Every now and then God will bring someone across our path and the Holy Spirit will whisper in our hearts, “That one – go and bless that one,” and the bridges we build, He ends up walking across.

The Problem with Freedom

There’s more than one thing that makes a Christian different from, say, being a practicing Jew or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim but one thing that does set Christians apart is that somehow they want to convert people to their faith. See most other religions aren’t quite so proactive about this thing that Christians call ‘evangelism’.

It goes right back to one of the last things that Jesus said to His disciples. He said, ‘Go on, go and make disciples of all people – here at home, just over the border and even to the ends of the earth.’ So most Christians see the whole ‘evangelism’ thing as being more than just being an optional extra but so often we don’t know how or when or even if we should – maybe we should leave it to the experts and then all of a sudden, a lot of us get the ‘guilts’ and what’s supposed to be freedom starts feeling like a burden.

Some people find the whole ‘evangelism’ thing just so easy. I mean, you look at Billy Graham, right, I mean the guy just had an amazing gift to evangelise. You hear about the big rallies by well known evangelists across Africa with hundreds of thousands of people coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Great! But you don’t have to be a big name to be doing those sorts of things. Actually, God wants to use plain, ordinary everyday people … people just like you and me to share His love with those who don’t yet know Jesus.

I remember my very first church, a decade and a half ago. There was an elderly couple by the name of Peter and Ruth. They had this amazing gift – you know, Ruth, who at that time was well into her sixties, would sit down at a bus stop and someone else would sit down next to her at the bus stop and as sure as God made little green apples, Ruth would end up talking to this person about Jesus, and more often than not, this person would come to faith in Jesus Christ.

I remember them telling me a story. They were travelling right around the country in a caravan and one night they stayed at a caravan park and they were the only caravan in this massive caravan park. At about ten o’clock at night another caravan came in and of all the places this caravan could have picked to go they parked right next to Peter and Ruth’s caravan. And Peter and Ruth went, ‘Aw, why are they doing this? You know we just want peace and quiet.’

Anyhow, they got talking to this couple in the other caravan; turns out they were going through deep marital problems. Peter and Ruth spent all night talking to them, led them to faith in Jesus Christ. The couple, now all these years on, have a wonderful marriage and a wonderful life together.

You know, some people like Peter and Ruth just seem to be able to do this stuff in a way maybe you and I aren’t gifted to do. And sure, it’s right that God gives some people a really special ability. The Apostle Paul writes that some people have gifts as apostles or prophets or evangelists or pastors or teachers – then we think, ‘Oh! Phew, I’m off the hook! Then I will definitely leave this stuff to the experts.’

But you know that the thing that we talked about where Jesus said, ‘Go … go and make disciples of all the people on the planet.’ He said that to the eleven remaining disciples just before He ascended back into heaven and each of those eleven had different giftings. Peter was gifted as a leader – it was Andrew who was the evangelist who brought people to Jesus and so on.

They all had different gifts and different abilities, yet Jesus gave the Great Commission – to go and make disciples of all nations – to each one of them, not just to Andrew but to all eleven. Agh … and I thought I was off the hook!!

And that in a sense is the problem; the dilemma with this freedom that Jesus hands us. On the one hand He tells us, “I’ve come to set the captives free – I’ve come to give sight to the blind; I’ve come to bind up the broken hearted,’ and we take that and we say, ‘Thank You, God, thank You, Jesus for doing that for me’. But then He seems to hang this ‘evangelism’ burden around our necks and it can weigh heavily indeed.

It certainly did with me! And you know, with me, the really embarrassing thing; the thing I was most ashamed about was that I’m the person who talks on hundreds of radio stations around the world; I’m the person who gets up at churches, large and small, and preaches the Gospel, yet I found it hard to share my faith; to share Jesus with people, one on one. And so the devil put a real guilt trip on me about that and I decided I can’t live under guilt and condemnation and so I decided to have a really good read of what God says on this subject. Because guilt and condemnation – let me tell you this – if you feel this; if you have this sense about, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to share Jesus with others, I don’t think I’m any good – I really should be’ … if you are living under guilt and condemnation I can tell you one thing, absolutely for certain, that it’s not from God because God doesn’t give us guilt. God doesn’t condemn us – that stuff comes from the devil.

What God does when He wants us to change something in our lives, is He speaks to us through someone or something in a way that it lifts us up; in a way that we go, ‘You know, I want to do this, I want to be part of that. That sounds like it’s from God.’ So this guilt and condemnation trip is something the devil is putting on us. Don’t believe it; don’t have anything to do with it because it’s not something that comes from God.

And when I figured out God’s plan, what I discovered was where I had a guilt trip, all of a sudden, I had the joy and the freedom to share my Jesus with other people. And so I have put together a bunch of programmes looking at this whole subject of sharing Jesus with others, from God’s perspective. I believe God wants you to experience the freedom to share Jesus with others … the key to that freedom – that I’ve discovered in God’s Word – is in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10. It says:

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that he prepared beforehand for us to walk into.”

Now there are two parts to that. The first part says that “… we are God’s workmanship.” Imagine that!! We are handcrafted by Jesus – He knows what He made us for – He knows our strengths, He knows our weaknesses. And the second part is that He “… created us for good works that he prepared beforehand for us to walk into.” He’s prepared the things for us to do.

Now do we imagine somehow, that He can’t fit those two things perfectly together? Do we imagine somehow that there’s a glitch in God’s ability to make someone for some task that He’s prepared them to walk into and then get it wrong? Or do we believe He’s got it all sussed out? You can only have one or the other – you can’t have part of one and part of the other.

That burden; that nervousness; that fear that’s holding us back from sharing Jesus with other people – let this set you free. God never asks you to do something that He doesn’t equip you to do. God never asks us to do something He doesn’t equip us to do.

It may not always feel comfortable; it may not always feel convenient; it may not always feel pleasant; it may not always fit in with our timing and our plans and our priorities, but God knows the things that are going to happen tomorrow and the next day and next week and next year and He has prepared good works for us to walk into, because we are His workmanship. He knows what He created us to do.

I was at a business lunch recently and I felt a bit awkward. It was with a senior executive of a global IT firm. We sat down and all he wanted to do was ask me about Jesus. He just kind of arrived and started asking me about Jesus – the whole lunch was that because this was a good work that God had prepared beforehand for me to walk into. I just didn’t know about it before I arrived. God used my relationship with this man, brought us together just at the right time and just when God was ready, into a good work that He prepared beforehand for me to do.

Now today on the programme and over the next few weeks, we are going to be talking about God’s angle; God’s perspective because I believe He wants to set you free to share your Jesus with other people. “We are God workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that he prepared beforehand for us to walk into.”

The Power of Praying for the Lost

Most of us will have had the experience of having to put together everything from a bike to some complex board game for our kids on Christmas morning. And if you are anything like me, you race ahead and fit this with that and you get annoyed and frustrated because it’s not working. You ignore the advice, as I do, from my wife and family and finally, when everything has failed, when you’re at the end of your tether, finally, you read the instruction book – right?

I wonder sometimes if it isn’t the same when it comes to us sharing our faith and Jesus with other people! Somehow, we think its God’s plan for us to go it alone and we try this and we try that – nothing works. And we tell them this and we buy them that book and people give us the brush off and we get all frustrated or embarrassed or whatever.

Then and only then we figure out, ‘Well, everything else has failed, I’d better pray. Prayer ends up being our last resort, when all the way along, we have failed to grasped the enormous power of praying for the lost.

