I interact with people all throughout my day. My job requires a lot of customer interaction and I enjoy the opportunity of getting to know the customers more as I talk with them. I also have the opportunity to interact with strangers while standing in the checkout line, sitting at Starbucks, hiking the incline, or numerous other places. All of these interactions with people are a chance for me to share the gospel with them. I must admit that most of the time I can come up with silly excuses why I shouldn’t do it. “They are in a hurry so I shouldn’t bother them, or this isn’t the right time, or I don’t want to be a nuisance, or I don’t have the right words to say.” These are all dumb and petty reasons that I use and let an opportunity to spread the gospel pass. Ultimately though I think it comes down to fear. Fear can build up inside of me and all too often I take the easy way out instead of addressing the fear. I have found much courage and comfort in Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians these last few months.
Starting in chapter 2 he writes, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
The apostle Paul who was filled with so much passion to proclaim the gospel, but he still felt fear when he did it. This is where I can find the courage to bring it up with strangers because I know that I am experiencing the same type of fear that Paul experienced, and that the same Spirit that gave Paul the words to say will give me the words to say. Paul says himself that he did not have superior wisdom on how to spread the gospel, but he did make it his number one ambition in life to seek Christ. Whatever is in a person’s heart will come out in their speech. If seeking Christ is our number one ambition in life then proclaiming Christ will spill forth from our lips.
The tragic events that have happened in Colorado Springs the last few weeks have left many people seeking for hope. We know as Christians that only true hope can be found in Christ. We can place our trust in Him knowing He has everything under His control from the fire that swept down the mountain to the hail that damaged so many houses and cars. God has blessed us with a wide open door to preach the gospel to others. I pray that we would all be ready and eager to proclaim Christ in the conversations we have in the weeks ahead.
Philippians 3:10-11 “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
