Someone once told a friend to be prepared for any opportunity. You never know when your preparation may save someone's life. This advice became clear to my friend one evening when he was dining in a restaurant. This is his story:
A man suddenly knocked a glass off the table and stood up, his face red and his eyes bulging. A piece of steak had lodged in his throat, and he couldn't breathe. I glanced around the room, hoping someone would rush to him to apply the Heimlich maneuver. But everyone froze, helpless. I pushed my chair back and ran to his side. When I wrapped my arms around his girth and squeezed, the meat dislodged from his throat, and I could hear the welcome sound of a deep breath.
Later, several people came by my table and expressed appreciation that I had helped. One gentleman said, “I'm so thankful you knew what to do. Could you tell me where I could learn to do that? I want to be prepared too.”
The choking man's wife left a note for me with the cashier. It said, “Thank you. My husband wanted to thank you but was too embarrassed and weak to say anything. We are so thankful you weren't afraid to help us.”
But no one could have been more afraid than me. It wasn't absence of fear that made the difference; the difference was I was prepared. This experience taught me I might be the only hope for someone whose life hangs in the balance.
Just as knowing how to use the Heimlich maneuver can save someone's earthly life, knowing how to share Jesus without fear can help you save someone's eternal life. And you never know when you might be needed.
For example, an erroneous debit showed up on my checking statement. So I went down to the bank to see someone about it. A young woman, Krista, assisted me and took care of the problem. As I was about to leave, Krista said, “By the way, Bill, today is my last day at the bank.”
“Really?” I asked. “I'm going to miss you. Not only because you fixed my problem, but because you're a kind person.”
I could have dropped it there. It would have been easier to walk out the door, calling over my shoulder, “Have a nice life, Krista. Good luck!”
Instead, I decided to use the opportunity to share my faith, so I asked my favorite conversation-starting question. “Krista, I was wondering, do you go to church anywhere?”
“Well, I have been, once, with my friend.”
“Has anyone ever told you the difference between religion and a relationship with Jesus Christ?”
“No. What is the difference?”
I said, “With your permission, I'll take you a step further.”
So I sat at her desk and took out my sharing Bible/New Testament and let her read the Scriptures aloud. Then, as the Holy Spirit began to work, her tears began to fall. I asked, “Krista, are you ready to say yes to Jesus Christ?”
“Yes,” she replied, and right there she did.
My question to you is, what if I had been reluctant to share with Krista? What if I had let this opportunity pass me by? What if I had been so focused on the bank's error, I had been rude and unloving toward Krista?
First and foremost, we must follow Christ's command to love our neighbors. We must talk to our neighbors with respect. Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
When we live our lives with a love-my-neighbor policy, we will take advantage of the opportunities God puts before us.
Ground-Breaking Obedience
Often, I hear my brothers and sisters say they want revival, a revival in which God moves and changes the hearts of individuals, families, communities, and nations. But I wonder: do we expect God to make the first move? If a farmer has broken no ground or sown no seeds, would he be justified in blaming God because he has no harvest?
Could we be like this lazy farmer? All of us should want revival, but revival will not come unless we break the sod of disobedience in our own hearts. Revival will not come unless we sow the seeds of the good news of Jesus Christ.
We have to respond. When was the last time you shared your faith or talked to someone with whom you didn't feel comfortable? When was the last time you wept and prayed for someone to come to Jesus Christ? When was the last time you sent a card to a family member who did not know the Lord?
On Judgment Day, it is not the liar, the murderer, the homosexual, or the fornicator who will stand before God in judgment first; it will be the household of faith. The person who rejected Christ will have to wait while we believers take our place in front. As they look on, we will have to look God in the eye and explain our every deed, done or undone; every word, spoken or unspoken (Matt. 12:36). Will we be embarrassed and ashamed because we have failed to obey the Great Commission: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19 KJV)?
Will we grieve over the prayers we left unprayed, the sacrifices unmade, and the tears unshed? As we look behind us, into the faces of our condemned friends and family members, how will we feel?