I’d like to share a story with you – it’s my story and maybe you have heard me share it before but it’s so important as we talk about praying for the lost. This Berni Dymet used to be a very tough, ruthless, incredibly materialistic business man. I had a consulting firm in the IT industry and I grew that firm with my business partners and we did consulting all over the world. I used to prance around, talking on stages all over the world, at large conferences and I was going to make it.

I mean, I was climbing the ladder – because for me, it was about profile and success and money. I had a huge house with gold plated taps in it – I had the most flashy, expensive car that I could afford. And if anybody had looked at me – as some people did, because I had some friends who were Christians – if anyone had looked at me at that time and thought, ‘I wonder … I wonder if Berni would ever become a Christian?” The answer would have been, ‘Absolutely no way!!’

If someone had said, ‘Berni, you’re going to end up in full time ministry!’ – the answer would have been, ‘You buddy, are smoking dope, because there is just no way that’s going to happen.’ Now as I said, I knew some Christians and they really made me feel uncomfortable. The whole ‘goodie two shoes’ thing, it didn’t fit with my world view; it didn’t fit with what I wanted to do. And the reason it made me uncomfortable because deep down, I knew they were probably right. And it just niggled at me and so I reacted badly against those people.

Now, I’m a confident person, articulate, I can use words – I could carve them apart with my words and my arguments. And as those Christians who were friends of mine – goodness knows why they stayed being friends of mine – as they looked at me through the physical reality, there is no way that I could ever have become a Christian.

Maybe you know some people in your life – they might not be the same as me – but you look at them and you think, ‘There is no way that that person could ever become a Christian.’ And a decade and a half ago, through a powerful serious of events and upheavals and circumstances of my life, I gave myself over to Jesus Christ.

It was and is and will always remain the most awesome day of my life. Even I couldn’t believe it! I went and sat under a tree and I said, “Lord, everything I am, everything I have, everything I earn, every hope and every dream that I have for the future I give to You.” It was such a complete surrender to Jesus Christ as my Lord and my life, from that day onwards, was never the same.

But the Christians I knew – they were gob smacked. They still, many of them, can’t help but get tears in their eyes when they hear me speak or pray because they know the enormity of what God did. And here, a decade and a half later, this voice that you hear on your radio station, is heard on almost a thousand stations in a hundred and twenty countries, sharing Jesus with others. Now, how do you account for something like that? Where does the power for that sort of turnaround come from, because it didn’t come from me; it didn’t come from my Christian friends?

Later I discovered that two of those Christian friends, who I really had never treated very nicely at all and never really made them feel welcome in my home – those two, husband and wife, had been praying faithfully for me for eighteen years. Against all hope in who I was, they put their hope in the One person that could make a difference.

When we look at a obstacle from our perspective in the physical dimension, sometimes that obstacle looks so much bigger than us and so we come to the conclusion, well, I can’t ever change that but when we look at it from God’s perspective; when we look at it from Jesus perspective; when we look at it through God’s eyes, God can deal with anything. God is big enough to deal with Berni Dymet and his pride and his objections to the Christian faith and his materialism and his brutal business practices.

Now I’m an ex-military man – I spent a decade in the Army – and so often in a battle, before the main force goes in to fight the battle, we would send Special Forces in. We would send in the reconnaissance or the engineers or the artillery.

Now, the job of reconnaissance is finding out what is going on out there before you send in the main force. The joy of the engineers is to build the bridges or breach the obstacles or clear the mine fields or pull the wire down. And the job of the artillery is to soften up the enemy.

You know, when we pray in faith and persist, despite the outward appearances, it’s like sending the Holy Spirit’s reconnaissance; it’s like sending the Holy Spirit’s engineers; it’s like sending the Holy Spirit’s artillery to soften the enemy.

When we pray boldly, with quiet assurance, as those two Christian friends of mine did for eighteen years – just let that reality set you free. When we do that, there are some things that only God can do and when we pray with quiet confidence for the lost, we are inviting Him into that space to do that stuff.

When we pray, ‘Lord, I don’t know what’s going on here, but if I need to know, show me,’ the Holy Spirit does the reconnaissance. When we pray, ‘Lord, there’s an obstacle there, I can’t pull it down with my hands, Lord you pull it down,’ the Hold Spirit does the engineering work. When we say, ‘Lord, I think the enemy is blocking this person, pull him out of there,’ the Holy Spirit artillery comes in there and does that. When we pray for the lost, we are joining hands with God – there is power in praying for the lost.

Can I encourage you – can I lift you up? If your hands and feet are tied; if you are absolutely immobilised; if you can do nothing else for a particular person whom you would love to see come to faith in Jesus Christ – if you can do nothing else except pray, that is the most powerful thing you can ever do.

What is it about us that we think we have to go it on our own? What is it about us that we think that we can argue or bludgeon someone into the Kingdom of God when what they really need is the gentle touch of the Holy Spirit? What is it about us that we make prayer our last resort?

D.L. Moody, the famous nineteenth century American evangelist prayed for one hundred people – one hundred of his friends and acquaintances – to come to faith throughout his life. He had a list of one hundred. By the time he died ninety six of them had come to faith. The remaining four gave their lives to Christ at his funeral service. That’s how God answers prayer – God will answer our prayers if we ask Him.

When it comes to sharing Jesus with others, let this fact set you free: the most powerful thing that you can do for them is to join hands with God in prayer.

Time to Get Going

Now whenever I speak about getting out there and just very simply sharing our faith with others, many Christians squirm in their seats. You see, we feel so inadequate; we feel so unprepared; we feel like we need a Bible College degree. Ever felt those things? Have a listen to this – Luke chapter 10:

“After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the lord of the harvest to send out labourers into the harvest.

Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” and if anyone is there who shares the peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourers deserve to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.

When you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there and say to them, “The Kingdom of God has come near to you.” But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into the streets and say, “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the Kingdom of God has come near.”

Well, so off these seventy went and then they came back. “The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightening. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you… In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and revealed them to infants.”

Do you get it? Not so much about preparation – Jesus deliberately sent them out with nothing: no food or extra clothes, no hotel reservations or airline bookings, no three year theology degree with evangelism 101 and 102, not even a theological understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ or the coming of the Holy Spirit because those things hadn’t happened yet.

He sent them out just as they were, with His anointing and at His bidding and they came back with the most amazing stories of what had happened through God’s power and through them just being out there and doing it. Do you get it?

We want to complicate this stuff so much – we want to make excuses for not getting out there and living out our faith. Have a listen again to what Jesus said:

“I thank you, Dad, Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent but revealed them to the infants.”

See, it’s not great wisdom and intelligence that so much He’s looking for. In fact, those things are the things that we often use to rationalise away our inactivity. Jesus is after just two things: a simple childlike faith and a willingness and preparedness just to go. At some point … at some point we can make the decision just to become a Christ follower in every part of our lives – at work, at home, the kids football club, in the supermarket – it’s just who we are and how we live. And that’s how we become salt in a bland world. It’s how we become light in a dark world and people see that light and they taste that salt and they go, ‘I want some of what that person’s got.’

Doesn’t mean we have to become God botherers, shoving religion down everyone’s throat – just get out there and be like Jesus; be you, be a Christ follower. Walk the walk! You know, Corrie Ten Boom once said, “Don’t ask God to order your steps if you are not prepared to move your feet.”

My friend, God means to use you, just the way you are. God means to use me just the way I am because this isn’t about notches on our belts. This isn’t about me converting this many people and you converting that many people because we don’t do any converting, all we do is we get out there and we walk the Christ walk and live our lives.

