Communicate your faith — to others — proactively. God needs people who see the critical need of our time to stem the tide of anti-Christian thought we are being deluged with and who do something about it. Let’s take a look at what it means to communicate your faith to others, proactively.
com·mu·ni·cate
verb kə-ˈmyü-nə-ˌkāt
: to give information about (something) to someone by speaking, writing, moving your hands, etc.
: to get someone to understand your thoughts or feelings
You can communicate verbally and non-verbally. You already communicate non-verbally through your lifestyle. People see how you live, how you handle situations that arise, and what you are ‘into.’ We all know that children learn more from watching you than from listening to you, especially before they’ve learned language. What you believe is communicated in how you act and what you do. Deeds (what you do) are the evidence of what you truly believe.
But that’s only half the story. Nobody is going to confess Jesus is Lord and believe God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9) if they don’t know who Jesus Christ is, what he came for, why he was crucified, and that God did indeed raise him from the dead. Those facts have to be communicated with words. Often Christians shy away from sharing their faith with words because they fear what people will think of them.
We have to get over these insecurities and get more proactive. We need to communicate our faith with words — the Word of God. In II Corinthians 5, God says he has given to us (Christians) the ministry of reconciling others to him. To do the job he has committed the Word of reconciliation to us. Read it for yourself!
pro·ac·tive
[proh-ak-tiv] adjective
We are at a critical point in the history of our world. People are forsaking Christianity for other alternatives at a rapid rate. Church attendance has been slipping for several decades now and nobody seems to know the answer to reverse the situation. I suggest several things that could reverse the situation rapidly.
1) Communicate How Relevant the Bible is Today
2) Make a Personal Stake In Your Spheres of Influence
3) Take Daily Action to Do Your Part
Let’s take a brief look at each of these.
Communicate How Relevant the Bible is Today
Sometimes we think of the Bible as a history book, sometimes as great literature, and sometimes as a source of daily inspiration. It’s much more than that. The Bible shares practical, relevant knowledge. Not only does it give a history of mankind and the world, but it gives us everything we need to understand what’s going on around us today. It gives us wisdom for daily living and it also tells us about the future. Had God not wanted us to think about the future, then he wouldn’t have included so much about it in the Bible. The Bible is relevant today and we need to both learn that and communicate it.
Make a Personal Stake in Your Spheres of Influence
You’ve no-doubt heard the phrase, “I’ll stake my life on it.” What does that really mean? The phrase comes from the military. In the times when they fought hand-to-hand with swords and other implements of war, a soldier would often take a wooden stake and pound it into the ground. He’d then take a rope and tie it around that stake and around his waste. He’d stay within that circle and defend his ground. He was ‘staking his life’ on defending that bit of ground. He would be responsible to take care of anyone or anything that entered that space.
We need to make a personal stake in our own spheres of influence. If you consider your home as your central location area, and you were to mentally draw a circle around it to include your neighborhood, that could be your staked-out area. You could make yourself responsible to communicate your faith proactively to everyone you meet in your staked out area.
You can do this with your job location, your leisure location, and everywhere you spend any amount of time.
Take Daily Action to Do Your Part
Seldom does a day go by that you could be speaking to someone about your faith in a inviting, positive way. Take advantage of who the Lord brings into your path each day and plant seeds that can bring forth fruit. Each encounter doesn’t have to be a heavy one-on-one session explaining deep biblical truths. Just a statement here and there is sometimes all it takes to spark interest or as I say, plant a seed that can later germinate. I often do this sort of witnessing and when someone responds by asking questions or commenting, I can go deeper at their invitation. In this way I’m proactive but not aggressive.
Being proactive means to do something before something bad happens. Are we not aware that if someone does not believe they are in a bad situation? They are, as the Bible says in Ephesians 2, “without God and without hope in this world.” We have the words of life and can help them out of that dilemma with our Lord’s help.
Our enemy, the devil, is very aggressive in promoting his plans. He’s got his minions doing his will with fervor all day, every day, throughout the world. Passive Christianity will not do anything near enough to meet that spiritually-military offensive. Only when Christians get bold enough to communicate their faith proactively will we be able to increase the impact of Christ in culture.
I encourage you to communicate your faith proactively whenever the opportunity arises. God will give you wisdom as you act. He’ll be there for you and will strengthen you and give you the words to speak, in love.
Now go speak God’s Word!