Highlight: Sharing our faith with confidence
Sharing our faith can be intimidating, but it’s important to remember that God is using us as a vessel to point others towards the love of Jesus Christ.
“I am the most important person they know, because I’m the one who knows Jesus.”
Rico Tice shares 4 helpful tips and advice on sharing our faith with skeptics, seekers and non-believers: Celebrate, serve, ask and exit.
Celebrate people.
God intentionally places people along our paths on a daily basis who have yet to experience the love of Christ. Rico reminds us that we are given opportunities on a daily basis to celebrate people and share our faith with them.
“The basic thing is to celebrate people. First of all, God has sovereignly put the people around us that are there. So my next door neighbor, my work colleague, etc., they are not there by chance; they are there because the Creator of the world has put them there, and they’re there to be reached.”
When we believe that God is using us in this way, it will give us more confidence to reach out to our neighbors with the love of Christ. A way to celebrate our neighbors is to ask them questions; this will allow us to get to know them on a deeper level.
Serve them.
By taking the time to reach out to our neighbors, we will be able to find out what is really going on in their lives and identify how we can best serve them as Christ’s ambassadors.
“What are the pressures in their lives? You do that by making sure you have time to stop and ask questions. Time and again our schedules don’t give us the leeway to stop and find out what’s happening in their lives; how can we pray for them, but also how can we serve.”
Ask tough questions.
Have you ever had that gut feeling to ask someone a personal question, but hesitate because it might offend them? Rico refers to this feeling as having the ‘painline’ issue.
“The easiest painline to cross is ‘Do you celebrate Christmas?’ Ask them along to your Christmas gathering, that’s what we tend to do here in England.”
As we find out about their life, we are encouraged to ask questions that might be more difficult. Rico shares a personal example,
“There is a girl on my street with a very bad back and I say, hey Lynn, what happens if the back doesn’t get better? What are you going to do then? That’s a painline; I’m trying to help her draw out a contrast between Christian contentment that is internal, and human happiness that is all about externals. I’m saying in Christ you can find that contentment.”
Asking tough questions can open up the door for sharing the hope of Christ with others.
Exit.
When sharing our faith with others, it’s important to recognize if the person we are talking to has an open heart or not. Rico elaborates,
“If they say nothing then you say nothing, but if they talk you – go and ask questions.”
By remembering these evangelism techniques, we will be able to confidently share our faith on a daily basis and introduce others to the love of Jesus Christ.
Rico Tice is Senior Minister of Evangelism at All Souls Church, Langham Place in London. As a passionate evangelist, he spent years developing the Christianity Explored course.
