The Lord will never fail to acknowledge when you are uncomfortable for His sake; a situation that is bound to happen in the life of one who faithfully shares the Gospel when they can.

But what should my goal be as an pologist?

Great question! And the answer is one that requires humility to the Lord.

Someone’s decision to follow Jesus is outside of our control, all we can do is introduce them to Jesus and pray for them.

Oftentimes, the fruit of our efforts on a person are unseen to us. It’s like an assembly line, with each person putting one piece on the car at a time. All I know is my job right now is to put an engine in, and I’m gonna do that to the best of my ability. Then, the car leaves and I don’t get to follow along with its progress every step of the way. I might not be there when someone else puts the wheels on, someone else builds the interior, someone else bolts on the doors. In the end, we’re left with a perfectly good car, but all I had to do was my job and trust that the rest of the car would get built by others.

Similarly with Apologetics, it’s not our job to argue with someone until we’re satisfied with their knowledge.

Another way to illustrate this is by showing an intellectual process in simple steps.

Going from an Atheist to a Christian can feel like a big leap for some people. But going from an Atheist to an Agnostic is a short matter altogether, one or two scientific and philosophical arguments can get that done; additionally no such person can be called unreasonable for believing or questioning there is a force outside of ourselves out there. An Agnostic to a Theist is an even smaller leap, it can even take one philosophical argument to show that this force outside of materialism is a personal one. A Theist to a Monotheist is the matter of showing that this force can only be one force (as opposed to Pantheism or Polytheism); there can only be one infinite being after all. A Monotheist to a Christian takes only the examination of Jesus Christ, and if a Monotheist looks at the evidence honestly, I don’t believe they will come out anything but a Christian.

Here we can see how we might play a role in someone’s life without having to take the entire mantle of converting them to Christianity. Maybe your role is to help them along from Atheism to Theism, or from Theism to Monotheism. And then when someone finally becomes a Christian, we don’t get to point at them and say “look what I did”. This is a team effort, most importantly that team contains God, who will do more for that person than we could ever hope to.

This gives us reason to be encouraged! Even those conversations that make us say “well, that went nowhere” can be used by God for this person’s benefit. We don’t need to see the finished car to trust that God is figuring the rest of the process out. Rather than feeling discouraged, anytime we faithfully share the Gospel, we get to acknowledge the honor of being used by Christ, and look with hope upon that person and situation. It’s also a huge relief to know that this persons eternity doesn’t rest on me remembering every argument there is for Christianity, it gives me the freedom to operate where the Lord has me, rather than try to do everything at once.