And every now and then God will bring someone across our path and the Holy Spirit will whisper in our hearts, ‘That one. Go and bless that one.’ And we just go, and I’m Berni and you are you and we just go and do what we do and all of a sudden Jesus uses that and the bridges we build, He ends up walking across.

That’s the plan to use you and me just as we are. We have the freedom to share Jesus with others.

God wants to use you just the way you are – through your plain language; everyday, simple language and observations and reactions from your life – to reach out to people in real life with His love.

Reflecting Jesus in Your Life

If there’s one thing the world hates it’s a hypocrite – particularly a religious one and you know something, I think that’s fair enough. Whether it’s in business or politics or family or work, we hate it when someone says one thing and yet behind our back, does completely the opposite. Of course, none of us are perfect but by and large, we want people to practice what they preach.

So when it comes to sharing Jesus with others, if there are areas in our lives that we know are wrong, well chances are we are going to make a lousy ambassador for Christ. ‘Oh great, so now what – now I have to clean up my act and become perfect before I can be free to share Jesus with others? Well, it turns out that God’s got a much better plan than that.

If I met the Swedish Ambassador to my country, my hunch is that I would expect him to be tall and blonde with blue eyes and a name like Sven and have this nice little Swedish lilt but if somehow, the Swedish guy rocked up and said, ‘Hi, I’m the Indian Ambassador,’ well, it just wouldn’t work for me. I mean, it doesn’t gel, does it?

The Apostle Paul in Second Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 20 – if you have a Bible – refers to himself, and I guess to us too, as ambassadors of Christ. Now let me ask you: if the Swedish Ambassador should look like a Swede, and the Indian Ambassador should look like an Indian, what should an ambassador of Christ look like – Jesus, right?

Passionate, real, honest, humble, a servant, yet knowing what they believe and knowing what God is all about. When it comes to sharing Jesus with others, if I don’t look like Jesus but I’m an ambassador of Christ, it’s not going to get; it’s not going to work; it’ll look hypocritical. How we behave – that speaks so much more to people about who Jesus is, than what we say.

Now here’s the dilemma – we all know we fall short of that. Now we may have tried to clean up our act in a particular area. It’s one thing to say, ‘I know I let myself down; I let Jesus down in this area or that area of my life,’ but when you try to clean up your act, some things, I guess you can do but other things are almost impossible.

In fact, I would go as far as to say, we each have one or two of those things in our lives that we ourselves can’t clean up. And if we take the attitude that we’ll strive and we’ll work hard and it’ll be a ‘works’ based thing; it’ll be hard, it ends up not being fun and it ends up feeling empty. We can pedal as hard as we like but it doesn’t work. Do you know why? Because God has a much better plan! The Apostle Paul writes this:

The Lord is spirit, and the Lord’s Spirit sets us free, so our faces aren’t covered like Moses’ was when he was up the mountain and took the Ten Commandments. No, our faces – we look at God and then they show the bright glory of the Lord as His Spirit makes us more and more like our glorious Lord.

God has been kind enough to trust us with His Word – that’s why we never give up; that’s why we don’t do shameful things that people have to do to keep them secret because it’s the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That comes from Second Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 to 6.

See, it’s the Holy Spirit that sets us free as we draw close to God and His Spirit fills us more and more and more and more and we look upon God’s glory, we see Him with our spiritual eyes. That glory bounces off on us and it reflects off our face as though we were a mirror and other people look at that face and think, ‘There’s something different about that face – there’s something I can’t put my finger on but there’s a joy and a peace and a goodness in that person.

What has that person got, because I want some?’ See that’s God’s plan – to reflect His glory through us; through our attitudes; through our behaviours, through our countenance, through our words into other people’s lives.

We gaze on the glory of God then He changes our hearts, our motivations and we end up looking like Jesus. See, take all the effort and emotional energy that we would spend trying to change ourselves and spend that on being with Jesus in prayer and reading God’s Word and worshipping Him. That’s what’s makes us look like Jesus.

I believe the churches are full of Christians who think that Christianity is a self help programme – it is not! What if we went to Jesus in prayer like this:

Lord, I have a friend or a family member or a loved one who needs to know You and I look at myself, Lord, in their lives and I know that I’m letting myself down; I’m letting You down in this area or that attitude or this road block or that bit of behaviour. I know that somehow, that person is looking at me and they’re saying, ‘Well, if that’s Jesus, I don’t want Him.’ Lord, show me Your glory – set me free that I may be Christ to them.

The reason I want this Lord, is not for me – not for me to be perfect. The reason I want this is to shine Your glory into their lives. I want to glorify You with my life – stir my heart, pour Your presence into me every day, starting today. Lord fill me with Your goodness so full … just so full that I can’t begin to contain it. Fill me with Your Spirit with a flood tide that will bring a harvest for You. What if we went to God with a prayer like that? Everyday Lord, change me so that You can use me in that person’s life.

Do you think God would miss that? Do you think God would reject it, or do you think He would be so overjoyed? Do you think that God would ignore it or do you think He would act? My life may be the only Bible that some of the people around me may ever read. Your life may be the only Bible that some of the people around you may ever read.

That’s a sobering thought! Your life in the lives of your friends and family and acquaintances may be the only thing that reflects God into their lives. They know I’m a Christian – most of them know that you’re a Christian and they look at us and they go, ‘well, has that person got something that I want? I mean, does their faith work? Are they real? Have they got something I want?

My friend, we are ambassadors of Christ; that means we have to look like Jesus to other people. And we can try to do that ourselves – I’ve got to tell you – there’s a whole bunch of energy and a whole bunch of pain and a whole bunch of frustration in that because it will never, ever work. Or we can pour our energy into our relationship with Jesus and let God’s Word set us free – let God’s Spirit set us free.

Can I encourage you? God means to set us free; God means to change us into His likeness; God means to use us – you and me – in other people’s lives.

Doing what Dad’s Doing

For me, being someone who has come to know Jesus is just the most awesome thing in my life and has been for the last decade and a half. But for a good many years after that the notion that I have a role to play in sharing Jesus with others, well, it was like a millstone around my neck.

I suspect it’s like that for a lot of Christians! But when I really spent some time figuring out God’s plan for me in this whole evangelism thing, all of a sudden I discovered a freedom to share my Jesus. One of the things that really used to get to me was the overwhelming size of the task.

See, I know so many people who don’t know Jesus and yet, I don’t feel gifted to tell them. It was such a burden and then I saw something in Jesus that set me free from that. See, there are so many things that paralyse us in sharing Jesus with others. And one of them is the sheer volume of effort – it’s demanding! We all know lots of people who have never met Jesus, the Christ. We can’t tell them all about Jesus, can we?

The size of the task just gets to us and so we give up and as surely as God made little green apples, guilt sets in – ‘Because I know these people, they’re my problem; they’re my burden. I have to do something about it. Aw, Lord, what am I going to do – there are too many of them – I can’t do this. Aw, it’s too hard. I tell you what, I’ll leave it for someone else – I’ll leave it for the minister or the evangelism committee or the street ministry team at my church or … someone else. It’s not my job; I’m not the expert!’

But you know, Jesus … Jesus won’t let it rest there because He has a plan to use you and to use me to touch people’s lives with His love and the reason that this niggles away at us and it never seems to quite go away, is because the Lord has a plan. Question is: how do we deal with the fact that there are so many people who need Jesus and you and I, we’re just one person each, right?

There’s a wonderful story, if you have a Bible – it’s in the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel, the fourth Book in the New Testament – the first twenty or so verses of the fifth chapter. See, there’s a big festival happening in Jerusalem and Jesus goes to a pool, nearby the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem and there were so many sick and blind and lame and crippled people lying close to the pool – lots of them waiting for a miracle.

