From this we can see that our "heart" is what makes us different from the animals. Moreover, the way God has designed us is that the soul resides in the body, and the heart within the soul. Or, putting it in computer terms, our bodies are the hardware, the soul is the software, and the heart is the ...... (artificial) intelligence???? (The fact that I am struggling for a complete analogy here shows me that a computer can never be 'human'!) So what makes us truly human is our wills, our hearts, our spirits. This is the 'image of God' stamped on us.

In reflecting on this, we can thus begin to understand more clearly what the Apostle Paul means when he exhorts us to "walk in the Spirit": I believe that what He is saying is that at the core of our beings, from our hearts, let us choose to make decisions which are in accord with the Spirit of God who comes to reside in us in a special way after we are born again (cf Revelation 3:20); let us walk in harmony with what He wants us to do. And if we do that, we can be sure that we won't do anything stupid, or destructive, or unwholesome. Wow!

Helping others to be born again

Now in the process of becoming born again as already described, the key element from a human perspective is what word from God shall we as Christians preach or communicate such that the listener will 'hear' and thus repent.

Whilst not diminishing the work of the Holy Spirit, of whom we are told that He will inspire us at the right times with the right words to say and the right actions to perform, and whilst also not diminishing the ability of the hearer to reject a word for them (as Jesus said "He who has ears to hear, let him hear"), we are able to examine the Scriptures to discern how the Holy Spirit acted on different occasions, thus discerning more effective from less effective ways of helping another person come to repentance.

Whilst the overall message to be preached is the good news that the Kingdom of God is here, and the kernel of the message to be communicated to all nations is repentance and forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus because Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead on the third day, this all, however, must be done in the context of how much the hearer already understands of the Gospel and what issues may be blocking that person from 'hearing' and thus believing the Gospel.

When we turn to the New Testament (NT) we can find a number of models of Gospel presentation, along with the 'results' of this preaching, to help us in our own day discern how to preach the Gospel. The following tables show us how the Gospel was preached pre- and post- Pentecost (being a succinct summary of the way Jesus and the apostles dealt with specific people groups):

These tables show us that Jesus and the apostles were lead by the Holy Spirit to preach according to how much the hearers already knew of the biblical meta-narrative, and to act in ways which would tangibly demonstrate the presence of the Kingdom. For example, note how in the above the Jews did not need it to be explained that the Messiah would be both Judge and Saviour, but that the Gentiles did need that aspect of the messianic mission explained. Furthermore, note that miracles were not done as 'show acts', but were rather demonstrations of compassion and responses to seeds of faith.

In the above we can also note the range of different responses depending on how much the hearers were truly God-fearing or not in their hearts, and that God seems to allow people time to change and grow in their outlook towards Him. This 'process of change' has been codified to some extent by James F. Engel:

Combining all the above information, it seems that a good way to communicate the 'appropriate word of God' is to first of all assume nothing and be prepared to start at the bottom. Secondly, we must realise that it is not just what we say that will lead a person to repentance, but also our actions and lifestyle (as we noted earlier, when Jesus came to earth he had a holistic ministry - not only teaching but also modelling and living congruently to what He proclaimed). This can be done through what are Four Basic Evangelistic Steps in the context of a Spirit-Soul-Body Dynamic.

Before outlining these basic steps on evangelism, we should remember that evangelism begins with a revelation of the nature and character of God. The fundamental evangelistic questions are:

And if we want to know what God is like, we look at the cross.

And if we want to understand the cross, we need to look at the Trinity.

With this in mind, let me present the essential four steps in leading someone to faith in Christ:

(Note that as an evangelist, one must be prepared in love to give cognitive reasons for each of the four steps and be able to address people's questions. This is what is called apologetics, and is addressed under 'Spirit-Soul-Body Dynamic' later.)

Step four will normally involve the hearer praying a prayer out loud similar to the following. In doing so they would be fulfilling Romans 10:9-13.

