All Christians should carry with them their Bible and several tracts. Pray to God that He will give you an opportunity to speak to someone about the Bible and Christ. Look for opportunities to give a tract to someone or to leave a tract for someone to read. In my travels around Asia, I often left a tract or  booklet in some obscure valley café or retreat, praying that the locals would find them.

“Ewww!”, cried out one of the teacher interns at my training school in disgust, “Somebody has invited me to her church!”. It should not surprise us that unsaved people sometimes act or think this way. Every sinner is born spiritually dead. They are lifeless. They are bound in the kingdom of darkness. They have a deep distaste for the things of God. It may feel too that when we witness, we are hitting a brick wall – that our efforts are futile. Indeed, we often see little immediate fruit. How discouraged we can quickly become. Yet, remember Jesus’ words to Paul: “I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:10). We do not know who God’s elect are, and so we must speak to all sinners about the Gospel. Woe to us if we don’t.

Presbyterians are not to be cold-hearted, indifferent Christians. As Spurgeon rightly said every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter. As a part of the broader evangelical church we are compelled to reach the lost.

Spurgeon counsels us: “It must not be tolerated that Christ should be unknown through our silence, and sinners unwarned through our negligence.” And yet, though many of us know that the road is wide that leads to destruction, we feel powerless to know what to do. How can we reach the lost with the good news of Jesus Christ?

Spurgeon suggests that one way ordinary saints can reach the lost is by handing out Gospel tracts. Everyone in the church can do this. Spurgeon argues: “[Tracts are] adapted to those persons who have but little power and little ability, but nevertheless, wish to do something for Christ. They have not the tongue of the eloquent, but they may have the hand of the diligent. They cannot stand and preach, but they can stand and distribute here and there these silent preachers…They may buy their thousand tracts, and these they can distribute”.

Some Christian commentators have argued that tract giving is a useless activity; that times have changed. True, many a tract may end up unread and crumpled up in the trash bin. Yet, we must trust in God’s providence. It is likely you will never be able to meet every person in your neighbourhood or even on your street – they are unlikely to ever hear the Gospel told to them in their lifetime. The giving of a tract may be the seed that God uses in His providence to cause them to come to Christ. We may never know this side of eternity.

As Spurgeon wisely says, it is only in Heaven or on Judgment Day that we will discover that the giving of a gospel tract led a stranger to Christ. “I look upon the giving away of a religious tract as only the first step for action not to be compared with many another deed done for Christ.

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