Story Bearer - How to Share Your Faith With Your FriendsShembull

They have a story An aid worker called Ernesto began working in Zambia helping the local people with agriculture projects. The villagers seemed extremely reluctant to help out, which Ernesto and his colleagues wrote off as pure laziness. They found the valley was extremely fertile, perfect for growing tomatoes.‘ Thank God we are here,’ they said, planting seeds and preparing for a bumper harvest. However, just as the tomatoes turned red, two hundred hippopotamuses emerged from the river and ate absolutely everything. The aid workers were distraught, frustrated and angry. The whole situation was a complete waste of resources. ‘Why did you not tell us about the hippos?’ they asked the local people. The response simply came, ‘You never asked.’ Sometimes the best thing we can do when sharing our faith is shut up and listen. The best evangelists aren’t always the best at talking, they are also expert listeners and question askers. Part of the art of sharing our faith and bearing our story is listening well to the story of our friend who we are trying to communicate with. Paul demonstrates this in a masterclass in Acts 17. He notices in the story of the philosophers in Athens that their worship is directed at ‘an unknown God.’ He listens first to their lives and their values before making the connection between their story and God’s story. He declares to them that the unknown God they exalt is knowable. He is the creator of the heavens and earth. The very fact that they have an altar is proof of humanity’s desire to reach out and find this deity, and the good news is that this God is alive and calls us to follow him through repentance. We can be encouraged that God is already at work in the lives of our friends and family members who do not yet know him. Our job is to build the best of relationships and find connection points between their story and Jesus. Jesus expresses this openness to the work of the Father in the world in John 5, ‘the Son can do nothing by himself, he can only do what he sees his Father doing.’ It may be that you have a friend who is lost in hedonism, constantly looking for the next high. Perhaps their intersection with God’s story is Jesus’ promise of life in all its fullness (John 10:10). Maybe your family member is terrified of death. For them good news might be the assurance of eternal life (John 3:16). Some of our friends may struggle with the loss of a father figure. Perhaps their intersection begins with the news that God is the perfect father (Psalm 68:5). May we be story bearers who listen well, observe the Spirit at work and connect the gospel to the lives of our friends.