witnessing...what does that even mean??

the concept of witnessing has always been just out of my grasp. it honestly has never been something that i have been passionate about. i am passionate about many many things, but witnessing? it's always been one of those things that if i'm in the right moment, with the right person, and they bring up my faith, then sure i'm more than happy to talk about Jesus with them. but as far as just going out and talking to random people on the street about believing in God? i mean, come on now, i don't want to be a radical, right? so i thought.

God has really been working with my heart on this topic and i feel like everytime i turn around i'm hearing about how important it is to witness to others. first of all, i am very fortunate to have come from a christian family background. i was raised in church, my mom was the sunday school teacher and we were literally in the church every time the doors were open. i mean literally...my mom cleaned the church during the week too, so sometimes she was the one to open those doors herself. i remember when i was little and my mom would be at the church cleaning, sometimes, i would go into the sanctuary and just sit in the front pew. you know nobody ever sat in the front pew....baptists like to see how far away from the front they can get. so the front pew was always a mystery. i felt a little rebellious i guess. haha. but i would just sit there, and listen to how quiet it was. and sometimes i would grab a hymnal (another thing that was cool about the front pew was that the hymnals were hidden UNDER the pew. HA! how cool was that?!) and i would go up to the pulpit and ask my imaginary congregation to turn to page so and so. and i would sing one of my favorite hymns, leading my devoted followers with the arms a waving and everything. i can still picture that little free will baptist sanctuary. i can still close my eyes and walk through every square inch of that entire building. the lobby, the office, the hallway, the sunday school room with the felt board that my mom told the Bible story on, the nursery, up my favorite little ramp to the fellowship hall, which had another beloved stage of mine. the back lobby where i watched our pastor kill a snake one night. the kitchen that had the cool swinging door, more sunday school rooms, the stairs to the mysterious upstairs apartment that for some reason i never went into, and then the steps going down outside leading to the playground. and the huge tree right in front of those steps. the parking lot that my brother drove me in circles in when he was learning how to drive. the front lawn where i rode my first pony on some kind of family fun day or something. the neighborhood behind the church that for some reason i swore tim mcgraw lived in...i have no idea where that came from. anyway.....back to my point....i spent so much time in that church. and i learned so many Bible stories and i'm so glad that i learned so many hymns there. so many of my friends don't know any of the old hymns we used to sing and i consider some of those my favorite worship songs. i learned how we are supposed to go and make disciples of all nations. and not only at franklin free will baptist did i learn that, but i also learned it many many more times throughout the years. at our new home church, grassland heights, at church camp, at youth group. but just like so many other things about the Bible, i knew it, but it just never clicked.

even now, as we've been searching for just the right church, i think about all the criteria that i look for in a church. do they sing the way i want them to sing, does the preacher speak about things that i think are relevant, do they have the kind of kids program i'm looking for? i wanted sermons that made me feel good, that gave me the warm fuzzies, that made me cry. that made me think about my life and how i could make it better and gave me more ways that i could live for God more. which are all good, valid things to look for. but i was missing the most important part. does the church care about reaching the least of those. are they focused on reaching out to the people that aren't like us, to the people that have never heard of Jesus. are they passionate about equipping their members with the knowledge and the faith to go OUTSIDE of the church building and lead others to God.

because you see, church is not about me! i shouldn't go to church so that i can get my God fix for the week. i should be doing that everyday on my own. i shouldn't go to church so that the pastor can make me feel good after a hard week. i need to go to church, and look around me, and ask, "how can i give back? who can i minister this week? who needs encouragement? who needs to be lifted up in prayer?" we go to church to have fellowhip with other believers, to learn how to reach others through the word of God. to equip each other with the courage to talk to someone we don't know, or someone that we do know. sometimes that's harder. Christianity is not about me. Christianity is first about God, giving back to God what He deserves for being so mighty and powerful and infinitely gracious. second, Christianity is about others. serving others. and lastly, Christianity is about me.