But amongst this crowd there’s one man who has been sick for thirty eight years – that’s most, if not all of the guy’s life. Now what does Jesus do when He wanders into a place where there are so many people who need healing? I mean, Jesus was the Son of God! Jesus has the power to heal them all – what does He do? What would you and I do if we had the power to heal them all?

Well, He sees this one guy who’s been sick for thirty eight years and when Jesus realised that, He said, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ And the man said, ‘Lord, I don’t have anyone to put me into the pool when the water gets stirred up. I try to get in but someone always gets there first.’ And so Jesus says to him, ‘Pick up your mat and walk,’ and right there and right then, the man was healed. He picked up his mat and started walking around. It was the Sabbath Day!

Jesus heals this one guy….just one – this was Jesus – remember He could have had a mass healing service on the Sabbath. It could have been really a spectacular thing! Why does He heal only one? Well just a few verses later, He tells us. Jesus told the people, “I truly tell you that the Son of Man cannot do anything on His own, He can only do what He sees the Father doing.” And so He does exactly what He see the Father doing! John chapter 5, verse 19.

See, this blows me away! This is Jesus, the Son of God and He says, “The Son cannot do anything on His own.” What is it that makes you and me think that we can? If Jesus said, ‘I can’t heal people on my own; I can only actually do what Dad’s doing and when I see what Dad’s doing, I go and do that.’ I’ve sometimes heard this particular verse referred to as: ‘Do what Dad’s doing.’

So what makes us think that we are any better than Jesus? Why was Dad only healing the one guy that day? I don’t know but that’s what God the Father was doing – that’s what Jesus saw Him doing and so Jesus walks to that one man because God had prepared and ordained that one healing in that crowd, that day.

I think that takes a huge burden of my shoulders and off your shoulders because we look at all these people out there whom God created; people who God knows and all of a sudden God is saying, ‘Well, my Son can’t do anything without Me when He’s walking around out there, so why is that you think that you can? Why is it that you think you have to pick people to talk to? What is it that makes us think that we have to go out there, on our own and bring everyone to Christ and heal everyone?

See that’s God’s responsibility; its God’s timing; its God’s sovereign choice. God is out there doing stuff – do what Dad’s doing. So what’s our responsibility, yours and mine? I think it’s like Jesus when He walked into that pool area – our job isn’t to heal them all, our job isn’t to bring them all to Christ, our job is to get close enough to Jesus to hear Him whisper in our heart, ‘Today, call so and so – ask them out for a coffee or today, send so and so an email, ask them how they are going or send them a card’.

Our responsibility is to figure out what Dad has planned – not to get out there and save the whole world. Let me ask you a radical question: what if we started every day, every meeting, every church service, every barbeque with friends, with a prayer something like this: Dad, show me today what You are doing. Tell me who You want me to encourage or pat on the shoulder or have a cup of coffee with.

See, it’s downright destructive when we try and shove the Good News about Jesus Christ down the throat of someone who’s not ready to listen. But when we do what Dad’s doing, then … then we experience the power of God in people’s lives.

Can I set you free here? Telling other people about Jesus isn’t taking it all on your shoulders and it’s not about me taking it all on my shoulders, telling people about Jesus is listening to the Father and doing His stuff … doing the stuff He’s already doing. And the closer we get to Him, the more we’ll hear His heart, His call, what He is doing, the more we hear His heartbeat for that one person that He wants to touch through us.

Telling God’s Story, God’s Way

Let me ask you: if you had to get up at a barbeque with some dozen or so of your friends or work colleagues; people who may not yet know Jesus and you had just two minutes … only two minutes, mind you, to tell them about Jesus, what would you say? Just the thought is enough to send a good many Christians into a panic attack. What would you say? How would you say it?

You know that’s one of the things that really stops a lot of Christians from sharing their Jesus with others. Used to be my problem too until I discovered that God Himself is the best communicator and He uses plain simple, everyday language and everyday stories to get His point across.

Right at the beginning of the New Testament, in the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel – if you have a Bible – there’s an amazing story – we know them as the three wise men. Now, actually we don’t know how many there were because Matthew just doesn’t tell us. There were a number of wise men, but these wise men were following a star to go and find this Jesus who had been born in Bethlehem. They were looking for the Messiah.

Now the word that Matthew uses for these wise men is Magi and Magi were astrologers; they were soothsayers. And to the Jews that was sinful and pagan and occult-ish. Kind of like today if some witches or warlocks wandered into your church, I guess there would be more than a few Christians who would be a bit perturbed by that.

So these wise men; these Magi who were astrologers – and the second thing that Matthew tells us is that they – came from the East. Well, that’s kind of code that we don’t understand today because east of Jerusalem was Babylon and Babylon was like … I don’t know … like the Third Reich to Jews. Babylon was a place where several hundred years before, the Jews had been exiled into slavery and so the symbolism of Babylon is probably getting close to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

Okay, that’s what they thought when they read ‘from the East’, so God calls – listen to this – some sinful, pagan astrologers and soothsayers from Babylon; from hell, across to meet His Son! Now, let me ask you, if you or I were God, would we have invited them?

You and I today, if we had some astrologers or some witches or whatever, living next door, would we invite them over for a barbeque? Would we invite the Taro card reader from down the local mall, home over a barbeque, to talk about Jesus? Or would we say, ‘Oh no, that’s occult-ish … that’s ohooo … have to keep away from that!’

Well, God invited them – He invited them when His Son was born, to meet Jesus. But how does He get their attention? How does He get them to come from Babylon to meet Jesus? Does He send them, say, John the Baptist or a prophet or a preacher or a Billy Graham? No, He sends them a star; an astrological symbol. Do you get it?

God is the most amazing communicator! Would you or I (a) even have bothered inviting them and (b) have sent them a star? So what that says to me is that, okay, God may well have hated their sin but He loved them so much more than He hated the stuff they were into.

Here and now, He is saying to us, “This is how I see people. I care about them, no matter what – no matter what they’re into, I love them.” Jesus is here for everyone – God was prepared to send the astrologers a star. He was prepared to call even astrologers from the Third Reich – that’s God’s way.

Jesus hung out with lepers and prostitutes and sinners and He told simple stories and sometimes, we think we have to be theologians or carry text books or have a Bible under our arm. Look at this story; this simple story – it must have been so shocking to first century Jews, to think that God would have called these astrologers and told them a simple story through a simple symbol that they understood.

Do we need to convince people about Jesus through some erudite, apologetic argument? Would it ever occur to us to go to astrologers with a star? What’s your story about: life and how you grew up and how Jesus came into your life? What’s He done in your life? What’s it like knowing Him? What are the things you’ve struggled with? What’s the stuff that you perhaps, haven’t got your head around?

I wonder if you had these astrologers at a barbeque and your backyard – you know, sausages and a bit of coleslaw and some onion maybe, and the conversation was flowing across the table. Well, I don’t know about you but this is what it’s like. Maybe we could just tell people about Jesus in plain, everyday language – just the way we are; just the way He’s impacted our lives, maybe we don’t need to be theologians after all.

Now, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t go to church; I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t study and learn, no, but you know what I mean? I think sometimes we think that experts should be doing this stuff. A doctor should hand out the medicine. An evangelist should hand out the Jesus thing.

Yet look at how Jesus communicated – He’d just wander around and talk with people and touch them and heal them and tell them stories and give them insights about their lives. And He was there to encourage them and just being with some of those people – just Him, taking the time to hang out with tax collectors and prostitutes and the rejects, was an awesome thing for Him to do.

