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November 23, 2003
How to Share Your Faith?
How to Share Your Faith?
Psalm 133 / Isaiah 35: 1-10
Acts 8: 26-40
November 23rd, 2003
Last Sunday I proposed why you should share your faith, if you have trusted in Jesus. There are two reasons why to share your faith. First, because this is what a living faith does. Second, because Jesus said to share it. Faith is not selfish. The goal of faith is not just personal peace and eternal salvation. It is not “our side” in the competition for converts in a world of many religions. When you come right down to it, this view of faith makes of it something selfish—to win, or ultimately to secure soul-health in the afterlife. It’s comparable to buying health insurance to protect your health.
Faith is more than this. It is the least selfish instinct. We speak of a personal relationship with God. In a way it is a lonely relationship with God in which we share God’s burden to care for the world. It is an outward-moving impulse. This is how faith saves us. It lures us to lose ourselves. I never know how to respond when I see faith pursued as a means of getting something.
At the end of our Christmas Eve service I light a candle and then take the light to each section of the sanctuary. You light the candle next to you, until everyone in the sanctuary has a lighted candle. This is a beautiful, even sentimental illustration of passing on God’s love for the world.
Supposing at one of these charmed services, when the music and the message has filled your hearts to the brim, that someone refuses to light the candle next to her. She says, “I came here to get my candle lit, to feel the glow of Christmas. I have it now, and I’ll enjoy it.” I wonder if there would be a stir in that part of the church. Someone whispers, “She won’t share her light.” Eyes start to turn in that direction, and the spell of the evening is broken.
Faith is intimately personal but anything but selfish. Jesus said, “You don’t find life by searching for it, but by losing it.” The joy of Christmas Eve comes in sharing your candle’s light, more than in lighting your own. Becoming a Christian is not joining an organization that claims to have everything explained. It is not a matter of believing a complicated theology. It is not signing on to get eternal security. It is the faith of Jesus Christ that matters, and His faith burst in love for the world. Yes, for the world—including the parts of the world you think of as “the enemy.”
It so happens that Christianity is a fashionable institution in America now. You can hitch onto this fashionable institution, while never finding the faith at the heart of it. Faith is a relationship with an unseen but present God, through trust in Jesus. It is buying into the idea of finding life by losing it, of sharing in order to have. I see increasingly that to understand faith we have to look at Jesus Himself more than at what Jesus did. Jesus fulfilled His life by losing it. This still describes faith. Faith has to be shared to be faith at all. This is the first reason why to share your faith.
Second, we should share our faith because Jesus said to do it. Don’t be like Peter in the courtyard while Jesus was at His trial, unwilling to say you know Him. Faith, then has to do with words as well as deeds. You will be my witnesses, Jesus said, wherever you go. A witness is seen and heard. It matters that we not only have Jesus’ ways, but that we be able to speak of Him. This is hard for many of us. I confess I don’t always know what to say that fits the situation.
Today I want to suggest something about how to share your faith. For many of you, this is an uncomfortable, maybe even repulsive idea. Polite people may talk of politics, but certainly they keep their religion to themselves. Indeed, there is a secret, private aspect to faith. The order of things must be to be evident as Jesus’ follower because of the witness of your life. Then, be prepared to say why you love as you do when you’re asked.
Jesus told us to pray in secret. He taught us to do our good deeds so privately that one hand didn’t know the other hand did it. Jesus was pretty strong in scolding those who put their religion on parade.
Perhaps the first idea we must grasp about sharing our faith is that the firelight of our lives must be seen first. Every one of us is turned off by the talk of religion without the walk of faith. If you say you are a Christian but you do shoddy work as a student, or are unethical in your business, are unpleasant to be around, and generally give no evidence that something divine is burning at your center, stop talking about Jesus. You’re hurting the cause of Christ. The first step in sharing your faith is taking stalk of the way you live. Are you a credit or an embarrassment to the Gospel?
