Sharing Your Faith - Step 5 - Creating Opportunities

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at how we can share our faith with our friends and family. To help in that, this past weekend as well as today most of our friends and family and people in general, are watching or planning to watch the opening of the football season. Yesterday, the Razorbacks, today, Green Bay. As excited as people are about their sports and for others, hobbies, work, family, etc. how much more so should we be as excited about our faith in Jesus? Remember, we are not here for ritual or religion. We are here to worship together around the Lord’s Table. We are here to encourage one another to live the Christian walk the rest of the week. We are here to huddle before we run the play of life.

                This week’s playbook is not about seeing opportunities, but creating them. Today, we’ve hopefully have been reflecting on the previous steps. We have been praying, preparing ourselves by setting out our testimony, and even began using notes and tracts to speak a timely word. Hopefully now we are ready for this one, being open with those we do not know. We are going to look at three passages to encourage us and then we will take real look at applying them in our daily lives.

                First, we must remember that we are to rely upon the Holy Spirit to guide us. Matthew 10.19-20 has the context of Jesus sending out the disciples, telling them to be as shrewd as serpents but as innocent as doves. This passage is dealing with a future prophesy for the disciples after Jesus returns to His glory. But let us still consider it. Here is a promise that when we are in need of the right words to say, the Holy Spirit will guide us. Now I am not going into advocating that we do not prepare ourselves. Jesus often went into solitude for a time of prayer, to communicate with our Heavenly Father. God has given us His Word so that we may fully know God’s will for mankind. Remember also that the disciples were in fellowship daily with one another and with Jesus.  The lesson is that in order for us to be able to rely upon the Spirit to guide us, we need to spend time with Him. We need to spend time with one another, and we need to spend time in the Word. I will tell you, when your relationship is right, then you will always have the right words.

                This last week, someone told me, “As intelligent as you are, how can you be religious? Religion is for the weak-minded!” The person who said this has a point. Yet she didn’t understand what makes Christianity superior to religions. It is not about rituals and rites. Christianity is about a relationship with the Creator of the Universe through the work of Christ, taking God’s wrath for us. Jesus in John 4 even told her as much. “A time is coming that you will neither worship the Father here, nor in Jerusalem…the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” John 4.21, 23.  I had these words because I spend time with you, with the Father and with the Word.

                So when you encounter someone, if you’ve been following the steps, don’t worry about what you will say. Ask the cashier at Mayflower how you can make her day better. Ask the waiter if there is something you can pray with him about. When he answers, then pray with him there, immediately.

                Second, we need to remember whose favor we seek. God’s opinion is what matters, or obeying God rather than men. Acts 4.19-20, the disciples are answering the Sanhedrin. They were bold about it as well. Fear, as we considered last time, tends to stop us from working. We fear what others might think. Yet in sports, even at my doctor’s appointment Wednesday, I was bold enough to be a Wildcat in the midst of the hog pen. Yeah, the doctor thought I was saying some fighting words.  But you get my meaning? In the same manner, we need to as courageous to stand for Christ when we are in foreign territory. There are more people out there that say, “You believe in Christ, good for you.” But we need to stand for Christ even when our audience may even be hostile against Christ.  What if your waiter said, “Don’t pray for me. I don’t believe in God.”? As Christians, no, not that he can hear. Wait until your are home. But when he says no, he’s given you the opportunity to go further. Why not? But then as soon as he is done, don’t argue back. Accept it. Heated debates might result in poor service or worse, like spit under the bread.  We need to show love to those who would not accept us. If we really want to make an impact, go the extra mile and see to getting his table time and again. Turn him into a friend. Someday, he might very well take you up on it. Oh, and beware of skeptics. They might say something silly. Pray for my son’s turtle. It’s sick. They may not be joking. Often we get caught up in the minutia of life. God wants to hear about that as well as the bigger issues.

                Then we have our final passage. Creating opportunities is important because eternity is on the line. James 5.20 addresses this issue that by turning a sinner from his sin, then he covers a multitude of sins. {{Sci-fi Geek Moment: This passage addresses potential, alternate universal theory. Each decision we make can create an infinite number of alternate universes.}} Now for the mind-blower: God is able to see these choices carried to their conclusion.

                Now a caution is in order. We are not saying that someone in a particular sin, say being greedy in business practices to the point of cheating others, must stop before he can become a Christian. No, not at all. God accepts us where we are, as we are. Then through the working of the Holy Spirit by word, by study, by loving discipleship makes the change in the new believer. The change may come quickly. It may not. Remember, our society has no idea of a guideline of Christian behavior. They don’t know that coming to church in your river/swim clothes, makes people uncomfortable with their own thoughts and straying eyes.  Well let me use a different example. It was years before the Campbells and Stone, founders of the Restoration Movement, realized that they should be baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the Holy Spirit. But they came to this through studying apart from their theological bends.

                Perhaps I should use another example. When you cast your pole into the water, do you pull out bass filets? Or do you pull out a fish that needs to be cleaned? No, you take the fist as it is, and then you prepare it, change it.

                But let’s return to the moment of eternity. There is a time that is coming, according to Paul, who quoted the Lord’s words to Isaiah, that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that God is God.  Let us also consider Peter’s words to help excite us from 2 Peter 3.9-10. God doesn’t want anyone to perish. This is why he told the disciples, tells us that we are to make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them in the way they should live. Notice the order. Teach after baptizing. This eternity will come in the blink of an eye. How shall we see the world around us? Luke 10.2, “Look, the world is ready to be harvested, but the workers are few.” You now know how to be a worker.

                Now you might still be nervous. There is another step, from last week, that can help us. Next week we begin a new series about the Kingdom, about reaching people around us. Next week is also the National Invite a Friend to Church Sunday. Next week is also our monthly fellowship dinner. It is really easy just to invite someone.