Session 6 / Sharing Your Faith

Hey everybody, let's get into session number six now. We're going to talk about sharing your faith. I love this topic, and it's one of the most powerful things that we do as a follower of Christ. Let me begin by reading what we oftentimes now call the Great Commission. I've referenced it before, but let me read this whole thing together. Matthew chapter 28, starting in verse 16, it says this, I love this passage, and this gives us one of those kind of big picture mandates in the Word of God. If you're going, okay, what's my purpose? What's my calling? Well, every single one of us that follow Christ have purpose and identity that we can find in this passage. And here we see that Jesus is now, he's lived his life on earth. He did what he came to do, which was to die on the cross to pay for the sin of humanity and to ransom us. I love that term, by the way, to ransom us. It basically means to aggressively take back. Jesus, with his own life on that cross, aggressively took us back from the grip of the enemy so we could find life and freedom. So now he's died on the cross, but not only died on the cross for our sin, he rose from the dead three days later. He conquered hell and the grave, and that's what the Bible says, where, oh, death is your sting. Where, oh, grave is your victory. Jesus has triumphed over all of that. Now he reigns supreme. He is the king of heaven and earth, and here we are in this midst now, we're getting directives from Jesus, and Jesus says, okay, listen, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Now it's your turn. Now, tag, you're it. I need you to go into all the world. I need you to make disciples. This is why it's called this great commission. It's this massive commission and mandate that Jesus has given every single one of us to go and extend the message of the gospel, the good news. If you've not heard, what does that term mean? A lot of times you hear people talk about preaching the gospel or sharing the gospel. The gospel means good news. So you and me have been called upon to share the good news. What is the good news? People may be describing it in various different ways, but the good news is that even though my sin had separated me from God, even though I was distant from the God who loved me because of my sin, the good news is God wouldn't keep it that way. God wasn't going to settle for a distance with us. The good news is that he sent his son, Jesus, to pay the price for the sin that I owed, the debt that I owed. He paid that price for me and for you. Because of that, he's washed away all of our sin. He has forgiven us of all of that, and now we get to come close to God. That's the good news. I don't have to stay distant from God anymore. My sin doesn't have to be counted against me anymore. That is some good news. We all get to have a close relationship with God and spend eternity with him for those of us who follow him. We've been called upon to fulfill this great commission, this sharing of our faith. That's why this chapter is called Share Your Faith. The session is going to lean into that.

We've all been called to do this. Maybe sometimes you've heard of Share Your Faith as this concept of evangelism. You're trying to evangelize. You're trying to get this word out to people. You're trying to bring people into the family of God. Sometimes I think that word evangelism, what does that mean? What does it mean to be an evangelist or to evangelize or to share your story? I think there's a great story in the book of Mark where Jesus goes across the Sea of Galilee and he comes across somebody who's been just massively tormented by the enemy. He sets him free. He literally went from being kind of an enraged, kind of demon-possessed person to completely set free. His life has been transformed by this encounter with Jesus. You know what he wants to do? When Jesus and the disciples are leaving, he wants to go with them. That seems like, it doesn't make sense, man. You've just been massively impacted by this Jesus who's just literally saved you and set you free. Now you want to go with him? go with him. But Jesus says something really interesting, and I really believe I think there's a great story in the book of Mark where Jesus goes across the Sea of Galilee and he comes across somebody who's been just massively tormented by the enemy. He sets him free. He literally went from being kind of an enraged, kind of demon-possessed person to completely it's a great clue into what does it mean for you and me to really share our faith. set free. He literally went from being kind of an enraged, kind of demon-possessed person to completely set free. He literally went from being kind of an enraged, kind of demon-possessed person to completely In Mark chapter 5 verse 19 it says, go home. This is Jesus telling this

man who's been set free, he wants to come with Jesus, but he actually says to him, go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. I love this because this just kind of simply describes, if I was to say to you, hey, I want you to share your faith, I want you to evangelize, I want you to get in your world and share your faith, you might be like, okay, how do I do that? Well, simply, it's in this verse, is just tell people how much God has done in your life. That would be like a simple way to describe evangelism or sharing your faith, is just telling people how much that he's done for you. You might go, I don't know all the words to say, I didn't go to Bible college, I'm telling you, you don't need any of that. If Jesus has impacted you, if you were away from him and now all of a sudden you find yourself having given your life to Christ and now you're following him, you found grace, you found freedom, you found hope, that's what you begin to tell people. And as you follow Jesus, you're actually gonna find your life begins to transform and people ask you, what's different? And you begin to share with them this hope, you begin to tell them, you begin to show them, what does it mean and what does this look like to really follow him and get to know him. So you begin to share that story of how he's had grace on you, how he's had mercy on you, how he's shown up in your world and when you do that, then you begin to get to tell the story of the transformation that happened in your life. You don't have to have some official kind of credentials or something memorized, just tell the story. And I oftentimes think of it like this, just don't ignore the God part of your life when people are interacting with you. You know, it's a little bit like when you're at a grocery store and the clerk says, hey, you know, what'd you do this weekend? Or how was your weekend? You know, you could comment on Friday and Saturday and just kind of leave out the fact that you had a great time in church with your friends and you were spending time in the presence of God and there was a great word that impacted you and challenged you. You know, you could talk about that or leave that out. Those are like just little simple ways to just naturally engage God into your world and into your conversations and tell people