Sometimes pastors mess up, and this hurts the Gospel. Sometimes elders do too, and deacons, and Sunday School teachers, and other ordinary Christians. We put apologetic bumper stickers on our cars, as an antidote. “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” “Please be patient with me; God’s not finished with me yet.” Why are these necessary? Isn’t it a stab at disinfecting our embarrassment?
Maybe you hear me saying that you have to be perfect to say anything about Jesus. I’m not saying that. Then who could say anything at all? I could say nothing. What I am saying is that it really matters how you and I live.
Maybe some of you would say, after candid assessment of yourself, that you are interested in religious questions, but the candle of the faith of Jesus is not burning at the center of your life. You struggle with life’s tests with very little energy inside sustaining you. Your own needs are your biggest interests. You are at the mercy of your moods, your lusts, your materialism, your temper. You need a light lit inside of you, and would love to have it so. You keep coming to church hoping it might happen inside you.
If this is the case, and you know it, you can do what I did as a young man when I realized that faith did not burn in my heart. I asked God to take over my life. I gave my heart to God, and accepted that Jesus died on the cross for my sake. I became a pilgrim. Until I did this, I was only a by-stander. I was only a spectator. I believe there are people in the church who have not passed from spectators to being pilgrims. Have you actually given over your life to God, accepting what Jesus did for you? Get in the pilgrimage. Nobody can do it for you.
But perhaps you are a pilgrim. But you don’t know what to say when someone asks you about Jesus and how to begin the pilgrimage of faith.
The story we just read from the Book of Acts tells of an occasion in the early days of the church when a man shared his faith with someone else. An Ethiopian official was reading from the Prophet Isaiah as he rode back home from Jerusalem in his chariot. He was reading one of the most suggestive parts of the Hebrew Bible.
He saw a hitchhiker. He stopped to pick him up. The hitchhiker asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I unless someone explains it to me?” Perhaps this passage from Isaiah had been read in synagogue the day before, and he was mulling the rabbi’s sermon on it. Something didn’t quite fit. I think even in this place there may sometimes be folk who aren’t sure if the rabbi interprets things right.
In Isaiah 53, he read, “As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth.” What did that mean? Who was the ancient prophet describing? How sad to read this. Some good man denied justice and takes it without saying a word. The rabbi said Israel was this suffering servant. But that didn’t’ quite fit. The Jews hardly took their oppression silently. Then, mysteriously, this quiet sufferer is taken up from the earth. There was mystery to this sad tale.
Without knowing anything about his rider he asked him, “Who is the prophet writing about, himself or someone else?” He had come to one of those pivot moments in life—that come to most of us. Philip, the hitchhiker, was in the right place at the right time. He knew what to say when he was asked. The Ethiopian man’s heart was ready, and Philip knew what to say about Jesus. The Ethiopian believed Philip and placed his trust in Jesus. They saw a stream with deep enough water. Philip baptized the Ethiopian as a sign of trusting in Jesus and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.
I notice the order of things here. First there was a need in the Ethiopian man that made him ask a question. Then Philip answered his question, and faith in Jesus was born in his heart.
There were other situations too. At Pentecost Peter preached in the street, and people listened and believed in Jesus as a result of hearing the Gospel. There is still good effect that comes from public presentations of the Gospel like this. Billy Graham does this to good effect.
In the jail of a Greek city a guard heard Paul and Silas singing. They’d been beaten the afternoon before. They didn’t take advantage of a chance to escape. He asked “Why?”
When in times of distress, we feel God’s strength and don’t respond “normally,” that is, in a panic, others may notice. Paul and Silas’ behavior aroused questions in the guard. He asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Why did he ask that? I don’t know. But he did. They told him. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, and your household too!” How did he know what “saved” meant? Somehow the word “saved” is part of the vocabulary of the heart. What does it mean, that word “saved?” It means “forgiven, healed, restored, accepted by God, offered eternal life, joined to the way of Jesus . . .” It’s hard to quantify this word. But it speaks volumes to the seeking person.
