Tell Your Story - June 29, 2009

As I was sitting in Sunday school class yesterday morning, John Fischbach was talking about how we as a church aren’t as great at telling people about Christ as we could be. How many of us in the past six months have invited someone to church? I hope more than half of you have. The discussion turned to how it may be that you invite 10 people to church and only one of those people respond. That may be deemed as discouraging. But our goal is to bring people to Christ and if you don’t ask about their salvation, how will you really know what they need.

The one way we can show evangelize is to just be a friend and to emulate Jesus by how we live each day. We can also give a testimony. Now, I think that word conjures up all sorts of scary images. We think of someone who dresses in a suit and tie or dress, standing in front of a crowd with a microphone in hand and spouting off every detail of how Christ has saved you and how great you feel now. It doesn’t have to work that way. I think the hardest part of telling others of what Christ has done for you is admitting that you are weak, have no control, and are in need of saving. I don’t like to admit that I am incapable of saving my self or not being good or perfect. Being called and evangelist seems kind of stuffy too. But, that is what Paul called the Ephesians. And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11 – 13.

Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing after all. If we tell our story, then maybe it will better equip someone else to be courageous and tell their story. After all, isn’t life just a series of stories that are put together for you to learn from and use to help others. I think that we can all try and tell one of our stories to someone this week. Maybe it will help each of to draw near to God and to each other.