Tuesday 7 June 2016

Sharing your Faith // Part 2: Strangers

Sophie sharing the gospel with a complete stranger 

Hi everyone!

My name is Sophie and I am Bonnie’s little sister. Bonnie asked me to do a guest post here on her blog about how you share the gospel to strangers. Let me start by saying, I am NOT an expert at this! Every time I step out of my comfort zone to speak to someone I am nervous. "Will this person reject it? Will they even listen to me? What if they have questions I can’t answer?’ The questions always fill my head. So if you feel nervous at the thought of sharing your faith, don’t worry - you are not the only one!

There are many ways you can share your faith and different people find different ways that suit them and the person that they are talking to best. I am NOT saying any other ways are wrong, but this is how I have learnt to do it. 

So anyway I believe that you can’t understand why you need a Saviour if you don’t realize that you are a sinner. Imagine someone saying to you ‘someone has just come and paid your $10,000 speeding fine! You are free now!’ That just wouldn’t make sense to you unless they said it this way, ‘you were just caught speeding at 80 km per hour when the speed limit was just 30 km per hour due to road works, and so you have been given a $10,000 speeding fine. But the good news is that someone else is offering to pay your fine for you, all you have to do is accept it.’ 

That would make a lot more sense to you wouldn’t it?

The 'Good Person Test' flip chart and Sophie in action at the Christchurch A and P show

To present the gospel, I use a flip chart created by a chap named Ray Comfort. He was originally from Christchurch, New Zealand, although he now lives in America (have a look at his website where he has a whole lot of great resources!). He has a great autobiography called "Out of the Comfort Zone".

The flipchart is called the Good Person Test and works like this.

The first few pages of the chart are from the Ten Commandments i.e. Do not lie, Do not steal, Do not murder (and did you know that 1 John 3:15 says that even if you just hate someone it is the same as murdering them in your heart) etc… and it shows them that they, like me, have fallen short of God’s standard (Romans 3:23). Then on the next page of the flip chart we explain how on judgement day God will find us guilty and we will have to bear our punishment of eternal separation from God in Hell (and remember that God is good, Psalm 119:68 and Psalm 107:1, so that means that there will be nothing good in Hell). God would love to forgive us and let us into Heaven anyway but he can’t as justice must be done.

Then on the last page, the picture of the cross, I explain that God sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross (and then on the third day Jesus defeated death and rose back to life) for your sins- and all the punishment that you deserved was poured onto him. 

Imagine it this way, you are a murderer and you are standing in court and you know that you can’t pay the punishment but then someone walks into the court room that has never done anything against the judge and they offer to pay your punishment for you. But it is an offer, that person will only pay your punishment if you want them to, so you have to accept their offer. It is just like that with Jesus, you have to accept his offer of eternal life (Acts 16:31). 

But what is interesting about that word, ‘believe’ in this verse is that it actually also means ‘to repent’ or ‘to trust in.’ So we must say sorry (and really mean it) and give our lives (trust in) to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

If you think about the question, ‘does God exist’ you will find it is a very important question. I like to say it this way, “find out for yourself if God is real, and then if he wasn’t real it wouldn’t have done you any harm, but if his is real (which he is) it will completely change your life and I hate to think what would have happened to you if you had waited till judgement day to find that out.”

To start with you may only feel comfortable with handing out tracts, but that is a great start! I have heard of several people’s lives being changed through a gospel tract. Or you may feel more comfortable and sit down beside someone on a park bench or somewhere and get chatting to them.

You will be amazed at how open and willing to talk most people generally are. As I said before there are many ways you can do it, but the key to evangelism is not the impressive words or even what you say, the key is prayer. 

Without the Lord’s help I know that I would never be able to do evangelism, I am too much of a shy person. I have often found though that when I am stuck for something to say, that a phrase or word will pop into my head that was the perfect thing to say to that person right at that time that I would never have thought of myself, I know that it is God who tells me at those moments what to say.

So anyway, a big thanks to Bonnie for asking me to do this guest post and I want to encourage you all to find a friend or someone and together go and find someone to share your faith to! And just think how awesome it will be when one day we get to Heaven we find that there are other people in Heaven that are there because you obeyed the Lord’s prompting, stepped out of your comfort zone and took the time to explain the gospel to them!


About the author // Sophie
I am a 15 year old sister to Bonnie and soon to be 9 other siblings. I am currently studying Biblical Hebrew part-time at Laidlaw College along with being homeschooled. I love evangelism, learning Hebrew, spending time with my family, baking, reading books, board games and card games, Bonnie’s bad jokes and having lots of fun!



