Share (Give Away Your Faith #3)

For years I lived by a quote I thought came from St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” There’s no record he ever said it, but it sounded wise, and it fit me perfectly. I wanted my behavior and my demeanor to do the preaching so I never had to open my mouth. I didn’t want to be offensive. I didn’t want things to get awkward. So I just didn’t talk about it.

This is the third and final week of our Give Away Your Faith series, and our key passage has been the same five verses all the way through, Colossians 4:2-6. Every week we’ve looked at one piece of how to give away our faith: prayer, care, and now share.

“Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”

The Verse I Wanted to Cut Out

We started with the call to prayer in verse 2. We prayed for ourselves, that God would give us chances to show we care and chances to share, and we prayed for the people we love who don’t yet follow Jesus. Then came the call to care in verse 5, walking in wisdom toward outsiders, which we unpacked with the word GRACE: genuine love, responsive action, authentic kindness, compassionate humility, and eyeing people with dignity because they carry the image of God.

Then there’s verse 6, and this is where a lot of us get nervous. If I let my actions do all the preaching, I’m basically taking a pair of scissors to the passage and cutting verse 6 out. Prayer, check. Walk in wisdom, check. Done. But if I really believe this is the word of God, I have to take verse 6 seriously. My actions can’t be the only thing preaching. My lips need to get involved too.

The Student Who Skipped Verse Five

Some people have the opposite problem. They get so excited about sharing their faith that they run right over everyone in front of them. Brand new believers are often like this, and it’s honestly wonderful to be around them. They’ve just discovered that Jesus died on a cross for their sins and rose again, that their sin is forgiven, that the old has passed away and the new has come. They can’t help but tell everyone.

But excitement without care can go sideways. When I was the young adult pastor at a church in Cedar Rapids, I became friends with some of the staff at InterVarsity down at Coe College. One year they sent their students door to door asking one simple question: “Can we pray for you? Do you have any prayer requests?” If that turned into a spiritual conversation, great. But one student was a little too eager. He’d knock, and instead of asking what he could pray about, he’d launch into an argument about the gospel. A lot of doors got shut in his face, and as he walked away he’d quote a verse from Romans 9 about people being vessels of wrath destined for destruction. The ministry eventually had to ask him to stop going out with them.

He was praying, and he was sharing, but he’d skipped verse 5. You can’t drop the care and expect the share to land.

A Soft Answer, Seasoned With Salt

Paul says two things about how we speak. First, let your speech be gracious. How you say something matters as much as what you say. Years ago I heard a pastor tell about a heated argument with his wife. He knew he was right, so he kept getting louder, as if volume could make him more right. Eventually he was yelling, and by then she had finally seen his point. Through tears she said, “Okay, I get it. You’re right, but you sound wrong at the top of your lungs.” That’s Proverbs 15:1: a soft answer turns away wrath. This isn’t about proving anyone wrong. It’s about giving away your faith, so be patient, be kind, ask questions, and let them ask theirs.

Second, let it be seasoned with salt. In Paul’s day salt wasn’t only for flavor. With no refrigeration, you buried your meat in it to keep it from spoiling. So ask yourself whether your words are preserving your relationships or rotting them. Are they building a bridge, or are they getting doors slammed in your face?

Joel’s Saturday Mornings

It’s fine to prepare for these conversations. When I started that job in Cedar Rapids, our youth pastor told me I should meet with Joel, the deacon of youth, who had worked with students for fifteen or twenty years. Over breakfast the topic of Bible reading came up, and Joel said he didn’t study the Bible every day. I figured everyone misses a day here and there. Then I realized what he meant: he reads it every day, but he saves Saturdays for studying it. For years he gave two to four hours every Saturday morning to the Scriptures. So when high school students came with hard questions, the youth pastor would often turn to Joel. He’d soaked in the Word so long that he answered with grace and humility, and he knew his Bible as well as a lot of pastors, even though he wasn’t in paid ministry. He just loved students and wanted them to know Jesus. You can get there too.

So read your Bible, and then study it. One of the best ways to start is to join a growth group. When you talk through a passage with other believers, someone will say something that lights up a verse you’d have walked right past on your own. And it doesn’t hurt to read some apologetics, which means giving a defense of your faith, not apologizing for it. Three books I’d recommend: Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, Rebecca McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity (newer, and a good fit for the questions people are asking today), and Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. The movie is fine, but it’s more about his life, and the book is where the actual case is made. There are also good voices online who share with graciousness instead of trying to destroy everybody, like Wes Huff, Gavin Ortlund, and Glenn Scribner with Speak Life. And if you use Right Now Media, it has an apologetics section, with Reason for God videos among them. Riverwood can give you free access if you don’t have it yet.

But please don’t hear this as “wait four years until you’ve read enough.” The man in John 9 didn’t wait for anything.