Often Jesus met people who needed help. He helped them, and this opened the door for Him to tell them about the Kingdom of God. When we have Jubilee Christmas, while we must not pounce on people, stuffing religion down the throats of a captive audience, it is important that we speak of Jesus to those who come. It’s not just presents we’re offering, but Jesus as the One motivating us to do this for them. We speak of Him gently, kindly, without a sense of superiority.
Perhaps you are one of those who grew up in a loving home where you learned about Jesus from earliest times and seemed to trust in Jesus the same way you learned to eat. You can’t remember not trusting in Jesus. And your life developed under this spell. You can report this without bragging. Others agree who see you. What should you say when you cannot in any way reproduce your experience for them?
When you are asked, say it simply. “I believe that Jesus died to forgive you and me of our sin.” “What is sin?” your friend asks you. Is sin all the fun stuff the church says we should not do? You know how we’ve blurred the meaning of words like sin and love. You can admit you still do things that are wrong. You can admit there are deeds you should have done that you did not do. They can identify with this. Then say, “I believe Jesus died to forgive me of this, and he makes me want to live a different life as a result.” This is honest.
The one who asks you this has a reason for asking. She has seen something in you that prompts the question. And she has a sense of need inside. Your candle has been burning, and she saw it and wants your light. Give it to her. Pass it on.
It really helps if you know what the Bible says about sharing your faith. If you know by heart “God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life,” you have something wonderful to offer. If you remember what Paul said to the guard at the jail, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household,” you have something to offer. The closer you are to your Bible the more you will know to what say at the moment. The farther you are from the Bible the less you will know to say.
Does this suggest something of the purpose of what we do here beyond this hour of worship? Take part in our Sunday School, life-long learning of the Bible—but more than that. In Sunday School you mix with others who want to know more about the Bible. Iron sharpens iron, and you sharpen one another. Become a part of a group that studies the Bible together during the week. This evening there are two such opportunities. On Tuesday and Wednesday there are others. It matters that you know what to say when someone asks you about your faith. And it matters if you don’t.
In I Peter 3: 15-16 we read, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence, and keep your conscience clear . . .” Here we find the most common order in which you and I have a chance to share our faith verbally. If you have already shared your faith visibly, that is, your way of life has raised the question, “Why?” then you must be prepared to say “Why.” When someone has asked you, you needn’t worry about foisting your religion on someone else. They have asked you. Now what will you say? Respectfully and gently you tell them. “I believe that God loves me. I believe Jesus was God’s Son, and he died for me because he loved me. He died so I don’t have to suffer for the sins I have done. He makes me want to learn his way of life and to do it.”
Your friend has seen your way of life, and hears the reason why you try to live it. And the chances are she will want this way of life too. If she wants to begin this way of life at that moment, help her.
When I began my life as a follower of Jesus, I said something like this, “O God, I want to accept Jesus’ gift of forgiveness of my sin. I want to follow Him. Help me. Amen.” Pretty uncomplicated.
And then I began to do what I thought I should do. I read my Bible. I read books explaining the way of life of faith. I tried to do the things a Christian does—not giving in to my moods, not giving in to temptations so easily, doing my work honestly. I began every day with my Bible and with prayer. I never missed church, listening to sermons intently. I never missed the chance to take communion. I was on a quest. And I’m still on it. I try to speak of Jesus in my own words to anyone who asked me, rather than in phrases and words borrowed from other people.
And I think this is how we share our faith. We acknowledge our need. We respond to Jesus. We try to live under the control of Jesus. We love other people. When they ask us why, we tell them simply and respectfully. And thus the light of Jesus is passed along. This is how I understand sharing our faith in Jesus.
Now, will you take part in this? It will make you happy to be of such use to someone else. If you will take part in this, you will be fulfilling that part of being a follower of Jesus, which somehow has been missed by very many people. Don’t point a finger at others. Accept the privilege of passing on the light on your candle. Just do it. Let’s pray.
We thank you Lord for loving us, and for sending to us Jesus, the light who enlightens everyone who has come into the world. Help us to be candles with a burning wick, passing on a bright light, that others may trust you love them too. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at November 23, 2003 09:30 AM