you see, i've always felt like i wasn't "ready" to witness. i felt like i had too much baggage, too many things wrong with me. i needed to get my heart in the right place before i could witness to others. but the truth is, i am human. i am a sinner, deserving death but saved through grace from a merciful God. and i will never have it right. i will never be in a position deserving of leading someone else to Christ. but that doesn't matter. God tells us to go. When God tells us something, he's not just giving us a recommendation. When your mom walks by and says, "my, your room sure is dirty." she's not just giving you information. she's telling you, you have one last chance to clean it up before she starts throwing everything in there away. when God "mentions" something in the Bible, he's not just giving us a suggestion on how to live, or his opinion on what we should do. He is giving us a command. and we are called to be obedient. in acts 18, paul is ministering to the Jews, and he's facing opposition from them. finally, he gets angry and throws up his hands and kind of throws a little fit. in our terms, he says, "fine. i'm done. i tried to tell you, but if you dont want to listen that's your fault. i've done my part, and if you want to ignore it, i can't help you." and God comes to him in a dream and reassure him. he tells him not to be afraid and reminds him to keep on speaking and not to be silent. because God is with him, and he's got paul's back. then paul is taken to trial by the jews. they are charging him with disrupting the community by trying to get them to believe in things against their law. and before paul even opens his mouth to defend himself, the judge stops the jews and tells them that he is not even going to listen to their charges because paul has not commited any kind of crime. so many times we are scared to talk to people about Jesus because we are afraid of what people will think, what they will do to us. will they make fun of us? worse, will they completely reject us and not be our friends anymore? but this passage in acts reminds us that if we are just obedient to God and do what he asks us, he will provide us with the words, and he will provide us with the allies when we need them. he will bring us the support. we just have to be obedient. i was lucky to have grown up knowing about God. but i try to put myself in someone else's shoes. if i had not been raised the way i was, and i had never heard about Jesus, and i had a life filled with so many bad and awful things, and someone took their time to step out of their comfort zone to tell me about a God who can save me from my past and heal me of my wounds. i would be so thankful for that person. i would be so grateful that that person stepped out of their nice clean church building and came and found me on the street and told me about the good news. how could i then sit in that nice clean church week after week, without trying to find someone i could help.

there are people dying out in the world, everyday. there are people that will never ever know of the saving grace that God provides. and we are sitting still, doing nothing to help those people. all because we want to come to church so that we can feel good and go home with warm fuzzies because God loves us. how selfish is that?! our bodies and our spirits are exactly where Jesus abides. our lives are where Jesus lives. i bet you anything, if i had the queen of england staying at my house while she was visiting america, i would be out telling every last person i saw that she was at my house. God is at my house!! i should be proud to share that. i should want everybody i meet to know that God lives with me and if you want, you can come see for yourself! most of us are lucky to have learned about Jesus at a young age. but for those of you that didn't. those of you that had a hard life, and you didn't find God until after you had been through so much heartache and pain and you were headed down a path of destruction. and you know what...really, all of us. we were all headed down a road of destruction. we were all going straight to hell in a handbasket. it doesnt matter if you had a hard life or not, we are all sinners and we were all dead in our sins. so, aren't you glad that whoever it was that led you to Christ, was there for you. why should we hold that back from anyone else?

the best example that i have seen in my life lately is my own husband. justin absolutely blows me away sometimes. he comes home almost everyday and tells me about who he talked to about Jesus today. he is surrounded with men that either don't have a clue about God, or who have pushed God so far out of their lives. either they've been hurt, or something tragic has happened in their life, or their parents pushed God down their throats so hard that they are totally against any kind of religion now. and he finds a way to talk to at least one person, seriously almost every single day. and he will be the first to tell you that he doesnt have all the answers. he is so humble in his faith, yet, he takes the step out there. people that he works with, that he has to face everyday. there is a chance that they would never speak to him again because they know he's a christian. but he doesn't care. he wants them to know the truth. and more often than not, those men are receptive. they respect him and they want to know why he believes what he believes. and a few have even come back to him and asked questions and brought the subject up on their own. my husband teaches me so much, because witnessing is an area in which i really struggle. i am the kind of person that wants everybody to like me, i don't like confrontation and i dont like answering hard questions. but i'm learning that God will provide the words when I dont know what to say. if i'm truly sharing with the right reasons, and i'm relying on God to get me through it, he will! the pastor at church was telling a story about a time when he was in an airport, and he was talking to a lady about kids and she had said somethings that struck him because they were not the same things that the Bible says. and the whole time he was sitting there talking to her, he was asking God how he could turn their conversation around and bring Jesus up. and it blew me away. not one time in my life have i been having a normal conversation and tried to think of how i could bring up Jesus. not once. if Jesus is brought up, i could talk all day. but to take a normal conversation and use it to share the gospel? that thought was unreal to me. but really, that's what we should be doing.

what on earth could be more important to talk about than where and with whom we will spend eternity. i am so glad that someone cared enough to take me to church when i was a week old. i'm so glad that someone cared enough to take me to church, even when i didn't want to go. and i'm so glad that so many people in my life cared enough to be obedient to the call, and share what they knew about Jesus with me. And i'm glad that they care enough to still teach me and hold me accountable. why wouldn't a friend, or someone i know, or even a stranger deserve that same care from me? who am i to be so selfish, as to worry about my comfort level and not just talk to them. it's just talking. if they reject me, that's ok. it's not going to matter in the end how many friends i have. what is going to matter, is did i do my job? because after all, Christianity is not about me.