Share The Gospel in Six Words: Gospel Mini-Series

We notice Christian parents talk about Jesus in safe spaces but freeze in real conversations, and our kids learn that pattern by watching us. We share practical ways to tell our testimony at home and a simple six-sentence gospel tool that helps our families speak with clarity and courage. 

Life in 6 Words Framework from dare2share.org

• finding natural moments to share our story with our kids 
• leading with honesty without oversharing or sanitizing the mess 
• asking questions that invite conversation rather than lectures 
• repeating our testimony over time as part of everyday life 
• moving from testimony to a clear gospel message 
• using Life in Six Words from Dare to Share as a memorized framework 
• practicing through role-play and learning to spot on-ramps in real conversations 
• letting go of the pressure to convince and trusting the Holy Spirit to work 

If this series is helping you, please share it with another parent who needs it and leave us a review. Shoot us an email at podcast at WayneChristian.org if you have suggestions for another episode. But make sure you subscribe so you don't miss our last episode in the series where we're going all in on equipping your child to share their faith with their friends.

Send any questions you want answered to podcast@waynechristian.org

This podcast is presented by Wayne Christian School- A Christ-centered community school whose mission is to assist parents and churches in the education of their children from a biblical worldview to impact their world for Christ. You can learn more at waynechristian.org 

Transcript

The Question We Avoid

Nate 0:00

When is the last time you told someone about Jesus? Not in a church, not in a Bible study, I mean in a real conversation with someone who wasn't a believer. Because here's what we've noticed Christian parents are really good at talking about Jesus in safe spaces. Small groups, Sunday school, at the dinner table with their kids.

Luis 0:20

We're all comfortable there. But the moment it comes to actually having a gospel conversation with a neighbor or a coworker or a kid on their child sports team, something happens. We freeze, we change the subject, we suddenly can't remember a single thing we know about the Bible, and our kids are watching that every single time.

Nate 0:41

Here's the thing it doesn't have to be complicated. The gospel is actually really simple, and today we're gonna give you a tool, six words, that can change the way you share your faith and the way your kid shares theirs. Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders, and educators to raise up the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ. We're your hosts. I'm Nate. And I'm Lewis. And we are glad you're here with us today. And we are in week two of our mini-series about the gospel, raising gospel sharers. Last week we walked you through how to craft and share your testimony. We gave you a homework assignment. Write down your before, your encounter, and your after. If you missed that episode, go back and listen to it. It lays the foundation for what we're building on today.

Luis 1:44

And speaking of that homework assignment, before we move forward, we want to make sure you actually do something with what you wrote. Because your testimony sitting in your notes app, it doesn't do anybody any good. So we're going to start today by finishing what we started last week. How do you actually share that story with your child?

Nate 2:02

All right, so let's get into it. And we can even talk about some practical ways of what this looks like when you're sharing your testimony. Again, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, go back and do that now if you've got time. If not, that's okay. Keep moving

Share Your Testimony Without Cringe

Nate 2:17

forward and listen into this episode. But we want to get some practical things. So, number one, find a natural moment to actually share your story. It doesn't have to be a formal meeting. You don't need to schedule, you know, some big family meeting. You all sit down on the couches, pull your kids into the living room, say, sit down, I'm going to share my testimony with you. That I mean, that's not going to go over well at all. Especially if you have teenagers. Yeah. Big eye roll.

Luis 2:44

And so what we're saying is find a natural moment, right? A car ride, a walk, a late night when they can't sleep, and neither can you. Something that they say may spark the conversation. Let it come up organically. You might even say, hey, can I tell you something about when I was your age? Yeah, but be careful though. Don't be like a back in my day. Don't make it one of those. Yeah, don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. Or gal. I am that guy. You are that guy. Back in my day. Back in my day. Back in your day. And then the second one is to lead with honesty, right? It doesn't have to be polished. And so don't try to make your story sound better than it was. Kids, especially teenagers, they they have this finely tuned radar for inauthenticity, right? They they pick up when you're not being authentic. And so if your story sounds too clean, they're gonna tune you out. And so lead with what's real, right? I was really struggling with X. I didn't know what I believed. I was scared. I was angry with God. Your mess becomes part of the message, and you don't want to wallow in it, but you don't want to sanitize it either. And like we mentioned last week, right? You don't want to overshare. You want to make sure that it's appropriate and context because you also don't want to inadvertently create this thought in your child like, well, my dad was really messed up. Yeah. And look how he turned out. So I can be really messed up and it'll work out for me too.

Nate 4:08

And then I've got time, right? It's the I've got time myth. And this actually, not to give away where we're going with the rest of this episode, but this is this is a good place to think about on-ramps. That's that's going to be a thing we'll say a couple of times this episode. But the the what you were struggling with, your before, those types of things, those are good on-ramps. So as your kid is struggling, you make that a connection point. Yeah, I struggled with something similar, and then look at how God changed me with that. Okay? And so really invite them into the conversation. That's kind of our third point, right? Ask them questions. You know, what do you think about that? Or does that connect with what you've been thinking or what you've been going through? You're not lecturing, you're opening the door and letting them walk through at their own pace. And if they say, you know, oh, well, that's cool, you know, and go back to their phone, that's okay. At least you planted a seed in the process.