I do not believe God is going to force obedience on us, because that is not his way. Love never forces anything. But when we disobey by choosing to ignore the Great Commission, God will allow us to experience spiritual dryness.
As I travel around to different churches, I have noticed that people's faith has grown weaker; their hearts, harder. Why? People are not experiencing God's joy because they are not sharing their faith. As we've studied, Philemon verse 6 says, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”
I believe God will discipline us so he can get our attention. I believe that if we do not go down on our knees, our nation will go down into oblivion. God will hold us responsible for the sin of silence for not sharing with those people he has placed in our lives.
The Time Is Now
Now that you realize you can't fail whenever you share your faith, you're ready to take the step of obedience. Don't be like so many who have approached me in tears. Many tell me they've felt God's gentle nudge to share with a friend and refused. One woman said, “I knew God was directing me to share with a friend who was in the hospital. But I was busy, and when I heard Lee was better, I ignored the nudge. ‘There's plenty of time,’ I thought. Two weeks later, Lee died unexpectedly.”
She hung her head. “If only I hadn't waited.”
People weep when they tell me these stories. They ask, “Do you think God will ever forgive me?”
They are feeling the shame of the sin of silence. They realize God wanted to use them as a messenger of the gospel, and they put it off. Now it's too late.
We don't know who's going to have tomorrow. We don't know if we're going to have tomorrow. The things we did yesterday are gone. What counts is to capture the moment God has given us today.
The only thing that counts is what we choose today—the moments we live for Jesus Christ. I never want to experience having to stand before God when he says, “Bill, why in the world were you ashamed to tell someone about my Son, Jesus Christ?” I'm going to stand before God for an awful lot of things, but I pray that's not one of them. I want to stand as the apostle Paul stood when he said in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
Are You Burdened?
Christians have a misunderstanding. People often tell me they have an incredible burden for a friend or a relative or someone else. What I try to get them to understand is, when God gives you a leading, it's not the time to just go home and pray about it. It's the time to respond, immediately. God has been preparing this moment before the world began.
If he wanted you to wait, he'd have given you the idea tomorrow. If he wanted you to do it yesterday, the idea would have come the day before. But when he puts Susan or John on your mind, the timing is now.
Lee Strobel says in Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary, “Almost every day, we come to evangelistic turning points. We make choices whether to help rescue these people from danger or to walk the other way. We make spur-of-the-moment decisions whether to heroically venture into their lives and lead them to a place of spiritual safety, or to merely hope that someone else will do it… . We make split-second decisions all the time to either play it safe or to tilt the conversation towards spiritual topics, and many times we shrink back.”1
We must not shrink back. We must venture into the spiritual lives of others, to point the way to Christ.
Be Obedient to Your High Calling
Again, your responsibility isn't to cause a conversion. It is to be obedient to the high calling of the Great Commission. Remember, success is sharing your faith, living your life out for Christ. It is not leading someone to Christ. Besides, as someone once said, “God never calls us to be successful, he calls us to be faithful.”
If you choose obedience in sharing your faith, your Christian life will never dull because Philemon verse 6 will have been activated.
Evangelism is not just about the person with whom you are sharing, because even if you refuse, God can make the rocks cry out. Evangelism is about experiencing God. If you choose to be obedient, he will take you on a journey so exciting that your life will never be the same.
I have had the privilege to share my faith on a one-on-one basis twenty-five thousand times since I met the Lord in 1981. It is with absolute confidence I can say I have never led one person to Jesus Christ. But I stay excited as I see how the Holy Spirit continues to change the lives of those with whom I've shared.
Remember, earlier in the book, I said there are only two kinds of Christians in this world:
It is time to choose obedience and grasp the fullness of a Christian life. It is time to be the kind of Christian who will talk to the lost, who will die to himself, and who is never ashamed of the gospel. It is time to be the kind of Christian who is really making a difference. You can begin by asking someone one of the five “Share Jesus Questions” today. But more than just asking questions, you will have chosen obedience. And when people choose obedience, they experience a unique kind of joy in an ever deepening relationship with their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is time to share Jesus without fear. God wants you to experience his joy. So get ready. It is time to go!