how much it's done in your life. Tell people the impact that it's had in your world. So when it comes to sharing our faith, I would say there's kind of two big ways that we can really see people who don't yet know Jesus really come to a relationship with God. There's two kind of primary ways. One is that you, maybe in your workplace, in your neighborhood, in your school, wherever you're at, you're interacting with somebody and you begin to talk to them about what Jesus has done. They're asking questions, you're kind of leading them in faith. You get to that place where you can now lead them to Christ and I'll talk about that in a little bit. That would be a way that you're introducing them to Christ and you're sharing your faith. Another kind of main way as well is that as you're going to church and you're encountering God in those church settings, you can invite people along with you to come with you to church. Sit with them, hang out with them, spend time together and in those church settings where it just there's that kind of electricity and you know kind of that presence of God that just in those moments when you're in worship together, you're hearing the Word of God preached and you bring your friend in those settings and they get a chance to encounter Jesus in that way as well. So I want to encourage you, not only do you want to be bold in yourself to share your faith and lead people to Jesus, but also you want to invite people to come with you to church. That's another great way to experience Christ. And maybe at the beginning you're a little nervous to personally lead somebody to Christ. Start with by just, hey come to church with me. I'll tell you what, it'll change your life. You know, share what God's done, share the experience you've had, invite people with you, but begin to grow in your faith of telling people what God's done in your life so they can begin to have that their same encounter with Christ. You know, I use this word kind of leading people to Christ or sharing your faith, sharing your testimony, because ultimately you and me can't make somebody follow Christ. We can't make somebody have an encounter with God. What we're doing is leading people to Jesus. What we're doing is giving our testimony. The reason why sometimes you'll talk about that or use that phrase of testifying or you giving

your testimony about what Jesus has done in your life, because it's literally like a witness stand. You and me are called to be a testimony, to testify, or to be a of Jesus on earth. And so what does a witness do? When you're questioned, you respond by answering the questions. When someone says, where were you? What did you do? When they're questioning you on a witness stand, you simply respond by telling your truthful, honest, firsthand account of that situation. Same way when it comes to my relationship with Jesus, I've encountered him, I know him, I've experienced the presence of God in my life. So my witness or my testimony or my sharing of my faith is not me being able to regurgitate or memorize every single scripture in the Bible and just be kind of a machine gun, like quoting a bunch of scriptures. That's a part of it, learning the word of God and helping them understand what Jesus has done. But first and foremost, it's just me testifying. It's me sharing my firsthand account of Jesus impacting my life. And every single one of us can do that. You might be not sure what all to say, start by just telling people what Jesus has done in your life

and watch how that begins to transform. In this chapter, I go through several key scriptures that helps lead people to Christ. I wanna encourage you to memorize these verses so that in moments where somebody's inquiring about it, wanting to know more about Jesus, wanting to know how do they get saved or how do they come into that relationship with God, you can kind of help them walk through it. It also gives you kind of a little bit of an overview of how do you help somebody understand that they've got a loving father who loved them and created them, but that sin separated them and there's a price that has to be paid for that sin. And Jesus is the one who paid the price and now we have to surrender our life to him, receive that free gift of salvation and then we get to walk in that freedom. That just kind of simple little thing I said is kind of a few key scriptures that you can read in here that actually help you unpack a leading somebody to Christ. That way they have that chance to encounter God in their own life. And I wanna encourage you as you bring people to church and they come to Christ, as you're sharing your faith with somebody

and they give their life to Christ right in the moment, I have some great kind of scriptures and prayers that you can help people walk through as they're making that decision to follow Jesus, but it's not an official prayer that saves people, it's a heart decision that somebody makes to say, I'm gonna follow Christ, I'm gonna be all in in my relationship with God, I'm tired of doing it my own way, I'm gonna turn and follow Jesus. And when you help your friends and family members and people in your world come to that place, it will set an unbelievable excitement and fire on the inside of you. If you feel like maybe you've gotten stagnant or a little bit lukewarm in your faith, make a decision, you're gonna start inviting and bring it. Like right now, maybe you write down one, two, three names of people that need Jesus that are not connected to him, people you're gonna share your faith with and people that you're gonna commit, hey, this week, I'm gonna commit to invite these friends to church with me. Maybe they'll say yes, maybe they won't, but keep inviting, keep bringing because you and me have the good news, we've got the hope that is only found in Jesus.

Imagine if there was an epidemic, like a virus outbreak in the world and it was literally killing people at a massive rate, but you had come upon the antidote, you had figured it out. Wouldn't you try to get that antidote to as many people as possible, sharing it or do you hold it and hide it and keep it to yourself? I know for me, I'm sure you would too, you'd be trying to broadcast it, you'd be trying to let everybody know, you'd be jumping on your social media, you'd be, hey, listen, come find me, I've got the cure, I've got the answer, I've got the antidote, I found it. And you know what, that's the reality of the world we live in. Sin is literally like a plague and a disease that is destroying people's lives, but you and me have the antidote, we have Jesus Christ, we have the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they don't have to stay in their sin, they don't have to stay in their brokenness, they don't have to have an eternity in hell away from God, they can find hope and life in Jesus. So come on, let's tell our story, let's lead people to Christ, let's invite people to church,

let's pack our cars full and bring people to that place where they can have an opportunity to encounter Christ in their own life.