please just save me. If you save me, I'll bring back all of those people who left you because of the way I treated them." And as soon as he prayed this prayer, he said he felt a hand pushing him up out of the water. It was strange -- no one was there.
After landing out of the water, he kneeled. How long it was, he doesn't remember, but he says he wept and wept as he prayed. This experience of God's grace completely changed his life. He became a passionate evangelist that cannot spend a day without sharing the gospel with someone.
"This place where you are standing is the place to share the gospel," Kim said to the audience at the seminar. "Pray a prayer of commitment before the Lord right now. If even someone like me -- I'm not very eloquent -- can share the gospel, so can you. Have confidence in yourself that you can share the gospel, and don't be discouraged if you don't see fruit today."
Love Korean Church is holding an evangelism festival from September 13 to November 8, during which the entire congregation is focusing their efforts in sharing the gospel.
