Today everyone is supposed to be fired up for something. You’re supposed to be fired up for the next game, or fired up to go and make that next sales call, or fired up to go and achieve your dreams. It’s about enthusiasm, drive and achievement. And you can even hire people who will help you get fired up.

Do you feel fired up about to share your faith? Do you have a fire in your heart, has the Holy Spirit set you on fire to go and share God’s love? If you’re like many Christians, sharing your faith is hard work, you don’t know what to say, you don’t feel like people want you to share the gospel with them. In fact, if you listen to the news, it seems people are trying to get rid of God’s Word. Was it the University of Wisconsin that recently removed all Bibles from a campus conference center? If people don’t want God’s word then if I share it, aren’t I just inviting trouble? So not only is the fire of enthusiasm within me doused, but it seems like I’m just starting fires if I do share it?

Well, this has all happened before; you’re not the first believer to face this. About 2,000 years ago three believers stood in front of a blazing, crackling furnace and were threatened with being burned alive if they didn’t worship a false god. There names wereShadrach, Meshach and Abednego and you can read their story in Daniel chapter three. These men show us that facing the furnace of evangelism isn’t about being clever or intelligent or powerful, it’s about faith. They knew it was better to trust in God's promise to deliever them from death and hell than to worry about what these flames would do to them.

Does the same promise of God resonate with you? 

To be a great evangelist means to understand God’s work better. The very first person that God converted in your life was you. You stand in this world as a miracle and a testimony of God’s power to change sinners into his children. Spend some time thinking of the miracle of faith that came to you. And when you do that you start to appreciate what God did. God sent a savior for a sinner like me. Jesus did all the work of living a perfect life so that he could buy me back from eternal death. Jesus died on the cross to pay for my sin. I come into God’s presence today only because Jesus brought me here.

How do we face the furnace of evangelism? How do we face the prospect of getting burned for sharing Jesus? The same way those three men did: with God’s promises in our heart. And those promises will give us a reason to share Jesus with others, no matter what.