Luis 5:01

Yeah. And that actually kind of segues naturally into the next one, right? You're gonna have to share more than once because when you share your testimony, it's not a one-time speech, but it's a living story. Yep. You're gonna need to revisit it. You're gonna add to it, you're gonna reference pieces of it in different conversations. You know, you might say, like, you know, this reminds me of when I was going through that season before I surrendered to Christ. Uh, your kids can handle hearing different parts of your story at different times. And there may be times when they're on their phone and they tune you out and they don't really hear what you're saying. So you may have to say it again a different way at a different time. Like we've said before, right? Deuteronomy 6 says to talk about these things when you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise up. It's not this once-a-year thing, right? It's not something that you do occasionally, but it becomes woven into the fabric of your everyday life.

From Your Story To The Gospel

Nate 5:57

All right. So that's that's the testimony, right? What we talked about last week. It's it's your story, but there's another layer that we want to add on to this because your testimony is powerful, but at some point you need to move from this is what God did in my life, to here is the gospel, and it's for you too.

Luis 6:16

Yeah. And that's what we're gonna talk about for the rest of this episode, right? How do you actually share the gospel and then how do you equip your kids to do the same thing?

Nate 6:24

I think you should start off and just say, you're a sinner, you're going to hell. Oh, yeah. Is that it like repent? Repent, turn or burn? Turn and burn. Turn, turn or burn. Turn or burn. Because if you turn and turn, turn and burn.

Luis 6:36

Yeah, if you turn and burn, you're going to run. I guess it depends.

Nate 6:39

If they're going on the right way and they turn, then they will burn. That's right. My goodness. Okay, so don't take any of that advice. We want to get into our actual advice. And before we get to that, to the tool, let's just admit again that this is not an easy thing, right? Because most Christian parents, they know they should be sharing the gospel. They believe it, they just aren't doing it. And and so there's a couple of things that get in the way, right? Feeling like you're gonna be rejected, even by your own kids, feeling like you're not qualified, or maybe just not knowing how to start the conversation.

Luis 7:10

And when we talk about fear, right, here's a way to think about it differently. When when you share the gospel, you're not selling something, you are offering the most important thing that a human can give to another. And that changes your posture entirely, right? You're not making a sales call, but you're demonstrating love for the other person by sharing with them the gospel.

Nate 7:36

Yeah, and and having that the salesy feel. Like when I was in Bible college, we would have a whole class on personal evangelism, and then they take the freshman, it was the freshman students at Bible college, down to New York City and drop us in. I remember it was a Friday night and all day Saturday, dropped us Friday night once we got in town in Times Square. It was about 9 30, 10 o'clock at night. Okay, and I was 18 years old. And they're just like, all right, we're gonna space out, you know, 20 yards apart, and we're all just gonna take this section and just start sharing the gospel with people. And it did feel salesy to the point that there was a guy walking down, also actually doing a sales pitch, and he would hit multiple of us in a row, and we were all trained to like use the same segue. And so he would he walked up, no lie, and he said, Hey, do you like drugs? And I'm like, 18-year-old me who is very nerdy, and I just look at him and I was like, you know, if you've got something to sell, I'll listen to your sales pitch, and then I've got something I want to share with you. And then he just was like, That's what they said, and he just keeps walking on. And I was just like, Okay, that didn't work very well. But then it does feel that way if that's your approach, right? If you've got a salesy approach, it's gonna feel that way. But what we're gonna teach you is it's a it's a conversation, right? And so you don't need to be, you know, super qualified on a cis certain, you know, like system where you can go through and say the right words at the right time. It's just a conversation, right? And so even if you don't know an answer to a question your child brings up, we say this all the time that you answer and say, you know, that's a great question. I don't know. Let's find out together.

Luis 9:11

And you may not know where to start, but the truth is that you just need to start where you are, right? Because the research shows that most people who come to faith come to faith before the age of 18. And so the friends that your child is sitting next to in school right now are the people that they are best positioned to reach. Not because they have the best theology, but because they have access and relationship that no adult will ever have. And if our kids never see us talk to someone about Jesus, then we're sending them a message that's louder than anything that we say in our family devotions, right? We're saying that the gospel is something we believe privately, but that we don't actually share.

Nate 9:56

Yeah, that's exactly right. And and so we want to make sure that, you know, that's that's not the thing that keeps you up at night, right? Worrying. You know, it's not about your kids having the right doctrine, but but whether they actually see us living out our faith. Uh so let's dive into this. Let's actually give the tool, okay, the the six words that we promised at the beginning.

