Introverts in God’s Service

God made so many different types of personalities with so many different variations to those personalities that it is almost mind boggling. To everyone, He has given special talents and strengths that should be used for His glory and purpose. While many men and women of the Bible seem to be extroverts, we also hear that a gentle and quiet spirit is very precious in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:4) and that we should be quick to hear and slow to speak (James 1:19). That tells us that God can also work through people who struggle with being outgoing and charismatic. Introverted people need to come to the realization that they should use what they have been given, and not force themselves to gain what comes naturally to others.

In a society that seems to prize extrovert styled evangelism, introverted people are sometimes erroneously “convicted” into believing that if they are not proselytizing the gospel in a really vocal way, somehow they are saying to the world “I am ashamed of my beliefs and of Christ!” It is true that in Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus tells his disciples “¹⁸All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ So you must go and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. ²⁰ Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Christianity, as a religion, was birthed in an oral culture, which allowed it to grow rapidly. Throughout history, oral proselytizing of the gospel allowed literate and illiterate people to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. There is little doubt that a fiery public message can elicit many conversions, but what if some folks are just not skilled orators, especially when it comes to spiritual matters? For many introverted individuals, what they mean or intend to say sometimes gets lost or forgotten in the actual delivery when they are required to verbalize them. Perhaps that is why God allowed the written word to be so powerful and why he chose specific individuals to write to certain target audiences.

We know that the synoptic gospels in the bible were written by three separate authors. God purposely chose those three individuals because he knew that each had a passion and desire to reach a unique sector of society. The word synoptic basically means “to see together with a common view.” When the first three Gospels are compared—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—it is unmistakable that the accounts are very similar to one another in content and expression. As a result, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the “Synoptic Gospels.”

Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and Matthew made his target audience the Jews. Matthew knew that the Jewish people were waiting for the long-awaited messiah that was prophesied about in the Old Testament and he wrote to his fellow country people in an attempt to provide evidence to them that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophesies and was in fact the Messiah.

When Mark wrote, he had a Roman Gentile audience in mind. Mark knew that the Romans were people of action and that any God that he was going to share with them was going to have to be a God of power and action. Since the coming of a messiah was a Jewish idea that would not appeal to the Roman people, Mark knew that they would need convincing evidence that Jesus was not only the Christ, but he was a Christ of power and action. For this reason, everything that Mark wrote was in support of that need.

Luke is the third categorized as a synoptic writer who was writing specifically for the Greeks. Although the original body of Christ was largely made up of Jews, as time passed an increasing number of Gentiles were being added. Since Luke understood and related to the Gentile way of thinking, God used him to provide a view and emphasis of who and what Christ was that Greeks could understand and relate to. Luke’s message was that the good news was universal and that anyone who was willing to accept Christ could be saved, whether Jew or Gentile.

Matthew, Mark and Luke are just three of the forty authors that documented everything that we know about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This reiterates how important the written word can be and that it has a place in communicating the gospel. In the 2,000 plus years that Christianity has existed, oral and written communications have both been the dominant ways of communicating thoughts and ideas and have allowed Christianity to flourish.  Although oral proselytizing may be the primary means of sharing the gospel message, the written word continues to be a viable avenue for introverts to participate in evangelizing the world. Hebrews 13:20-21 says, “²⁰ Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, ²¹ equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” When God calls someone, he equips them and that equipping could very well be the ability to share, through a written message, the gospel of Jesus Christ to somebody who may not otherwise be able to “hear” it.