After this, it is appropriate to pray for the person, asking God to fill them with the Holy Spirit and to release His power within them.

Then it is appropriate to rejoice, because this person is being born again!!

Thereafter, there is no reason to withhold water baptism from them. A suggested baptismal formula is as follows: 'In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit I baptise you into the Lord Jesus, into His death, his burial, and his resurrection.' After this it is again appropriate to lay hands on them, asking God to fill them with the Holy Spirit, especially if the signs of speaking in tongues, or great rejoicing in God and praising Him, accompanied with the ability to call God 'Father' have not yet been evident (note that a person is not 'properly' born again until this spontaneous spiritual speech is evident).

However, there are many things that can block a person from responding positively to each of these four steps. That's why we now need to look at the what I call the Spirit-Soul-Body Dynamic in helping someone give their allegiance to Christ.

As outlined earlier, a completed human being comprises three essential elements: a spirit, a soul (consisting of mind, will, and emotions), and a body (having senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). The following diagram indicates how it is that God relates to us and we to God, and can be easily expanded to indicate how we communicate with each other as humans and how other forces in the spiritual realm can interface with us.

In the nature of how God created us, it is our wills that are at the centre of our beings and that ultimately must be brought to make a decision for Christ. In helping a person come to this decision, there are many players/factors, none of which should be underestimated or neglected:

For a truly comprehensive approach at seeing someone come to faith, it stands to reason that the whole of the person should be addressed in helping them come to a decision with their will, as the following diagram indicates:

These aspects we will now begin to explore.

In John 15:18 to 16:16 Jesus gives a good outline for us of the role of the Holy Spirit in helping people come to faith. In essence, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would continue to be a witness to the person, teaching, and work of Jesus in the world, and that the disciples also would be such witnesses (cf John 15:26-27).

However, the role and work of the Holy Spirit varies depending on which type of person He is addressing. To the oppressed and those enslaved under the burden of sin, the Holy Spirit first plays a revelatory role, to make Christ 'clear' and to show that Christ is the 'way out'. It is only when a person refuses to listen to this revelation, and "doesn't hear", and makes wrong judgments about the person and work of Christ, that the Holy Spirit takes on a convicting role, being an advocate for Jesus against those wrong judgements. This is the context we find in John 16:8-11, where the "world" which needs convicting by the Holy Spirit is the Jewish leadership which rejected Christ.

So we can clearly see that apart from our own preaching and giving testimony to the truth concerning Jesus, the Holy Spirit is also at work along side us, even before us. But whilst we cannot predict the working of the Spirit - it is like the blowing of the wind (sometimes it is dead calm and other times it blows hard!) - we can pray for God to act by His Spirit to help people be set free. But how should we pray in order to be co-workers with God's Spirit?

Apart from ignorance, people may not be believing the truth about Jesus and the Gospel because of three things:

a) rebellion, stemming from pride and unbelief
b) false beliefs and thought structures (cf 2 Corinthians 10:4,5)
c) Satanic blinding (cf 2 Corinthians 4:3,4)

Therefore, we can pray that:
a) the Holy Spirit will convict them of their rebellious attitudes, unbelief, and pride
b) the Holy Spirit will tear down the false beliefs and thought structures
c) Satan will be bound and stopped from blinding their minds, in Jesus' name.

We also need to pray, as the apostle Paul requested, that:
d) the Holy Spirit will open a door for us to preach the message (Colossians 4:3)
e) we also may preach it clearly (Colossians 4:4)
f) the Holy Spirit would give us the very words to preach on each occasion (Ephesians 6:19).

It is also quite amazing to notice the power and effect of actually praying with a person who is not yet a believer, if they will allow you to do such, praying for them and also asking God to bless them. Apart from the fact that they sense you really do care, it allows the person to actually enter into your own personal relationship with God, thus bringing them into contact with God in a second-hand but very real way. I have personally noticed on a number of occasions how blessed and different the other person feels after I have prayed, with them often remarking that they felt different whilst I was praying for them. Perhaps it also relates to the what Jesus said in John 6:63 " ... The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life".

