Love?

I just finished reading the first chapter of Mark Dever's book The Gospel & Personal Evangelism. I like what this book is doing to me, but it is a bit painful. The first chapter is titled Why We Don't Evangelize? 

Dever has a section in this chapter in which he challenges the reader to Plan To Stop Not Evangelizing and he give twelve steps to implement that plan: pray, plan, accept, understand, be faithful, risk, prepare, look, love, fear, stop and consider. 

The following is from the section on love:

We are called to love others. We share the gospel because we love people. And we don't share the gospel because we don't love people. Instead, we wrongly fear them. We don't want to cause awkwardness. We want their respect, and after all, we figure, if we try to share the gospel with them, we'll look foolish! and so we are quiet. We protect our pride at the cost of their souls. In the name of not wanting to look weird, we are content to be complicit in their being lost... 

...As Jesus said, 'Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks'. How much evangelism do we find flowing our of our mouths? What does that suggest about our love for God?

These are some difficult words to hear and many will not ask themselves the hard question. Rather, they justify their inaction and lack of evangelism. 

The greatest act of love you can ever show a person is to share the life transforming message of the gospel of Jesus Christ with people.

Let us stop excusing ourselves and start loving the LORD we claim to serve. I must go now and repent and then seek to share Christ with someone in this coffee shop.