Talking To People About God: Part 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. All this week we’ve been talking about how as Christians we should be starting conversations about God with people in our lives, and the truth is, so many people in your life are keen to know more about God and what it means to have a relationship with Him, how to move forward with that, who Jesus is, what it’s all about.

You’ll only find out who those people are, if you start conversations and say something that just invites the conversation to go deeper than the surface, and then wait for that person to show you by how they interact with it, whether they want to go deeper.

If they do, then you know, here’s someone who wants to have a conversation about God, and you just start from there and start talking about God with them.

And look for a chance to explain how you start a relationship with God through Jesus.

Well, today I want to go one step further and suggest to you that you not only do this just as you go and as opportunities arise, but you actually make a plan for how to connect with people in your life, particularly in your own street that you live on, or your own apartment building, or your own neighbourhood, or people at the coffee shop you go to.

Something changes when you make a strategy.

When you make a plan, things start happening. You start acting to make a desire become reality. You want to talk with people around you about God. Many of them want to have conversations about God with you. They’re curious or even searching for answers in their life.

You make a plan for how to make that a reality. You know, in Jesus’ own life, when he started out His ministry, he started out for quite a long time just having personal interactions with people and leading them to faith in Him as the Messiah, people whose hearts were open to God. He started talking about God with them. He started explaining that he was the Messiah. They were all Jews waiting for the Messiah.

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And he helped them come to faith in him as the Messiah who would help them have a good relationship with God.

Well, after almost a year and a half of that, Jesus then said, I’m going to be strategic about this. It’s not just about my random encounters with people. I’m going to form a strategy. And so he approached 4 of the people who’d been followers for more than a year. They were brothers involved in a fishing business, and he said to them, Follow me full time now, and I’m going to teach you to be fishers of men, just like I have been doing.

Well, they were so keen. And so they followed him and he taught them to be fishers of men. He kept adding people to that group. And all of a sudden he had a strategy for reaching far beyond just the as you go things, right?

I talked to you yesterday about my brother David, who was a missionary in the Philippines, starting churches there. Well, he started one church, then he moved to another place and started another church where there were not really many Christians at all.

And then he thought, I want to become strategic. Next time I plant a church, I’m going to plant a church that has as its vision planting more churches up the coast from here where there’s not Christians already.

And so he planted a church that was a church planting church.

And all of a sudden it started something significant. My brother now is no longer living in the Philippines, but those last couple of churches he planted are planting other churches and other churches and other churches. Strategy makes all the difference, and you can form a strategy, right? I encourage you to sit down with your wife, your husband, and your kids and just say, let’s think about how we can start meaningful relationships with people on our street. What could we do to meet everyone on our street?

Maybe you’ll plan a neighbourhood barbecue, and it won’t just be you, you’ll invite some of your other neighbours to help you plan it, you’ll get to know them more in that way as well, and maybe start deeper conversations with them to find out who wants to know about God, right?

When you have your barbecue, you plan, OK, how are we going to go deeper than the surface with people as we chat with them at the barbecue. To find out who wants to go deeper, right?

It, it’s a strategy, but it’s also just relationships. All you’re doing is trying to find people who already want to go deeper than the surface with you, and that leads to really meaningful friendships. And that’s what you want, and it’s probably what they want too.

Make a plan for how to connect with people in your street, in your neighbourhood. To find those who want to have God conversations with you.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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