Cognitive apologetics falls within the realm of a Christian reasoning the Word, focussing it on the mind and will of the unsaved person, whilst relying on the Holy Spirit to apply what is being said to their minds and binding demonic 'confusion tactics' etc. It corresponds to what Aristotle described as the logos factor in effective communication: what we say must make sense, there must be good reasons and sound arguments, and the organisation and language must be clear and understandable.

When it comes to talking or reasoning with people, it must be kept in mind that whether they are redeemed or not, by virtue of creation they are of value and have dignity and worth. Therefore at all stages we need to be affirming them. We need to beware of winning an argument but alienating the people! Successful apologetics occurs when a high relational dynamic is maintained, and we come with a desire to engage the person (over against 'Bible-bashing' or just having a one-way conversation) [see Experiential Apologetics below].

As mentioned earlier, we must be able to give reasonable answers to reasonable questions people may have at each of the four evangelistic steps noted earlier (at this point I would refer the reader to works by Josh McDowell, such as 'Evidence that demands a verdict', for some specific helpful detail). But when it comes to foundational questions about God, the Bible, and why a person should even bother listening to a Christian talk about Jesus, the works of Francis and Edith Schaeffer provide some brilliant apologetic material. Their work has been hammered out on the anvil of hundreds of discussions with questioning people from all over the world. Below I reproduce in short form what I have gleaned as the essence of Schaefferian apologetics, and sense is also an excellent foundation for all philosophic thinking (of which apologetics is a part):

We can see that Schaeffer latched onto the truth that life is found not in practising a religion but in living congruently to a true worldview. And it is exactly at this point that we have rich entry points for speaking with people about the Gospel, because hardly anyone has even given thought as to what worldview they actually have, let alone bothered to investigate whether it is true to reality and actually will enable them to live life to the full! (Note: the modern secular mind is so 'fragmented'. Consider the popular expressions of worldview - art, music, film, literature - and you will see just what a mish-mash is out there!)

And when talking about 'truth' let us be clear what we mean here. Firstly, whilst we cannot know anything exhaustively, we can know it truly. That is, just because we cannot know something or someone exhaustively does not mean that I do not truly know it or them!

Secondly, truth cannot be relative; the laws of non-contradiction apply to reality. Consider the statement "My truth is my truth; your truth is your truth". This cannot hold true in reality, as can be clearly demonstrated by the following opposites: "My truth is I want to rape; your truth is you don't want to be raped". In this case it is not an issue of truth any more, but one of power.

Thirdly, the truth of a statement needs to be weighed against an 'undeniability test' (a test for truth) and an 'unaffirmability test' (a test for falsehood). Take, for example, the issue of my existence. While my own existence cannot be logically proven, it is nevertheless existentially undeniable. That means I cannot deny my existence without affirming it at the same time. As another example, just because something can be stated, it does not necessarily follow that the statement is true. "I cannot speak a word of English", may be passionately stated, but it cannot be affirmed at the same time.

This all allows us to say a final word on whether truth as a category really exists. In the post-modern world in which we exist today, many claim that there is no such thing as truth that corresponds to reality. But applying the above tests reveals that the statement defeats itself, because it implies that it is not reflective of reality!!

(For an extended treatment, see "Can Man Live Without God" by Ravi Zacharias, Word, 1994)

So, in helping another person to see whether their own worldview or religious or philosophical system is true, we need to help them examine and discern what it says about:

And each of those four factors must be critiqued at five levels (sources of credibility):

Correspondence (statements correspond to fact) and coherence (all the facts form a cohesive system) tests must apply over these five areas. As Schaeffer discerned for himself, only the Christian system as presented in the Bible and exemplified in the life of Jesus fully fits the bill. Our task as Christian apologists is to help others also come to the same conclusion, and to do so our apologetics must function philosophically at three levels:

1. the level of logical persuasion (that which can be demonstrated by argument)

2. the level of experiential relevance (that which can be tested and illustrated by life)

3. the level of prescriptive mandates (that which can be applied to others)

With all these foundations laid, there should (hopefully) be intellectual space in the hearer to actual 'hear' what the Bible has in the way of answers.

