Personal Evangelism - Sunday Leftovers

Our lesson this past Sunday centered on the matter of sharing our faith with others. I concluded the sermon by offering you, what I believe are two vital characteristics of the person who is effective at this process. The first trait perhaps is the most indispensable and that is that we must care for people. The deeper that care, the more effective we will be in engaging people in spiritual conversation. The second came more in the form of a tip and that was to wake up every day and pray that God will help you cross paths with someone who is in need of His Good News. More appropriately said, pray that God will heighten your awareness so that you will be ready when you do cross paths with that person. It is highly likely that we are intersecting the lives of these people on a daily basis already.

I had five more of these traits/tips to share Sunday but, as it typically goes, I had more sermon than time. Let me list those five additional insights for you now.

1) Earn the right to speak of spiritual things.

Matters like faith, God and spirituality are intimate in nature. To get to them effectively it is only reasonable that you would have to gain the respect of the other through investments of time and concern. Why should someone be convinced that I care about their eternal life if I don't show concern for their temporal one?

2) Respect their journey thus far.

Listen to them. See and validate their spiritual process up to this point. Surely God has been interacting with them before you came into their life.

3) Tell them your story.

Jesus/God is not a doctrine; He is a living experience. There is nothing more compelling than a true story.

4) Be open for God's guidance.

Obviously, this is true in every area of our lives but no where more so than in this, potentially, sensitive area. Surely if God loves people and we are willing to be used by God, He will impress us in ways to be effective in these interactions.

5) Trust God.

Be confident that God is involved in this holy process. He loves even more than you do. The Apostle Paul taught that one plants the seed, another waters it but it is God who gives the increase. We aren't called to do anything more than come alongside people in their journey by hearing their story and sharing ours. God does the rest.

I know these are very basic and I'm sure you already knew them but that's a good thing. It reminds us that this process does not demand a degree or professional status. The truth is, with these simple elements in tow, willingness is the greatest part.

I hope you’re willing today.

Lent: An Opportunity Holiness - Introduction

Since the first of the year, in our worship services we have been following Jesus from His infancy through the early stages of His earthly/bodily ministry.  We heard the wise men from the east ask the question so many before and after them have offered, ''Where is He?''  We followed Jesus from His hometown, Nazareth of Galilee, down to Judea where He was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. We watched as He moved northward back to Galilee where He would do the bulk of His teaching and miracles, assimilating along the way an inner core of twelve disciples as well as a large grass-roots following that unsettled the authorities, both religious and civil.

We saw his predecessor, the greatest prophet, John, imprisoned and ultimately executed for preaching the Kingdom of God.  With John behind bars, Jesus assumed his message and his followers, proclaiming everywhere He went the Good News of the Kingdom.  The lame walked, the blind saw and the dead were raised to life again - the crowds could only grow.  And grow and grow they did until He could no longer enter cities for the throng.  So He recessed to the rural places where the masses filled the open fields and seashores to be near Him. 

At the height of His popularity and in the midst of His busyness we followed Him, in the early hours of the morning, to a ''lonely place'' where He spent precious time in prayer.  We saw the disciples find Him there, reminding Him of the neediness of the people looking for Him.  He conceded, following them out of that devotional solitude into an encounter with a leprous man whom He miraculously healed, setting the Mosaic Law on its ear in the process.

Last week we moved ahead to the end of His Galilean ministry and observed Him take James, John and Peter up a mountain where He was transfigured before their eyes.  As if that weren't enough, they also saw Moses and Elijah appear from the netherworld to converse with Jesus about the implications of His impending death.  Upon descending the mountain, Luke said, ''He (Jesus) steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.''  We used that text to prepare our hearts for the Season of Lent, the season the Christian church annually sets aside for the purpose of refocusing, reflecting and realigning our lives with the purposes of the Kingdom of God.  I have high hopes that our GP community will take this time very seriously and in a few weeks find ourselves celebrating Resurrection Sunday with a renewed vigor and deepened commitment.

This Sunday we will do some good backtracking, chronologically speaking, in the life of Christ.  Immediately following His baptism and just prior to launching His Galilean ministry, Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where, for forty days, He was tempted by Satan.  As far as I'm concerned, those are forty of the most intriguing days of Christ's life.  So intriguing are they, that we as a church have lifted the number of those days, imposing it upon the time we call Lent. 

The gospel writers say that Jesus fasted the entirety of those forty days and was ministered to by angels.  Furthermore, they say that Jesus went into the wilderness ''full of the Holy Spirit'' yet came forth ''in the power of the Spirit.''  While I'm sure I haven't fully wrapped my mind around the differences between those two phrases, I am sure that there are differences.  And I am also confident that the supremacy of Christ's latter relationship to the Holy Spirit was directly related to the forty days of special devotion He committed Himself to in the wilderness.

This confidence translates for me to a deep conviction that if we follow Christ's example we will enjoy the fullness of His life.  Come Sunday, and let's process this incredible text and story from the life of Jesus together.  It's one of my favorites, and I think you'll see why, not only as we study it together but even more as we LIVE it together.

See you Sunday,
Stan