1. If you pray for God to give you witnessing opportunities, and you assume He answers prayer in the affirmative, then this is the rule: If the question is, "Should I say anything to this person?" then the answer is, "If the person is in your presence, then yes!" In other words, if God has arranged for you to be in the same place at the same time as the person in question, then that’s enough of a sign that you are to say something.

2. It’s not up to you to decide whether or not to witness to someone. The answer is always, "Yes–Now." You are not given the authority, wisdom, or autonomy to decide to wait. If God doesn’t want you to witness to a particular person, He’ll make it impossible. To use an illustration: if you see a crime take place, you aren’t supposed to go home and wait for someone to knock on your door and ask you if you want to tell someone about it. You are supposed to take the initiative and flag down a policeman to tell him what you saw.

3. There is no instance in Scripture where God says, "I don’t want you to witness about Me," or "I want you to wait to tell someone about my Son."

4. So what if preaching Law and Gospel ticks off, alienates or turns off the person to whom you’re witnessing? That in no way relieves you of the responsibility to preach it. It’s God’s kingdom; He should worry about how it’s received. You are not responsible for the person’s acceptance of, or turning off to, the Gospel or the Law. That’s between them and God. Both Law and Gospel, by their very natures, alienate, irritate, and turn people off. Expect that.

5. You have neither the wisdom nor the foresight to try and wait until a person is "receptive" to the Gospel. The so-called "strategy" of "If I tell him about Jesus right now in the mood he’s in, it’ll turn him off forever to Christ," is not yours to decide. You aren’t smart enough to know that. Maybe it requires a period of "turning off" before the person will be ready to listen to the Lord. And only God knows when a person is receptive. After all, no human would have approached Paul with the Gospel on the road to Damascus. He was breathing threats and murder against Christians at the time Jesus knocked him off his horse on the way to kill Christians in Damascus. Human wisdom to "wait for the right time" is insufficient and arrogance of the worst order. When should a person be preached the Gospel? Paul said, We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. (Colossians 1:28) Paul does not say "We proclaim Him to all those we judge to be in a receptive frame of mind." Day after day, in the Temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ. (Acts 5:42) They didn’t go "from receptive house to receptive house, proclaiming to all who were in the right mood."

6. You want in instant harvest on Planting Day. God will rarely give you that. You may plant, water, even prune or fertilize. You will almost never be given the privilege of harvest.

7. C.F.W. Walther: to the unsaved, not a single drop of Gospel comfort for all those still comfortable in their sin. To the broken and contrite, not a single word of convicting, condemning Law!

8. An unsaved person must be broken, convicted, and contrite. This will turn people away–and it won’t make you popular. Get used to that.