How can you maintain your passion for evangelism when you feel it waning? For me, all it takes is remembering my life when I didn’t know Jesus Christ.

If you came to know Jesus at an early age and can’t really remember your life without Christ, then these thoughts may not make much of an impression on you. But for those of us who remember life without him, one of the biggest motivating factors in our passion to share Christ with people is remembering the darkness of those days before he came into the centre of our lives. Well did the Apostle Paul describe our salvation as passing from death into life, from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.

For years after Jesus changed my life I would listen to the song ‘Yesterday’s Gone’ by Kelly Willard. It starts out like this: “Seems like a long time ago I was always looking down on myself wishing I was somebody else. That was only yesterday. Thank God yesterday’s gone.”

The thing is, people around me didn’t know the downward spiral of depression I was in. My family didn’t know, my youth group didn’t know, my friends didn’t know. But I was dying inside. I felt so alone. I thought nobody loved me. I didn’t like myself. I was desperately searching for real love and a place where I belonged, where I felt safe. It was right there in front of me—in the lives of my friends and family. Yet I was missing it.

I went on a youth camp organised by my church. The speaker was a gifted youth speaker named Dan DeHaan. He spoke on the theme of REALITY. That week as he unpacked the scriptures I met Christ. As I turned to him in faith his love poured into my life and transformed me. I felt joy for the first time since I was a little boy.

I know how much people need Jesus, because I know how much I need him. Even if people don’t seem desperate on the surface (neither did I), I know that without Christ their life is like a black and white movie that is missing the colour. They are incomplete and they know that something is missing. Like me they are trying to find what will fill that void, but nothing will fill it except Jesus. They were made for him!

Sometimes I feel my passion to share Christ with people slipping into the background. Life gets busy and our nature is to focus on ourselves. When that happens, all I have to do is remember my dark days without Christ and the light he has brought into my life. My passion returns.