I wonder whether we are making it all too complicated. I wonder whether we are struggling with things and tying ourselves in knots when sometimes, the people around us; the people we work with; the people we live with; the people who are our neighbours or our parents or kids or people at the football club.

I mean, those people look at us and they just want us to be real and to share our lives with them and to share a meal with them and to share a sausage with them and to share a sandwich and some coleslaw and talk to them about life and somehow, in all of that, what Jesus did for you and what Jesus did for me – it’s part of who we are – it’s just the way it is – simple real, life stories.

Can I set you free through this idea? Through this notion that God wants to use you just the way you are – through your plain language – everyday simple language and observations and reactions from your life, to reach out to people in real life with His love. So how would you share, how would you tell people about Jesus in your life?

Maybe that’s something we all need to spend some time just … just thinking about and praying about and pondering and turning over in our minds.

God means to use you and to use me just as we are to share our Jesus with others.

If our heart aches for people; if our eyes are open to see people through the eyes of God, God will use us to tell other people about this Jesus.

Surveying the Spiritual Landscape

It’s interesting, you know, as we look around at people and society as a whole these days, that there’s a spiritual paradox playing itself out in the lives of so many. On the one hand, most have rejected the institutional, bricks and mortar church thing of the nineteen fifties and yet, there’s a spiritual hunger bubbling away, just beneath the surface.

My hunch is that one of the reasons that so many Christians are shy or backward about sharing Jesus with others is that we mistake the rejection of the traditional church – whatever that means or is – for a lack of spirituality. But just scratch below the surface and you find a generation that’s more spiritually in tune or inclined than ever before.

There’s been quite an interesting shift in the spiritual landscape over the last couple of decades. It’s really a generational change. The more chronologically endowed amongst us – you know, the older baby boomers and the generation before them – to many of those people, faith and spirituality was a very, very private matter.

There was an old adage that you never talked about sex, politics or religion and it’s important that we understand and respect that – it’s still true amongst my parent’s generation – it’s very much the case. But the younger baby boomers and the Gen-Xs and the Ys and so on, well, that lot are really spiritually on a journey.

In one of my previous programmes, I spoke about a senior IT executive and a lawyer with whom I had lunch a while ago and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we will be talking about business and all the things that are going on in this IT company.’ I’m expecting a business discussion, right?

Now the IT executive is a really senior guy in this global company – he spent the whole of lunch talking about his spiritual journey and trying to discover Jesus and the problems that he’d had in some churches. And my lawyer friend; he pitches in and I discover he’s on a spiritual journey as well. He’s been searching; he’s gone on some things and spent weekends trying to discover his spirituality.

Now I have only seen these two men before as an IT executive and a lawyer. I have never really thought of them as God’s children on a spiritual journey. Here are people who are made in God’s image and they are looking for something spiritual and they don’t know exactly what. I believe it’s sacred ground that place.

To me that lunch was just the most amazing experience of God’s grace because here were these two men – deep calling unto deep – looking, searching because God, as He has made each one of us in His own image, has put something inside us that causes us to go out on that journey; that causes us to go on that search; that causes us to reach out and look for something beyond ourselves. That something we call ‘the spiritual’.

Now for many, many years Christians and churches have looked at “evangelism” ( and I put in inverted commas) as getting people to come to church; getting people to believe these facts about God and about Jesus and what He did, to accumulate some head knowledge and then to say, ‘Yes, I believe that!” But today, the post-moderns, as the sociologists call them, they don’t so much want to believe with their heads, they want to believe with their hearts. They want to count on intuition and faith. In a sense, they want to give up on the idea of truth and have an experience instead.

And so we can go on preaching the old way to a generation that has changed the way it thinks or we can say, ‘Hang on a minute! These people; these post-moderns; these younger folk; they’re looking for something authentic. They want us, in a sense, to preach with our lives; to share our lives with them. These people are tired of words – they want evidence; they want it to be credible; they want it to be authentic.

If we are talking about this God and this Jesus, they want to see it in our lives. They’re searching for something that’s real and plausible. They are searching, not for a sermon but for a relational exchange – for an experience with a God, with a Jesus, that’s more than bricks and mortar religion.

They’re suspicious of authority – they’re suspicious of institutions and yet they hunger after the small stories … the stories that you and I have in our lives. Stories that speak of God’s love, God’s grace, of real life, of the fullness of life and the life that has some extra spiritual dimension to it, beyond what they have been experiencing.

Post-moderns may have rejected the sort of institutional wrapping of the bricks and mortar church, yet they are hungry for authentic spirituality. At the same time, these same people really don’t know the Jesus story. They’re not so much conscience of guilt; it’s more a sense of doubt; of uncertainty in a world that is changing more quickly than we could ever imagine – a world that feels as though it’s out of control. And they’re sick of condemnatory rhetoric, whether it’s from the church or anywhere else.

And yet they have multiple alienations – self esteem is a huge issue in society today. We have broken and fractured relationships – people are more isolated than ever. I would ask you to let this set you free to share Jesus with them because when you look into the face of someone in need, there … right there is someone made in the image of God; a God who planted in their DNA a deep yearning for Him.

We should never look at people in society and say, ‘Okay, they’ve rejected bricks and mortar religion. The religion that was maybe in the post World War II time; the forties and the fifties and the sixties and even in the seventies – they have rejected that because, by and large, they’ve rejected social institutions … and yet, they’re searching for something and that something is Jesus.

Shoemaker in his celebrated poem wrote this:

“They crave to know where the door is and all that so many ever find is only a wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched, groping hands, feeling for a door, knowing that there must be a door, yet they never find it.
Men die outside that door as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter.
They die for want of what is within their grasp. They live on the other side of it; live because they’ve never found it.”

What if God put you and me in their lives because our face, our smile, our shoulder to lean on, our hands can gently guide one of those children to that door to discover Jesus for themselves – to walk through that door.

Yes, our culture has rejected bricks and mortar Christianity – that’s a challenge – but what a huge opportunity this rediscovered sense of spirituality is in our society – a spiritual hunger; an openness more than ever that enables us, at the right time, with the right words, to tell people about this Jesus.

In the middle of that spiritual hunger He plonks you and me and He taps us on the shoulder and He whispers, ‘Show them! Show them the door. I’ve put you there to show them the door.’

Finding the Words

One of the hardest things I’ve found about sharing Jesus with others is, well, finding the right words – what do I say? Where do I start? Now that’s really weird because I’m a writer and a speaker – it’s what I do for a living. But all of a sudden, stick me one on one with someone and say, ‘Okay Berni, tell them about Jesus.’ Oh, man, I was petrified and so for a large part of my walk with Jesus, I just didn’t know what to do.

Have you ever felt like that? ‘I know I’m supposed to tell people about Jesus but I’m just not up to it. I’m not good with words – they’ll never listen to me. I can’t do this, I’ll just embarrass myself, I’ll embarrass them – no, not me.’ And so we clam up – we don’t share Jesus without ever thinking that that decision could have eternal ramifications.

It’s not an unusual phenomenon. You think about the sales person – they do sales, they maybe do cold calling – they have to pick up the phone; they have to go and see people they don’t know and try and convince them to buy their product.

Maybe the product is a car or a house or an insurance policy – could be anything – I don’t think there’s a single sales person on the planet who’s never felt that unique sense of trepidation, of making that making that cold call, of picking up the phone; of going to see that person they don’t know.

