“Wow, I can relate to what Jesus said about being born again spiritually, and not physically. This makes a lot of sense!”
When my friend K* blurted that sentence out in the middle of January, something like a resurrection seemed to start taking place in his heart. But our lunch appointment and reading of the Bible together wasn’t some unplanned miracle.
No, God had already began to move some time ago.
A week earlier, K and I were having lunch over the second chapter of John.
It was only the second time he had agreed to open the Bible with me, yet K already had an inexplicable and genuine interest in Jesus’ water-into-wine miracle. But again, this was no random revelation.
The Spirit had already begun stirring in his heart a whole month ago – we were just catching His drift.
Because 4 weeks earlier, K had attended an outreach event where he heard a speaker tell him why it was worth giving Jesus a chance. And he was struck by the idea that Jesus had come to bring the sunshine of God into his darkness.
K didn’t just happen to be bored that Saturday night and decide to join me as a backup plan. The Spirit had already started blowing life months ago, and we were just riding His wind.
K’s encounter with Jesus took many months of intentional friendship, conscious prayer and uneventful meals.
We started out by reconnecting at a random event I frankly had little interest in! But as we caught up once more after that one-off social gathering, I began to pray over K and connect deeper with him. When the Holy Spirit showed me how empty K’s life would look without the truth of Jesus, my heart was moved to bring him to Christ.
That was when I began asking God to clear K’s schedule for the outreach. And thankfully, He did! K was invited to hear the Gospel and the unintimidating nature of the experience warmed his heart to continue on this journey of discovering Jesus.
This is the conviction I’ve developed through this friendship: The Father’s heart for those still in darkness to find Jesus’ light through seemingly uneventful occurrences and ordinary friendships.
So when your friend shares about the loss of a loved one, or the futility of their paper chase at school, or the hypocrisy of Christianity they’ve experienced, their surprising honesty might be an open invitation by the Holy Spirit for you to take another step.
Would you consider bridging them to Jesus then? You might want to humbly share your response as a Christian, or invite them to what the Bible says about their issue. Or you might want to stoke their interest by saying something like, “I’m not sure I can give you a better answer than what Jesus said when he spoke to so-and-so in the Bible; you have to read that for yourself!”
Such conversations may be inconvenient, but they’re no different from how Jesus hosted Nicodemus right before bedtime.
Sharing the Gospel with your friend could cause illogical changes to your schedules, especially when we’re led by the Spirit. But for a chance to bring light into darkness, for someone to hear the very words God wants to say to them – what wouldn’t we give for that?
The occasional church outreach event can be a stepping stone for our non-Christian friends. But the crux of Christian witnessing lies in the miracle of ordinary, everyday conversations over an opened Bible.
Let us be faithful friends who will bring others to see Jesus in the Bible. Let’s pray and watch as the mighty Spirit breathes life!
For a really encouraging book on how we can persevere through our awkwardness and inconvenience to share Jesus, consider Rico Tice’s Honest Evangelism. From now until end April, Thir.st readers can also get 15% off all books from Cru Singapore’s online store with the coupon code “READ15”.
