Comment on Week 16

A week after writing the rant on street work, I think I will have to disagree with myself. Street work is still something that scares me because I am awkward in those situations, but I think that if God really is the most important part of my life, and if I really am all for Him, He should be the one I spend my time thinking and therefore talking about. And so it should be only natural that when I meet up with people on the streets or on the bus or flying half way across the globe that I would want to tell them about the God who created them and who loves them infinitely. I also think that the ways we learned about for how to present the gospel can be a very useful tool to present the gospel visually so that people can understand. I need to know God first though before I go out to tell others about Him (‘know’ as in an intimate knowledge). And I need to seek His voice when I go out so that He can direct me to the people who need to hear and the people whose hearts He has already begun to prepare. I also need to stop relying on myself to say the right things but rely completely on God. That way, the conversation will flow naturally and won’t be forced.

I think that one important thing I learned from Roy was that it is always good to give people a way out. That is, if it comes up in the conversations, to say something like “If you don’t want to talk about it though, that’s fine, I’m really not into Bible bashing.” That way, people feel more comfortable discussing it and more free to ask questions that may have been bothering them. I love the illustration of the cure for cancer: if I discovered the cure for cancer, I would be super excited about it and I would want everyone to know about it and I would b telling everyone about it. In much the same way, I have found the cure to death, so shouldn’t I be equally if not much more excited to share it with everyone I meet, no matter when and where I meet them? That is something for me to chew on!

Something that hit me today is that we, as Christians, are stewards of the gospel. Remember the parable in Matthew 25:14-30 about the master who was traveling to a far country and so entrusted different amounts of money to three of his servants? I won’t write it out here so I’d encourage you to read it. Basically, I think that although this parable is talking about our material possessions and how we are going to use them to further God’s kingdom, I also think that there coins can symbolise the gospel. We have been entrusted with a certain amount of knowledge and understanding of the gospel. We can either keep this knowledge to ourselves (like the servant who buried the talent) or we can share it and ‘get interest’ from it (like the servant who put the money in the bank). This ‘interest’ is ‘calculated’ in terms of people coming to Christ and in people deepening their relationship with Christ.

So to finish my rant, I would encourage all you faithful blog readers to be bold in proclaiming the gospel of which you are a steward so that when we meet Jesus face to face, He will be pleased to say “Well done my good and faithful servant.”