With Christmas past, our thoughts turn naturally to the New Year. I like new years. They can provide an opportunity for renewal, for reenergizing, for beginning again.
As I have been thinking about the new year for me, I have become reenergized about the practice of sharing my faith with others. I have become convicted that I need to work harder at preparing myself to share my faith and to increase my readiness to do so in 2020.
I thought I would share my thinking with you in the possibility that the Lord may want to encourage you in this area as well.
1 Peter 3:15-16 says,
Honor Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you. However, do this with gentleness and respect, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are accused, those who denounce your Christian life will be put to shame.
We unpack several observations about this passage.
- We are to prepare ourselves with ready answers for our faith.
The first, and most obvious point this passage makes is that we should identify and be prepared to share the reasons why we believe what we believe. Christianity is a religion of truth, and we must be prepared to share this truth with others.
How much truth we are prepared to share with others will vary from individual to individual. For example, I have a friend who has a Master’s degree in Christian apologetics (defense of the faith), and he can go on for hours about in-depth reasons to believe Christianity.
Others might be more limited in time and academic background, and will find themselves responding to this challenge on a much more basic level.
Our challenge is to accept the Lord’s level of readiness for us rather than someone else’s level of readiness. Our temptation is often to expect too much or too little of ourselves. A comfortable balance is felt when we get it right for us.
The series I began in this blog on apologetics on
November 12 of this year might be a helpful place to begin for you in preparing yourself for more readiness in the new year with answers for your faith.
- We are to do so with gentleness and respect.
One time as a college student, I came upon two individuals who were discussing the Christian faith. I say discussing… actually they were screaming at each other – eyes bugging, neck veins bulging, saliva flying! I didn’t hang around to hear who won the argument, but the point of sharing our faith is not to win the argument, but to win the person.
If we are arrogant, impatient, or aggressive in sharing our faith, we may win the point, but we will not likely win the person.
When we share our faith with respect for the other person, with gentleness, relying on the strength of the truth rather than the strength of our presentation, the other person will be much more receptive to what we are saying.
As the proverb says, “we attract more flies with honey than with sugar.”
There are two things that help me maintain a gentle and respectful demeanor when sharing my faith with others.
First is to recognize that non-Christians are not blindfolded, they are blind. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 says, “
if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving…”
Second is to remember that only God can break through a person’s blindness. I cannot. In John 15:5, Jesus said,
“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Then, in John 6:44, Jesus said,
“no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.”
So, the work of leading others to Christ is God’s job. Our job is to be prepared to give an answer – and to do so with gentleness and reverence, appreciating the fact that the other person is lost, which should elicit our concern and compassion, not our arrogance. Dallas Willard makes this point skillfully in his book,
The Allure of Gentleness.
- We are to do so with a clear conscience, with a life of integrity, with actions that match our words.
In their book,
Bold and Broken, authors David and Jason Benham make the point that there is a gap between God and man, and that God wants us stand in the gap between the two, to help bring the two together.
If we truly believe our message, a clear conscience and life of integrity will move us to share our faith with boldness. But boldness alone won’t get the job done. Boldness apart from brokenness only makes a bully. You can stand with courage, but without compassion, you only widen the gap.
At the same time, the authors say, “brokenness apart from boldness makes a bystander. You can be the most compassionate person on the planet, but without courage, the result is the same widening gap.
“When you’re both bold and broken, you become a bridge – one connecting heaven to earth in supernatural ways. When you stand in the gap courageously for God with a heart of compassion for others, you become the answer to Christ’s prayer – thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Conclusion
A compelling point that Hugh Ross makes in his book,
Always Be Ready, is that if we prepare ourselves to share our faith, God will use us.
- When we ready our minds with reasons for the hope that is within us
- When we ready our hearts with gentleness and respect
- When we ready our lives with integrity – committed to both boldness and brokenness…
…God will supernaturally send people to us whose hearts He has prepared to receive the message. Wouldn’t that make an exciting New Year?
What will be new for you this year? If this message resonates with you, why not join me in asking the Lord to make 2020 a New Year of preparedness to share your faith with others more readily and more effectively.
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* I preached this message at my church, Geist Chapel, this past Sunday. If you'd like to hear a fuller version of
Getting Ready for a New Year of Impact,
go here for the recording.
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