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My fiancee gets really irritated with me sometimes because I’m a story teller. I love to tell stories about things that happened to me or happened to friends and often I tell the same story multiple times. She loves me (and in 12 days she’s stuck with me for life) and I love her for the little smile I always get that says “I’ve heard this many times before but I love you enough to humor you and listen again.”
It’s just something about a good story that compels me to want to share it with other people. I especially love stories where something that you thought was missing is suddenly found or you discover something you thought was lost and the memories come flooding back as soon as you find the item. It happened to me as I was moving to my new house…I found things that belonged to my grandfather that I had forgotten I had in my possession and thoughts of grandpap just flowed from that little watch.
I was telling a friend about something God did for me and it hit me how rarely I hear other people sharing with me stories about what God is doing in their life. I’m not talking preaching or even overt witnessing but just sharing the little things that God does like perhaps bringing us an encouraging word from a stranger on a day we’re feeling down or a surprise bonus at work when our money is tight. How often do we really share those stories beyond perhaps our immediate family?
I think of a passage of Scripture that pastors will call it the “Parable of the Lost Sheep” (because that’s what it is) and they usually use this to illustrate the depth of the love of God that He will go after the one…presumably you in the sermon context…and rejoice greatly over you because you were lost but not found. That is, indeed, true. However, I see another lesson that comes from the same text and I think it applies to our lives in a way that goes beyond just the salvation angle of the parable in Luke 15:4-6 (ESV):
“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”"
That lesson comes in verse six when Jesus says the man calls together his friends and his neighbors to ask them to rejoice with him because the lost items was now found. This guy was telling his friends and neighbors about something he found that he thought was lost just like we do in our everyday lives! It wasn’t that he was being high and mighty or preachy or superior to his friends…he was just wanting them to share in his joy and celebrate the return of the lost item.
He had no problems telling his friends of his mistake…losing the sheep in the first place…and he had no problem opening himself up to them in a personal way by letting them be intimately involved in his life (knowing how many sheep he owns, for example.) We can do the same thing in our lives and through it be very effective witnesses for Christ without being preachy or overbearing. All we have to do is share the stories of our lives when God does the little things.
We all think of witnessing as sharing Jesus in some direct way. While that can be a part of it, our lives are also a major witness to those around us. When we face a hard situation and come out on the other side and praise ourselves or others who help us only then those who see us think we must not really believe in the God we profess to serve. After all, if it was Him who delivered us, shouldn’t we be thanking Him instead of talking about our own perseverance first?
When we are sitting with a friend and are sharing with them about the surprise card a friend gave you with twenty bucks in it when you didn’t have money to get groceries instead of just leaving the story ending there just add “and I was praying God would supply that need for me but I never thought it would come that way!” Your friend might just smile and ignore it…or they might ask you about the fact you were praying for it. They might ask you “well, what did you expect God to do?” It opens the door to talk more about Jesus and the things that He has done, is doing and will do in your life.
All it takes is sharing a simple story about something you’ve had in your life that’s lost but now found just like that sheep in the parable. It’s not hard, it’s exciting and it’s a joy to include others in the joy that you’ve found.