Now, let’s unpack that for a minute. What’s that all about? Why is it that sometimes we are afraid to tell people about something? Well, when you think about that ‘sales person dynamic’ success equals: they buy my product and failure equals: they don’t! It’s as simple as that – there’s no in between ground.

And my hunch is a lot of that trepidation is about the fear of rejection and the fear of failure. My hunch is that this salesman’s sense of trepidation is at the heart of our dilemma in sharing Jesus with other people.

You think about it – we have friends, we go and have coffee or a drink with them – we have no problems sitting and talking about issues in our lives and all sorts of stuff. We have dinner at home with our family and we all sit around the table; we tell all what’s going on in our lives that day. At work we have to deal with this person about this issue and that person about that issue – we do this all the time. By and large, we all do those things pretty naturally, right?

Maybe we not all public speakers par excellence, but it’s just as well – the world would be really boring if we were. But we are able to find the words when we need to, to do things that we have to do, day to day. So in a sense, it’s not really about finding the words or not finding the words – no, it’s not words – I think it’s the fear of failure and rejection. It’s the fear that they’ll think we’re strange because we believe in Jesus.

Let this thing set you free! Telling people about Jesus isn’t being a salesman selling; it’s about listening and learning. You see, it’s not my job; it’s not your job to give them a brochure, to answer all their product inquiries, to close the sale and seal the deal.

If we think that sharing Jesus is a sales transaction, I think we have got it wrong. What an arrogant notion – that’s it’s my job to represent God and close a deal on His behalf! What do I think – I’m going to get paid a commission? I’m going to get sacked if I don’t sell?

No, my job and your job is to peer into their faces; to look at them; to know that here is a person made in the image of God – to hear their hopes and their joys and their motivations and their hurts and their loses and their failures – to laugh, to experience their triumphs, to cry, to feel their pain.

And in the middle of all that to see them reach out for a spiritual answer; for a spiritual experience with that deep need that God’s placed in each one of us – to know what life is all about – to know the news; the Good News.

My job and your job is to believe that God is already at work. In one of the earlier programmes in this series we talked about the fact that once Jesus walked into an area around a pool where there were a lot of sick people … a lot of sick people and He went and healed just one. And when they asked Him why He did that He said,

“I tell you the truth, the Son of Man can only do what he sees the Father doing.”
That comes from John’s Gospel chapter 5, verse 19.

In other words He was saying, ‘Do what Dad’s doing. Believe that God is already at work in this person’s life or that person’s life and then we’re just there to listen and to be’. Do you want to know how hard it is to get someone just to listen to you today – even within our families, even with friends, even at work? It seems that nobody has time to listen to us.

So if we take to time just to listen to people and to hear what is going on in their lives; to learn and to touch, to see this person as one of those lost sheep, reaching out for his or her Saviour; his or her Shepherd and to share right at that point, our Jesus with them through our lives and through our touch and yes, even through our words, the words that Jesus lays on our hearts just at the right time, that’s an awesome thing.

What an awesome thing to be used by God in that way. Not just my job to close the sale – that’s not it. We’re not here to do a sell job or a snow job and we’re not doing the deal. If we approach it that way, with that attitude – this attitude that this person is an object of my evangelistic effort – when I get them into the Kingdom I’ll discover another notch onto my rifle butt.

Come on! Seeing what God’s doing, being there in the middle of all that in someone’s life is such an incredible privilege; being the Word of God as they look at our lives; as they see Jesus shining out through our touch and through our smile, through our words of encouragement. And when we need words, God promises us that those words will come. He says, ‘Don’t worry about what you’ll say. Right at that moment, standing there, My Spirit will give you the word. Just be you; just be you!’

You know something? People are so tired of just words – they want authenticity; they want care in a cruel world; they want love in a lost world; they want authentic spiritual realities. Where do they see that? Where do they find that? I’ll tell you something: it’s looking at my life and looking at your life that they will discover that Jesus is awesome or they’ll look at us and think, ‘That Jesus is a hypocrite’.

I can’t remember who said it – they said, “Tell people about Jesus and when all else fails, use words.” Sure we have to use words sometimes but what a privilege to walk into a place where God is already doing stuff in someone’s life and He has just put you or me there to be with them, to love them right into the Kingdom of God.

Let me pray with you:

Father, I pray that each person that’s been with us right now would just know that it’s not about finding the right words or being a theologian or having a text book under our arms.

Father, teach us through Your Word, through Your grace, through looking at Jesus, that sharing our Lord is about living a life that reflects Your glory into the lives of other people.

Father, take away any fear we have of failure; any fear we have of rejection; any fear we might have that people would think that we’re loopy and Father set us free to be Jesus – the hands and the feet of our Saviour in this lost and hurting world. In His name we pray. Amen.

Paul in Athens

As we come towards the end of our time together, I just want to share a story with you. It’s about the Apostle Paul and when he came to Athens – it wasn’t a planned stop – he didn’t have the local stadium booked for an evangelistic rally. In fact, it was anything but that – he’d just fled his last venue in fear of his life. Anyhow, have a listen – it comes from Acts chapter 17, verse 16:

“While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also out in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) So they took him and they brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is the Lord of heaven and earth does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all the nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’

Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, or an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked these times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear about this again.”

See, here he is; he’s in this pagan city and his heart is aching for them – he’s deeply distressed. And he went and did something about it – he went in the synagogues and out in the marketplace and told them about Jesus. And a few of these philosophers took him to this pagan place, the Areopagus. It’s a place where trials used to happen and so they put his faith on trial there – they said, ‘Tell us what you are talking about; we want to know; we want to understand.’

And Paul, instead of looking at all the things they were doing wrong and all the idols that they were worshipping and all that they were carrying on with, Paul said, “I’ve been around. I’ve looked at all your idols and I found one which is ‘To the unknown god,’ I’m going to tell you about that unknown god.”

See, Paul saw their spiritual need, he saw them reaching out. Okay, the Athenians were reaching out in the wrong direction; they were reaching out to idols but he saw what was going on. This was deep calling unto deep – these were men and women made in the image of God, looking for God and not finding Him.

We are surrounded by people like that, you and I – people looking in all sorts of different places, for God and not finding Him. And all of a sudden as Paul wandered into Athens, you or I wander into these people’s lives and see them reaching out, maybe to alcohol, reaching out maybe to sex, maybe its hedonism, maybe. … whatever it is, reaching out in the wrong direction.

Are we like Paul, able to look into their spiritual need and discover that unknown god; discover that little doorway into their hearts. See Paul went on, he told them about Jesus, he told them about the resurrection of the dead. He told them that God would one day, come to judge every man, woman and child. He preached the Gospel. Some scoffed but others … others wanted to know more.

Paul walked into an unknown place and because his heart was open; because he saw people through the eyes of God, God opened his eyes to see and to be who Paul was and to do what he did.

My friend, that’s all that God’s asking of us. Of course, some will scoff – I scoffed when people told me! That used to be my defensive mechanism. But somehow, someone got through to me – someone touched me with the Gospel and that’s why I’m here with you today.

How do we find the words? My friend, if our hearts ache for people as Paul’s heart ached for people, if our eyes are opened to see people through the eyes of God, we can’t help it; we just walk in there, we can be ourselves, live our life. Paul was Paul, Berni is Berni, you are you – just be you and God will use you as He used Paul here, to tell other people about this Jesus.

Jesus the Christ means to use you and to use me in the lives of the people whom He’s put next to us so that He can set them free.

Out of His Abundance

Sharing Jesus with others can feel like a tough gig sometimes, especially when our own lives … well they’re not quite so fantastic at the moment. And lets face it, sometimes life overall isn’t fantastic. Then what we’re tempted to do is to put on a brave face and pretend that we’re a super Christian and try and sell people something that frankly, we don’t have happening on the inside of us.