As noted above under Cognitive Apologetics, when talking with people it must be done in an atmosphere of love and acceptance. It is no good winning an argument if the people are alienated, and so a genuine relational dynamic should be maintained.

It corresponds to what Aristotle described as the ethos and pathos factors in effective communication. Concerning ethos, a person must be able to sense that the communicator is a person of intelligence, character, and good will, and that they are informed, moral, and interested in their welfare. Concerning pathos, the listener will be able to sense if the communicator is identifying with their emotional state and relating to him/her at that entry level, and not being manipulative. Note that the ethos of the communicator is often known through their attempts at connecting with the pathos of the hearer.

This is especially important when dealing with cynical people for example, because underneath there is often a lot of hurt in them. We need to handle people with care and treat them with integrity and respect. Often as an evangelist you have to first 'cop a lot of crap' from people, and be around long enough, until they get deep down and they reveal the heart of the issue for them. Communication, or engagement, is to bring out commonality, hurts, and questions. We need to couple our attention to people's needs with probing, sensitive, sensible questions as we put ourselves in the world of somebody else in an appropriate way.

All this we see this beautifully and perfectly illustrated in the life of Jesus. Consider His approach in dealing with Zaccheus, the man ostracised from his fellow 'respectable' Jews not only perhaps because of his short stature but definitely because he was a tax collector for the Romans (cf Luke 19:1-9). The first thing Jesus did in response to seeing Zaccheus' desire to see Jesus was invite Himself to dinner at his house! It was in the context of this utmost sign of acceptance and solidarity that Zaccheus was opened up from within to be able to hear and respond to Jesus, and we read that it was in the process of the meal unfolding that he was transformed, giving his wrongly acquired wealth away.

The above tells us that how we experience the messenger is just as important, if not more so, than the message itself. Sometimes it is the experience of the message, registered by our emotions, that gets through our mental defences more than the actual spoken word, and that therefore challenges us to consider the cognitive word once again. And this is important, because ultimately for a person to live in harmony within himself/herself, thoughts held in the mind should be congruent with the decisions made in the will. Else there is cognitive dissonance leading to stress.

And there can be no Emotional Apologetic without there first being the presence of the messenger. The word 'incarnate' means to 'embody in flesh'. God became flesh and modelled what He was on about, and God wants us to continue to embody His message, being His hands and feet. The listener should be able to see, hear, and touch, the content of the message, and in so doing becoming aware that perhaps this is something which they should really take on board for themselves.

A person hearing, seeing, reading about great works done in the name of Jesus can often not help but want to know more. We see this again in the life of Jesus - the miracles he did as physical demonstrations of the presence of the Kingdom drew a hearing from many people. And today the same. Our deeds, whether miraculous on par with those of Jesus, or perceived as miraculous by those around us (eg reaching out a hand in love to someone who thought they were beyond love), can influence and bless people more than we know.

And it is this last point which must not be overlooked. The greatest miracle anyone can perceive is the reception and participation in true love. God is love, and when God became flesh in the life of Jesus, love became flesh, and people were converted. People were attracted by Jesus' great miracles, but they were converted and began to worship Him when they experienced His love and grace (consider Luke 7:36-50). And Jesus prays that His followers will continue to be the visible manifestation, the enfleshment, of love.

As someone has said: "There is no conversion without there first being incarnation".

To be an effective evangelist to see people genuinely born again into the Kingdom of God, one needs to know the following:

And finally, referring back to the earlier tables of pre- and post- Pentecost preaching models, we can now attempt to expand them to include the different types of people we encounter today: