‘Evangelism’ illustration using these ½ dozen free-range eggs.

A friend of mine keeps chickens and a few cockerels. They’re allowed to roam free and so some of these free-range eggs, maybe all of them, will be fertile – if the cockerel has cock-a-doodled with the hen, that is! How can we know which ones are fertile and which ones aren’t? We can’t. We just have to let the hen sit on them and see what happens! It’s the same with personal evangelism: we can’t know who will respond and who won’t, so we reach out, invite everyone and trust the Lord to see what happens.

By the way, did you know that a breeding hen lays one egg a day but she doesn’t actually sit on them until she has her full clutch, maybe 14 or so. Then she gets broody and sits on the eggs to incubate them. That means some of the eggs (in egg years) are quite old before they are actually incubated and brought to life. It’s the same with some people: the gospel seed is sown but sometimes it takes many years before they finally come to faith… Don’t ever give up on those God has laid on your heart.

R. Ian Seymour

R. Ian Seymour, Empowered Personal Evangelism, Weybridge: New Wine Press (2014), p.153