AHH!! Don't say that Word! ...Evangelism pt. 1

When many Christians here the word evangelize, many including my self say something along the lines of
"I need to do that more but I don't know how"
"I don't like talking about my faith with other people, they know that I am a christian. If they have questions they will ask" or
"How do I even start a conversation about faith?"
Before you and I get stressed over this whole issue of evangelizing lets check out what the actual definition is. According to dictionary.com evangelism is defined as "the practice of spreading the Christian gospel" or "the preaching or promulgation of the gospel; the work of an evangelist". Now those definitions might make you even more concerned since the thought might have cross your mind of "I am no Billy Graham"  ... to be honest neither am I. Yet as Christians we are called to evangelize to others..so how do we do that?
Well the early Church was kinda in the same boat. Jesus was no longer with them and the Holy Spirit had just entered them and Jesus told them to go and spread the gospel. I think they were probably asking the same questions and we can look to them to get the answers because boy did they ever spread it.

Going through the book of Acts and looking for examples of Evangelism I found something rather interesting. Acts 4:1-31 specifically 23-31. Peter and John had healed a man who was crippled in the Temple and then Peter started preaching there. The religious leaders arrested both Peter and John and the next day was brought before the council of rulers, elders, scribes, and the high priest and his family. (I would just like to make a note that these people were SCARY! you did NOT mess with them...just saying) Yet Peter speaks Boldy to them! This word in greek this is parrēsia which depicts Spirit-inspired courage and confidence to speak even amongst danger. This word is very important in Acts and is used agian later in the passage.
Once Peter and John are set free they come back to the believers to talk about what happened and something really cool happened. They all came together and prayed. For what? BOLDNESS! The believers all gathered together and asked for what Peter had so they too could be like him in sharing the gospel. What they said in there prayer was really neat too. They said that they would be willling to go through ANYTHING to have the BOLDNESS that Peter had in sharing the gospel.

I think the reason that I am scared to evangelize becuase I failed to ask for what all the believers in the early chruch had! Praying for Boldness something so simple yet so profound and powerful. It is something as us Christians in the day and age are in desparate need for!