Sharing Faith With Others

How do you share your faith with others? Hugh Halter suggests that Jesus sets an example of allowing your behavior to draw others to you.

Questions for Discussion and Personal Reflection

  1. How might organic spiritual conversations be more productive than those in which discussing spiritual issues is forced?
  2. What do you think Hugh means when he says that Christians should be living beautiful lives?

It's been probably 15 years. I don't think I've ever really initiated a conversation unless somebody has already kind of initiated some curiosity with me. It's— even when you watch Jesus, he didn't really start a whole lot of conversations. It seemed like people actually went after him, and then even when they would ask him a question, he would just sort of deal with it very quickly and then he would sort of back up. And it seemed like they couldn't keep from continuing to go at him. I've found that's the same way in my life. People will ask a question about, um, you know, "How come you and Cheryl don't seem to fight that much?" And then I tell them that we do fight, but yeah, not as much as we used to, and then they ask, "Well, how? How do you not fight?" And I remember one guy asked me that question, and I said, "Joe for me to tell you that, I'd have to be really honest about my relationship with Jesus," and he said, "That's why I asked you." And so at that point, then the conversation's supernatural because he's literally asked me to tell him about Jesus. A few months ago, I had a party at my house, and we had a, a neighbor that was my wife's real estate agent, uh, kind of head broker at her office, and, um, just a lot of friends hanging around, some of his friends, some folks that were part of our church, uh, just kind of mingling together really well. And, uh, Matt came over, and he, uh, just said, "Hey, Berry and I"— that's his wife— "were talking the other night and we just talked about how we don't have a whole lot to offer our kids." His kids were now, I think 6, 7 and 8, and they must have been bringing up conversations about God and he just said, "I realize that I have nothing to offer them," and he actually goes, "I think I might be spiritually bankrupt." And, uh, I said, "Well, you should work on that," and he said, "I'm trying to," and then we just went back to the party. And then it was probably four months later just a few weeks ago that, uh, I actually walked into his real estate office, and he looked a little bit sort of bummed out so I said, "What's up, Matt?" And he goes, "Remember that spiritual bankruptcy thing I brought up?" I said, "Yeah," and I said, "You're not making a lot of headway on that?" And he goes, "No." He goes, "Is there something that you could do to help me figure this out?" And, um, so we've been talking about God pretty naturally. I think it was assumed that Christians would live such, uh, beautiful lives that people would actually go after them, knock on their door, um, call them, email them, whatever, uh, to try to get some help with their life so I just wait till people, uh, move towards us, and then I just speak openly and honestly as somebody that's, that's just trying to figure it out, too. So... I'm not the answer man, um, but I am somebody that's trying to follow this real person that really makes a difference in absolutely everything in my life, and so it's easy to talk about that part of Jesus.