Note from Bonnie: Thank you to Sophie for her awesome guest post! :) And by the way, just for clarification, my jokes aren't bad..... :P

15 comments:

  1. What a wonderful post! I appreciate this so much, as I have been trying to work on sharing the gospel more, and it's even harder with strangers!

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    1. Hey Emily!
      I am so thrilled to read this, I was hoping that this post might be a bit of encouragement to someone. :)
      I have always found it really hard also, but the joy I get when I am talking to someone and I realize that they understand what I am saying, they just really get it! It just makes all the effort worth it! In someways I feel it is easier talking to strangers than friends as I don't mind it so much if they are secretly judging me as I will probably never see that person again, but for a friend I am (though I know I shouldn't) often worried about what they think about me.
      But with friends you are still in contact with them and so it would be a lot easier to disciple them in their newly started walk with Christ. Whereas it isn't often you can keep in contact with the strangers that you witness too. So it goes both ways I guess. :)
      Blessings,
      Sophie

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    2. I probably should have clarified. ;) I feel the same way, that sometimes actually talking to strangers is easier than to your friends, but for me, finding what to say to strangers was always harder than to your friends. So thank you for this post!

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  2. Great post!! I like the twist picture. :D

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    1. Hey Kiley,
      Glad you enjoyed it. :)
      The twist picture? Do you mean the second picture with me on the flip chart and the word Liar disguised as a face?
      I think it is pretty clever too. :)
      Blessings,
      Sophie

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  3. Great post Sophie. I can now add some more ideas to talk about when I out talking to people.

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    1. Hi Timothy,
      I love reading articles like this from different people for that reason. Everything I say I heard from someone at some point and thought, 'that is a really great way to put it, I will remember that.' It is the best way to learn something.
      Blessings,
      Sophie

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  4. I really appreciated this post! It had a lot of valuable information for me. :)

    You're learning Hebrew? My family and I are, too, only we're doing modern Hebrew. Is there a specific reason you are learning it? A while back my Dad, sister, and I started learning Biblical Greek, but that sort of died out because we didn't have much time and also we weren't using it as much as conversational Hebrew, which we're starting to speak around the house.

    Rachel M.

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    1. Hi Rachel,
      I am so glad! :)
      Really? Wow that is cool! It is a bit of a long story but here it is, so actually I have really wanted to go and do this trip to Israel that I have in mind but you have to be 18. So I thought maybe I would learn a bit of modern Hebrew before hand. The only thing was that I couldn't find anywhere that I could learn it that wasn't too expensive. Then I started looking at learning Biblical Hebrew at Laidlaw College. I thought I would find it really interesting learning one of the Bibles original languages and also I have been told that it is not too hard to learn modern after Biblical but it is a lot harder to go the other way around. I also thought that if I do this paper at Laidlaw it will count as a Uni subject for me and I had been needing another one to do for this semester. So it has all worked out and I have been really enjoying it. :)
      It would be fun to have your family all learning a language at once and so be able to practice on each other.
      Blessings,
      Sophie

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  5. Sophie, thank you so much for sharing!!! Ray Comfort is an incredible evangelist. I love watching how he shares the Gospel without fear of what the listener will think. I have never shared my faith face-to-face with someone...I don't know if I haven't had the opportunity or if I've been too scared. My family has handed out Gospel tracks and left them sitting in obvious places for finders though. =) That is a fun (and easy) way to share Jesus' love! Another blessing of the 21st century is social media! I have been able to encourage, witness, and lift up people around me - people I might otherwise never meet in person. =)

    Thank you for sharing your testimony of what God has done in your life. =) I appreciate knowing that you too experience fear, but God helps you overcome it!

    ~Hosanna Emily

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  6. Hi Hosanna,
    Yes, I find it really powerful.
    Our family does that a bit too! Even before I started doing evangelism routinely I used to do some tract planting and I still do. I have a pile of these million dollar tracts (have you heard of them?) that I like to randomly hand to people down the street, I just love seeing the look of astonishment on that person's face when they receive one!
    My sister Danella paints stones with beautiful scenes and writes Bible verses on them, we often leave these stones around for others to find also. :)
    Social media is a good way I agree, though I confess I don't use it for that purpose that much.
    Blessings,
    Sophie

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    1. Yes, we have used million dollar bills before. =) It's fun to see the expressions on people's faces when we hand them "money." =) Your other ideas sound wonderful as well! How fun to think of creative ways to share the Gospel! =)

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  7. This is such a great post, Sophie! Thank you so much for sharing your great tips!

    Sarah
    http://mybowsandclothes.blogspot.com

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    1. Hi Sarah,
      It is awfully sweet of you to say so! :)
      Blessings,
      Sophie

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