Now people aren’t stupid, and in an age when they’re hungering for spiritual authenticity they see right through that kind of sham. If we’re going to share Jesus with others, the whole Jesus thing has to be happening on the inside of us, no matter what’s going on, on the outside.

In this world we tend to judge success on external indicators. You think about it. The pastor of a church is successful when? When they have a lot of people in their church; when the money’s rolling in. You and I are successful when? Well, when we earn a lot of money and we look happy and we’re driving a good car.

But we know that’s not success and we know that God doesn’t look on the outside stuff – He looks on the inside, He looks at our hearts. It turns out that God is looking for people whose hearts are aflood with His joy and His love and His peace and hearts that are passionate for their saviour. Those are the sort of people that God’s looking for.

And when it comes right down to it, today’s generation, despite all the materialism and selfishness, we live in a world where today’s generations are looking for an authentic form of spirituality – something that gives meaning beyond just buying stuff. It turns out they’re looking for exactly the same thing that God’s looking for: a heart that’s aflood with the joy and the peace and the patience and the love and the goodness of God.

They’re looking for people who have something that they don’t. They’re looking for the stuff that’s going on, on the inside. One of my favourite authors is John Piper and he’s written a book called “The Supremacy of God in Preaching” and he makes this point. He says, ‘You can’t consistently give something to someone else that you, yourself don’t have.’

We can’t sell the concept that Christianity works – that Jesus is wonderful; you should have this in your life – when deep in our hearts we’re not living that joy and that peace and that wonderful thing that happens when we connect with Jesus Christ. If we try and sell a religion people will see straight through it.

Being a Christian, sharing Jesus with others, you know something, it’s not about flogging a philosophy, it’s not about flogging some political dogma, it’s not about peddling a belief system or religious doctrine. There’s enough doctrines out there, there’s enough philosophies out there, there’s enough dogma out there.

I think that when you or I decide that we need to share Jesus with others it’s kind of like one beggar showing another beggar where to find the bread – the bread of life; the bread that feeds us; the bread that’s good; the bread that works. I’m eating this bread. I’m having a relationship with this Jesus and it’s fabulous. Do you want some of that bread too?

Lets this set you free here. Telling people about Jesus doesn’t rely on our outward success but on our inner peace and joy which comes from having it day by day – a day by day walk and relationship with Jesus. I don’t have to be rich to share Jesus with others, I don’t have to own a big house or drive a flash car, or be the most successful person or be the most articulate person, or be the smartest, or be the most beautiful person.

None of those things matter, you know why? Because some people are tall and some people are short and some people are fat and some people are skinny and some people have grey hair and some have brown hair, some are smart some are not so smart, some people are good looking, some people are less good looking in the world’s eyes. It’s just the way it is.

No matter what we look like or how smart we are or how well we speak or how much we earn, that peace that Jesus Christ and died and rose to give you and me is available to every person in every circumstance when they place their faith in Him.

2000 years ago the Apostle Paul was on death row. He was in prison, he was in chain – had chains around his ankles and wrists – and he wrote a letter to the church at Philippi. And there on death row he writes these words. He says:

“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.”

Man, this guy has a fire. He has something that I want. That guy has something burning inside his heart for Jesus and that’s what people are looking for. If you are a Jesus follower, if you have the Holy Spirit and you spend time with Him praying, you spend time in God’s Word, that’s where that peace and joy come from.

You’ve got problems? Well pray. And in the same breath, in his prison cell, the Apostle Paul will tell you this. He says:

“Pray; ask God; give thanks and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.”

Man, this guy knows some stuff about joy and peace that I want to have. The very first book that I read after I became a Christian was “The Pursuit of God” by A. W. Tozer. Listen to what he says. He says:

“This book is a modest attempt to aid God’s hungry children so to find Him. Nothing here is new, except in the sense that it’s a discovery that my own heart has made of spiritual realities both delightful and wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much further into these holy mysteries than I have done but if my fire is not large, it is yet real and there maybe those who can light their candle with its flame.”

Isn’t that beautiful. Don’t you want to have a life like that, where there’s a fire burning inside of you like with Tozer, like with the Apostle Paul? And people look at you and think I want to light my candle there. I want to be around that person, because flowing out of their heart is the living water that Jesus Christ has to bring. They’re working out of an abundance that Jesus has given them, no matter what’s happening. There’s a flood tide of life and blessing out of this person.

And you might say, ‘Berni, I don’t have that abundance.’ Jesus said, ‘Without me you can do nothing’. And nothing means – nothing. Without Jesus it’s a sham. But the fullness of His joy and His peace and His love is available to you and me here and now when we place our faith in Jesus.

All we have to do is ask. All we have to do is spend time waiting on Him. Everyone grows tired and weary, even youths will faint, but those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength and they will soar like eagles. That’s His promise.

When we share Jesus, the only way we can share Him, really, is out of His abundance and His grace and His presence and His peace and His joy in our lives.

Walking Boldly, Treading Lightly

I don’t know about you, but I hate it when people shove their beliefs and their doctrines down my throat. To me it’s somehow offensive when people try to bludgeon me to death with their beliefs, as though they’re better than me because of what they believe. And so many of us have spent so many years watching Christians telling people about their faith in that kind of a way that they think that’s the only way it can be done.

And I don’t want to be like that, so I’m not going to tell people about Jesus, I’ll just keep my mouth shut.

These days, let’s face it, for a lot of people the church is on the nose. My hunch is that a lot of it has to do with dogmatism that we’re anti this and anti that. And what that anti implies is a judgement and a criticism rather than love and grace. It’s not so much what we say but how we say it.

Before I went into ministry I was in the Information Technology industry. One of the things I did was travel to a lot of conferences and do a lot of public speaking right around the world. I began to notice when I was quite a young man, that some speakers seemed somehow to have a superior tone yet others were at my level. I felt they were with me. And a mentor of mine, the man that mentored me for over 20 years, Graham, explained to me what that was all about.

In part somebody gets up to speak at the podium who has a superior mentality, you know, ‘I’m the expert, I’m the one that knows all about the subject. You listen to me and write it down and do as I tell you.’ Well that’s kind of offensive these days. It might have worked back in the 1950’s and perhaps the 1960’s but it certainly doesn’t work today.

People like that make me cringe because they demonstrate an outdated notion of relationships. They demonstrate a notion of relationship that goes back to the ‘50’s and ‘60’s that there are experts and institutions that stand above people and they are the ones that tell us what to do and we do it. Now that was okay then but 99% of the time it’s not going to work for people today. So in part it’s a superior attitude.

Then there are people who kind of pull on the side, who share their lives and experiences. Who invite me to think about what they are saying with questions, who share not just their successes but their weaknesses and their failures and their challenges and the insights that come out of those.

They talk more in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘me’. I love listening to people like that. I have so much to learn from people who speak in those terms because it demonstrates an attitude that says, ‘Hang on, I’m not the expert, I don’t know everything. But there are a few things that I have some insights about. Why don’t we share those, why don’t we have a dialogue, why don’t we pull up alongside one another and be better off from the experience.

And for me, that second type of speaker is someone who treads lightly yet they reflect an attitude which is contemporary in terms of a relationship which is where we all are by and large, today. But they also find language that’s about ‘us’ and ‘we’ that’s about questions, that’s about engagement rather than ‘I’ve got this, now you should do that’ and ‘I believe this so you should believe that and if you don’t then you’re wrong’.

