What is not evangelism Part II- The Results of evangelism

NOTE- Ideas and some quotes in this post have been taken from the book The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever.

One of the most common and dangerous mistakes that people make is to confuse results with evangelism itself. "Evangelism must not be confused with its fruit... According to the Bible, converting people is not in our power. And evangelism may not be defined in terms of results but only in terms of faithfulness to the message preached." John Stott said that to evangelize does not mean to win converts but simply to announce the good news, irrespective of the results." Did the apostle Paul judge whether or not he was preaching correctly based on the results and how people responded to his message?

Many many many churches these days confuse results with evangelism and so in turn become pragmatic results oriented businesses. Also a side effect is that individual christians who obey the great commission but do not see the immediate results are viewed as failures. Many have tried to make me look like a failure because of my lack of converts in street evangelism but good thing I know better and am not fooled by their misunderstandings. There are many examples in history of people coming to faith months or years after they heard a gospel message and Luke Short would be one such famous example. It is not us that wins people to the Lord but God who is the ultimate soul winner and grants the elect faith and repentance at his good timing. With this understanding all we can do is be faithful to be out witnessing and expect God to bring in the results. Perhaps you may be fortunate to see such results, or perhaps it won't be till heaven, no one really knows.