The gospel shouldn’t be a rarity; it should be a normality, and when shared frequently with and to others, good news can become normal—in the best sense. While Christ alone does the work in human hearts, he wants them to hear the message from our mouths.

Bravery began for me in the depths of Detroit, where there are gas stations, funeral homes, and my high school all within a mile radius. Though the layout and events were abnormal, this was my norm. It was my norm for friends from middle and high school to pass away and for daily shootings and theft to occur.

When this is your norm, you yearn for good news.

I was at the tender age of seventeen when I became a Christian, and I felt compelled to tell everyone what Jesus did. My presentation wasn’t perfect, but my heart longed to point people to Jesus—sometimes through prayer, buying them a meal, or verbally sharing the gospel.

Detroit, on the daily, has its fair share of bad news; even if you turn the TV off you can’t channel out the bad news and brokenness that seems to be around the corner. People turned to robberies and raids because they did not have enough money to make ends meet. I remember the countless times of gathering families together in a circular style, hand in hand as we prayed for them as they lost a son to a shootout. My goal became to meet the brokenness with the beauty of the gospel. At seventeen, I didn’t have silver or gold to offer—even if I wanted to—yet I had Jesus, and he’s better than all the fool’s gold of this world.

I decided that whoever walked by, I would talk to them about Jesus. I’m aware that this is an introvert’s nightmare. This meant I crossed paths with many different types of people, more than I can remember. Some mumbled as they kept moving, and some cursed at me and cursed God. I heard the arguments from every party: atheist, agnostic, spiritualist, and so forth.

One young girl stands out to me. She lived on the opposite corner of my childhood home. I took the relational approach of complimenting her and making jokes before getting deeper.

As I asked her about her walk with God, her eye contact disconnected, and she began to tell me she was pregnant and hadn’t finished high school. After getting it off of her chest about the baby that was in her belly, she looked me in the eyes for a religious reaction—you know that one where your eyebrows raise into your hairline and your mouth goes so sideways it almost reaches your ear.

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