The Man Everyone Could Dismiss

Here’s the story. Jesus and his disciples come across a man who was blind from birth. The disciples ask whose sin caused it, his or his parents’, which was a very common way of thinking back then. Jesus says neither. It happened so the works of God could be displayed in him. Then he does maybe the most disgusting miracle in the Gospels: he spits in the dirt, makes mud, and puts it on the man’s eyes. Other times Jesus healed blindness with a touch or a word. Here he sends the man to wash in the pool of Siloam, a name that means “sent.” Everyone who knew him as the blind beggar can tell something happened to him, and it raises questions. It all happened on the Sabbath, so the Pharisees get involved, and they interrogate him. They wonder if it’s a setup, like a magic trick with a plant in the audience. They even call in his parents, who confirm he was born blind and then step back, afraid of being thrown out of the synagogue. Then the leaders call him in a second time. Here’s what he says:

“So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, ‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?'”

Before we get to what he says, look at who is saying it. He’s about as low as a person could be in that society. Being born blind meant people assumed God had something against him. With no Braille, he couldn’t read, so everyone figured him uneducated, though everything he knew he’d learned by listening, and he was probably far sharper than they gave him credit for. He couldn’t farm or do carpentry or any kind of tactile work, so he had to depend on the kindness of his parents and the community. No family was going to let a daughter marry a man who couldn’t provide. He was an adult most likely still living with mom and dad.

And he’s talking to the highest of the high, the religious power brokers of a religiously driven culture. His own parents were too scared to speak because these men could cast them out, and being cast out meant losing every connection and relationship you had. At the end of the story the leaders can say anything they want to him, because what could he possibly do about it? And yet he finds the courage to say what he needs to say. Here’s what I take from him.

Stick to What You Know

When the leaders say Jesus is a sinner, he doesn’t launch into a theological treatise about how Isaiah 35, Isaiah 42, and Psalm 146 describe God opening the eyes of the blind, and how a man born blind receiving sight points straight to the Messiah. He could have. Instead he says, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

If someone asks you something you can’t answer, don’t make something up. It’s completely okay to say, “That’s a good question. I don’t know.” Then go research it, study it, and come back with a response. But start with what you know.

Stick to Your Story

When they ask him to tell it again, he says, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” They’re using the old police trick of asking for the story a second time, hoping to catch a contradiction. If they can discredit him, they can discredit Jesus. But his story isn’t going to change.

That also means living a life that backs up your story. I had college classmates who went to a Christian group on Wednesday night and talked about how great and glorious God was, then spent Friday and Saturday night acting like they didn’t believe in God at all. If you live hypocritically, nobody will believe you. That doesn’t mean living perfectly. It means that when you mess up, you stumble toward God instead of away from him. Confess it, and keep seeking to honor him. And if you’ve been praying for people and caring for them, then when you do share your story, they won’t react like the leaders who mocked this man. They’ll say, “Oh, now it makes sense why you act and talk the way you do.” They may not agree in that moment, but you can share without wrecking the relationship.

And you don’t need a doctorate to tell a story. In Mark 5, Jesus frees a man from a legion of demons. The man, finally in his right mind, begs to go with Jesus. Jesus says no. “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” The man went and told the whole Decapolis, and everyone marveled. If you have a story, you have something to share.

Stick to What Is Obvious

The third thing is in verses 30 through 33. “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

You can feel his frustration. It’s so obvious. Nobody could do this unless Jesus really was from God, and deep down he knows they know it. They just refuse to admit it, because Jesus isn’t doing things the way they think it should be done. He didn’t go through their school system. He’s healing on the Sabbath, which, honestly, was probably the best Sabbath that man ever had. Still, throughout Scripture we catch glimpses of some Pharisees who eventually put their faith in Christ, because they saw the works and heard the teaching and were honest enough to see that it fit with the Scriptures.

When someone says something that goes against what’s obvious, like the sky is green or two plus two is five, you don’t need a deep argument. Say it with grace, seasoned with salt, and stick with what’s plain, because chances are they know it too.

Not About Winning

So: stick to what you know, stick to your story, and stick to what is obvious. The goal of prayer, care, and share was never to win an argument or get a podcast-worthy moment of shutting someone down. It’s to give away your faith in the hope that it becomes theirs. We were separated from God by our sin, and Jesus loved us so much that he came and paid the penalty we couldn’t pay. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” I hope you want that for your friends, your family, your coworkers, your classmates, and your teammates.

Whether you put your faith in Christ at four years old or at forty, you have a story. Share it, because it gives glory to God, and perhaps they will make Jesus part of their story too and give glory to God themselves.

Here is my prayer for you this week. Father, help us be people who truly love and care for those around us. So much of our lives is spent thinking about our calendars, our worries, our pasts, and our fears, so we cast ourselves on you and remember that your burden is light and you’ll walk with us. Help us get our eyes off ourselves long enough to notice the people around us, and to pray for them and lift them up regularly. Give us opportunities to serve them and love them, and open doors to share. Keep us from being belligerent or forcing anything. Let us share our story, share the gospel, and point to you, and let your Holy Spirit do what only he can do, convict hearts and open eyes. I’d love for many in our church family to be there with someone the moment they experience new birth, and to see their eyes opened and their life changed. Do that, Lord, not so we can add numbers, but so your kingdom expands. Help us live this life of prayer, care, and share, for your glory and the joy of those around us. In Jesus’ name, amen.