In his book “The Gospel and Personal Evangelism,” Mark Dever advocates holding together three qualities in sharing the gospel: honesty, urgency, and joy. If you leave any one of these out, you will end up promoting either a deficient message or a deficient attitude. Here is what he writes:

“…there is a certain balance that we want to strive for in our evangelism, a balance of honesty and urgency and joy. Too often we have only one, or at best, two, of these aspects rather than all three. The balance is important. These three together most appropriately represent the gospel” (pg. 55).

He adds later, “Honesty and urgency with no joy gives us a grim determination (read Philippians). Honesty and joy with no urgency gives us a carelessness about time (read 2 Peter). And urgency and joy with no honesty leads us into distorted claims about immediate benefits of the gospel (read 1 Peter)” (pg. 60).

May God make us a straight-shooting, clock-watching, winsome people.