As opposed to people, right, who want to bludgeon me to death with their beliefs and my answer, like most other people, is ‘No thanks, I’m not that interested’. This concept of using our attitudes and language to tread lightly to me is a beautiful concept. To me it’s relational. To me it’s like … I love dealing with people like that who want to engage me, rather than bludgeoning me.

Now don’t you think that’s natural? Yet at the same time it’s still possible to walk boldly, to be certain of what it is we believe in. If you’re a Christ follower, if you’re a Christian, my prayer for you is that you’re absolutely rock-solid in your faith in Jesus. That you’ll look at everything the world does that is right and wrong out there in the world and say, ‘Look, no matter what’s going on out there, in my heart, when I look at the Cross I see the Jesus who loves me, who’s prepared to die for me, who’s coming back for me, and when I believe in Him I’m going to have eternal life.’ I want to share that Jesus with other people and I’m so certain about that, I’m so safe in that.

You know, we don’t have to be shy about believing in Jesus. We don’t have to be uncertain in our faith just because other people don’t like it. We don’t have to be afraid about what other people might think of who we are and what we believe. No! Are you Christ’s follower? You’ve put your faith in the King of kings and the Lord of lords and the Creator of the universe and He died for you and for me. And that’s a fantastic message!

Does that flick your switch? Man, it flicks my switch. It works for me every time. Do people aspire to a sort of faith that’s uncertain? Would you be impressed with someone who wasn’t really happy with who they were in their faith in Christ.

Charles Spurgeon who was a great preacher of the 19th Century tells a story of a young preacher who was one of his students who went out to speak at a church. And obviously this young guy was a bit uncertain about what he got up to speak about. And a crusty old parishioner comes up to this young man after the service and says, ‘Young man, I don’t expect to believe everything you say when you get up and preach on Sunday mornings, but I do expect you to believe it’.

Kind of true isn’t it. I mean, sure, people won’t always agree with what you have to say about Jesus or what I have to say about Jesus, but if we profess a faith in Jesus I reckon people expect us to be passionate about it and to believe it and to be rock solid in our faith.

To me it’s wonderful to think of treading lightly on the one hand yet walking boldly at the same time. Treading lightly to me is about not having a superior pulpit-style attitude about people, about me being better because I happen to have met Jesus. And yet walking boldly is saying, ‘I know the one in whom I’ve place my faith’. And I think that when you and I take treading lightly and walking boldly seriously and you put them together in the one person, do you know what that equals? It equals a powerful humility. It looks like Jesus.

Jesus said, ‘I am lowly and humble of heart. Come to Me and I will give you rest’.

Jesus wasn’t some woos he did both things. He trod lightly in the lives of people. He didn’t come to judge them; He didn’t come to pull them down. Yes, He attacked religious hypocrisy but that’s about the only thing He ever attacked. All those people out there who didn’t know Him yet, who didn’t believe in Him yet, He was gentle and loving and yet He was so bold in knowing what God His Father had called Him to do.

We can be certain and yet respect people and tread lightly in their lives.
Jesus gave people time to unpack His story. To come to grips with who He was.

Look Around – They’re hurting Out There

One of the greatest deceptions for anyone who calls themselves a Christian is to imagine that some day well into the future, God has some amazing evangelistic job for us to do. And so the days slip by and the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months and months into years. And we wait for that long-off far-distant call and all the time, right here under our noses people around us are hurting. Not in some other country, not in another city but at home, at work, at the football club, at school – right under our noses.

One of the things that stop us sharing Jesus sometimes with those people is this romantic notion that one day … one day … God will do something big with me. But in the meantime, well people around us are going to hell. Does that sound a bit strong? Does that sound a bit dramatic? We know well those people around who are going to an eternity without Christ.

If they don’t know Jesus, if they have never met Him, never put their faith in Him, never experienced His love and His grace through faith, then tonight they die of a stroke or a heart attack or next week they get run over by the proverbial bus, that’s exactly where they’re going to go. Is that a bit strong? Maybe, but it’s the way it is.

Listen to what Jesus said, Matthew Chapter 28 verses 19-20:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Remember I’m with you always to the end of the age.”

With all my heart I believe that Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Saviour, Jesus the Son of God wants to use you and me to touch the people around us with His love. Not in five years time, not in ten years time, not in twenty years time, not half way around the world necessarily, but today, here and now.

So, what about the people in your life? Your husband, your wife, your kids, maybe adults, maybe teenagers, maybe younger kids, your extended family, your brother-in-lay or sister-in-law, cousins or uncles or aunts or grandparents or grandchildren. Your neighbours down the street, your friends, and the parents of the kids that your kids might go to school with.

When you think about it, we all actually have relationships with quite a number of people: our work colleagues. You look around at your own little group and there are probably about 50-100-150 people that we regularly have contact with. It’s quite staggering when you think about it. But then you think, a good number of those don’t know Jesus, a good number those are doing exactly what Berni said. A good number of those people are going to end up in hell.

There’s too many of them to deal with all at once. How do I deal with these people? I don’t think God expects us to deal with all of them at once. He knows the ones with whom we can really connect and I believe that as we pray towards the end of this program which we are going to do, God will bring the faces of the people that He wants us to touch with our lives right before us.

I believe that as we pray that we will see all those people through the eyes of the almighty and loving God and you know something. They may not be the ones that we expect. When God shows us those faces I can almost guarantee the feeling of “Oh no, not him, not her, they’re such problems.” “I don’t want to deal with them, that person’s marriage is falling apart.” “That one is a real pain in the neck. I can’t stand that person.”

I tell you, God will bring those people in our lives out of His love and grace and He’ll whisper, this is the one that I want to touch through you, or this one or that one, or maybe these two or three.

It’s really easy at that point to say, “Well Lord that was a nice exercise praying that prayer. I have a lot to do, I have really busy in ministry or busy at work, or I’ve got a family to bring up and money to earn.” But when God brings those faces before you today, as He will if you ask and pray, would you make the prayer investment in their lives? Will you make the emotional investment in their lives? ill you make the heart investment in their lives and be like Jesus was to those lepers and the prostitutes and the tax collectors.

Let’s pray a prayer right now.

Father God, we know that you have a plan to use us, a plan to bless people with your love, a plan to bring people to that door, to open the door so that they can meet Jesus Christ and have eternal life with you.

Father, sometimes we know it’s not going to be convenient, and sometimes we know that we’re not going to be that able, and sometimes we know we are going to make mistakes, but Father we ask you, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ today, to bring before us right now the very face of the person or the faces of the people that you want us to reach out to with your love.

Father, by your Holy Spirit, show us those faces, show us those names, speak those into our hearts and put it on our hearts the fire that burns for you to be the hands and the feet and the voice of Christ to them. Lord equip us, strengthen us, encourage us, give us the endurance, give us everything it takes for you to use us as much or as little as you choose to bring these people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Father, we ask those things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen

As you contemplate what God’s doing in your life, as you contemplate the people that God’s surely brought before you, let this knowledge set you free. Jesus the Christ means to use you and to use me in the lives of the people whom He’s put next to us, so that He can set them free. It’s all about sharing Jesus with others. Not some time in the future when we’re all perfecto but here and now, just as we are. One of my absolute favourite passages of scripture is Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10:

“For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

Just the way we are. His workmanship prepares us for the good works that He’s already prepared ahead of time for us to walk right into. God’s already gone ahead, God’s already started a work in people’s lives and when He calls on us to love someone or care for someone or say something or tell them about Jesus, let me ask you something.

Are you ready to ask this call? Are you ready to share the love of Christ with that person today?