The Faithful Witness
Intro: Sharing our faith is often a two part persuasion process. We may be conscious of needing to convince the person in front of us to look at the Scriptures and make decisions about Jesus, but we may not be in touch with the equal need to convince the person inside of us to be faithful in the encounter.
Being faithful in our outreach encounters is a combination of our awareness of 3 things:
- Our awareness of God and his role as the one who moves hearts, grants repentance and makes things grow
- Our awareness of ourselves (history and present) and our roles as ministers of reconciliation
- Our awareness of the person we are reaching as a person of need and value
Definitions
Awareness: For the purposes of this exercise, awareness is simply the knowledge that we tend to act on when we reach out. Awareness is what influences our outreach and can be conscious or unconsciously affecting us.
Full Awareness: Someone with full awareness would have a more complete knowledge that influences them no matter what they have previously experienced. For example: a full awareness of people would mean being aware that they (like us) are complex people who are capable of a surprising range of behaviors with no guarantees to respond well, but are still worth persuading.
Limited Awareness: Someone with limited awareness might have a complete knowledge on the intellectual level, but on the practical level (when it comes to actually reaching out) are heavily influenced by only a part of what they know.
The reason why awareness is important is that it represents a script that we play in our mind when we reach out. Like actors in a play, we tend to act on the script in our outreach, and then reinforce that script by holding on to things in the encounter that support our awareness.
For example: if the script in our mind is, “No one at my job is open” we might invite a coworker and get a negative response that we reinforce our script by thinking, “See, I was right! No one here is open.”
Situational script: Sometimes a script is situational and we respond from our awareness in a particular way based on our history with that person or the context of the situation. Example: we might feel awkward reaching out in an elevator and when we are in that situation, we feel that there is no benefit in doing that.
Universal script: When we don’t challenge our situational scripts, we can find that they begin to become the typical way we look at things. If that is a good script, that’s not a problem.
Elements of sharing our faith
As we know, there is no true formula in sharing our faith, but here are elements that we have to consider with each encounter.
- Awareness of God
- Knowledge that he is working all the time on people’s hearts and is the one who makes things grow.
- Fear of God
- Knowledge that he will judge us and the world and mankind will live with God or apart from him for eternity.
- Full Awareness of people
- Meaning that we know and understand that people are wonderful as well as complex and sinful
- Limited Awareness of people
- When we only seeing part of that equation – for example: We see the person in front of us too simply. Example: Seeing someone as wonderful or sinful – or completely open or closed.
- Full Awareness of self
- Knowing and understanding our gifts, abilities, sins, history and limitations and accepting them as a part of our outreach experience.
- Limited Awareness of self
- Only seeing some part of ourselves – could be just our limitations or only our strengths.
All these elements (or lack of them) play a role in our outreach. They are the elements we must deal with in order to be faithful witnesses.
6 ways evangelistic encounters unfold
The sweet spot in sharing our faith is Faithfulness, but we may have a range of responses in every encounter. Here are 6 broad categories to help us examine our awareness in 3 areas: God, Self and People (meaning those we are reaching out to).
Each of these has a particular awareness of God, self and people, and an underlying question that we ask ourselves.
- Naïve
- Might not share our faith because we simply believe that God will connect them with the truth if they are open. Question: Why share?
- Main issue: Self:
- The person may trust that God is always reaching out to mankind, and my not have much of an issue with People, but this is a person that has not accepted role God has for us as persuaders.
- Cynical
- Might share with people, but can doubt value in doing so. Question: What’s the point?
- Main issue: People/and/or
God:
- Often cynicism comes from negative experiences with people and as Christians who know God is sovereign, we can find it difficult to reconcile. Undealt with, these encounters can dramatically affect our faithfulness in evangelism.
- Example: Jonah
- Insecure
- Might share with people, but tend to doubt the value of own effort and/or effectiveness. Question: Why me?
- Main issue: self
- A lot of the time, people with this challenge have confidence that God can do anything, but don’t believe that God will use them for whatever reason. Can be focused on personal failure, shortcomings and weaknesses. Insecure people are not seeing themselves properly which maintains a wrong awareness of God working in the encounter.
- Faithful
- Fully aware of God, self and people – the sweet spot. Question: Why not?
- Main issue: N/A
- Faithful people aren’t perfect. They trust God to play the roles that only he can play, accept that wherever they are at, they have a role to play in this person’s life, and are confident that while people are complex they are worth saving.
- Self-Reliant
- Might share with people, but rely on own strength, ability and wisdom. Question: Why God?
- Main issue: God
- People in this category may be confident and talented, but have a limited awareness of self because they are relying on their talents and effort to do what only God can do. Self-reliant people are not seeing God properly, which maintains a wrong awareness of their role in the encounter.
- Dutiful
- Might share faith because it is expected, but even though there is no real doubt about the value, there is also no real vision. Question: Who’s next?
- Main issue: God
and/or self
- People in this category aren’t necessarily hurt by rejection (people or God) but also don’t have the kind of vision that matures their faith and has them looking forward to what God will do.
- Obstinate
- Won’t share with people and no practical awareness of God. Question: Why bother?
- Main issue: God/People/Self
- Under this definition, people in this category may believe that God is at work in some way, but have stopped believing certain groups of people are open and worth persuading.
- Example: Pharisees with the tax collectors
How to use the Handout
The terms we have been using aren’t labels as much as quadrants – spaces in our lives where we tend to live out the way we have described.
Note: It can be helpful to view these categories as the ends of 3 continuums. They aren’t perfect ends of one another, but keep in mind that reaching out – or not, is always leading us somewhere.
Insecure – Self-reliant: living in one quadrant, we are too confident in self, the other not enough.
Naïve – Cynical: in one quadrant we expect God to do everything, the other ourselves.
Dutiful – Obstinate: on one end we obey even there is no real heart or faith, the other is no obedience at all.
Being a Faithful witness isn’t the middle of any of those. It involves us recognizing where we are on any of these continuums and tackling our main issues in those areas so we can have the proper awareness of God, self and others in our evangelistic encounters.
We could be on one continuum for our family and another for our job, etc. We could be faithful in the way we approach evangelism on the job, but naïve about a particular group of people (wealthy people, certain cultures, etc.)
Activity
Using the handout as a reference, think through 3 broad categories: Family, Job, and Neighborhood
- Try to identify what quadrants you currently find yourself in (meaning, what quadrants are you in regarding your outreach to the family, job and neighborhood. Should be thinking about 3 areas)
- What would you say is the main thing keeping you in that quadrant?
- What’s one step you can take to move forward in each area?
Ruben's Lesson Notes 