Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Reaching out...

Ultimately the goal of our Christian walk is to go and make disciples - after worshipping and loving God of course. I suspect I am not alone in feeling inadequate in this area. The first evangelical challenge of God52 was therefore a big challenge, not just for me.

I take some consolation in reading about the efforts of other bloggers in the challenge of praying for a non-believer. Many of the bloggers are full time ministry workers who you might expect to excel at this sort of thing. It was with some measure of relief therefore that I saw how others were struggling to fulfill this task. Everything from offering to pray for people via a Twitter hash code, to stealth praying for people - they won't know what hit them!

Don't get me wrong. My missionary life has led me to many opportunities to pray for, and with, non-believers. Yet I am still afraid to declare my beliefs aloud. Not to mention the fact that these days I hardly even come into contact with non-believers. All my friends are believers, I work with believers, I serve in worship in my church... with believers. So it's already a bit of a challenge.

Put it to God though and He will make an opening. I went on a very important trip to buy something. On this trip I was praying, asking God for favour to get a good price. I threw in a prayer at the end for an opportunity to be a witness. I thought I could use the interaction with the sales clerk to initiate a conversation that might allow me to pray for him/her. Plan in place I entered the shop... and was approached by a woman with head covering....Muslim!... In an instant all my resolve fled. Any plan I had to use my missionary status to negotiate a better price was crushed! How could I share with this woman? How could I dare pray for her?

In hindsight I realise I had been given an awesome opportunity and I blew it! I should have entered with boldness and courage and shared what God had placed on my heart, but I fled into the security of a stealth prayer. I'm not knocking quietly praying for people without their knowledge, but in this case it was just an excuse to avoid standing up for my faith.

This God52 stuff is a hard! Sadly I seem to be failing more than I'm succeeding. Hopefully as the year progresses I'll improve and learn.

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