Life In Six Words Framework

Luis 10:16

And let's be clear up front, this is not unique to us. No, we don't own this. In fact, this the tool comes from Dare to Share Ministries. Yep. You can find them at daretoshare.org. That's the number two, dare number two share.org. We'll we'll link it in the show notes. Perfect. And it was developed by them to equip teenagers to share the gospel with their generation. And so they developed this framework called Life in Six Words that takes the core message of the gospel and makes it simple enough for a middle schooler to memorize and actually use. And so there are six words, and each one stands for a letter in the word gospel. So we're gonna walk through each one. The first letter is G, which stands for God. God created us to be with him.

Nate 11:03

And I love the fact that their system here starts with God, right? Sometimes I made that joke earlier about, you know, you're a sinner, you're going to hell. It's starting with you, right? But but really the gospel starts with God, who he is and what he intended, right? From the beginning, God created humans to be in his image in a relationship with him, right? That was the design. God created us to be with him. So before you can explain what went wrong, you need to understand what was supposed to be right, and it's that we were supposed to be with God. So that's the first one. G. Second one, oh. Our the word our so our sins separate us from God.

Luis 11:47

And so this is the problem, right? Yeah, sin is not just bad behavior, but it's a posture of a heart that says, I want to live my way. I don't want to live God's way. And the consequence of that is separation. Romans 3.23 tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the word our matters here. And this isn't just pointing your finger at your kid, right? But it's standing on the same ground and saying, This is the human condition. This is this is all of us. All of us have this problem, right? That's why O is our. Our sins separate us from God. Yep. And then the letter S is next, right? And the letter S stands for sins. Sins cannot be removed by good deeds.

Nate 12:33

Our listeners at this point are just thankful we know how to spell gospel. G-O-S-P-E-L. I'm thankful that we know how to spell. That's right. Okay, so sins. And this is the point where the gospel becomes countercultural because like some people, most people will agree like our sins separate us from God, the O. But when we add in this S that sins cannot be removed by good deeds, it's hard for them to recognize the fact that it's not about trying harder or doing better. It's about recognizing that we cannot do it ourselves. Yeah, that's true. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, right? It's by grace through faith, not by works. And and the bar is not to be good enough or to be better than somebody else or to have your good deeds outweigh your bads. Like that is what every other religion in the world says, right? Heap up your good deeds so that you've got a good resume. It's not gonna work for you. So that's the S. So G-O-S, God, our sins, and now we're at the P paying, paying the price for sin. Jesus died and rose again.

Luis 13:39

And this is the heart of the gospel, right? Everything else sets up this moment. Jesus, who's fully God, fully human, lived the life that we should have lived, died the death that we deserve to die, and on the third day he rose from the dead, defeating sin and death once and for all. And Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15, right, that the death and resurrection of Jesus is not a footnote in the gospel. It is the gospel, right? It is it is what saves us. It is because of him being fully God, fully human, living a life that was perfect, dying a death that he didn't deserve to die, rising from the dead, because of that he defeated sin, and because of that, we now can have salvation. Preach. We gotta get in there. Like, amen. Yes, yes, right. Raising some good stuff if this were a video podcast. There we go. And then E, right? This is everyone. Everyone who trusts in him alone has eternal life.

Nate 14:44

Yeah, so that's great because the offer is open, right? Everyone, not just people who have it all together, not just people who grew up in church, right? John 3 16, whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life, right? And and that's it's it's the trust part of that that's key, right? This is not just an intellectual agreement saying, yes, I know Jesus died. We do it, you know, we worship every Sunday, we celebrate Easter, whatever. Trusting means that you're actually putting the full weight of your eternity on what he did, not what you can do. That's kind of the point there of these middle letters, is that it's our sins and we can't do anything, but he did it all for us. So everybody who trusts in that is going to have eternal life. It's the difference between believing an airplane can fly and actually getting on the plane and trusting that pilot to get the plane in the air.

Luis 15:42

Ooh, that's a good analogy. Thank you. Thank you.

Nate 15:44

All right, so let's get on to the next letter. L life. Okay. And and this last one is is important because we miss it sometimes. We don't end here. But life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.

Luis 15:59

And the last word life there, right, is continuous. Like we like we are gonna have eternal life. And this is the part, right, that can sometimes be shortchanged, right? Because we talk about heaven and and that's real. Yeah, but John 10 10 says that Jesus came that we might have life abundantly, and that abundant life starts now. Yep. And Paul tells us that if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. And so when you're talking to your kids, this framing matters, right? You're not asking them to sign up for a set of rules, you're not asking them to sign up for life insurance or what some people call fire insurance, right? But you're asking them into a life, a relationship that starts today and never ends. This past weekend I preached from Psalm 145, and David is declaring God's worthiness of praise, right? And he says, I will praise you. And he uses the word forever. And so David acknowledges, like, I'm praising God right now while I'm alive, I'm praising God tomorrow, I'm praising him next week, and I'm gonna praise him forever because when I die, I'm gonna continue to praise him. And so that's what that's what we're saying, right? Is is that your life with Jesus starts now, it's a really good life, and then it's gonna continue forever.

Nate 17:26

That's awesome. So you put it all together, right? G-O-S-P-E-L. God, our sins, paying everyone life. And you actually put it together, you can say all six as as sentences to really explain the gospel. God created us to be with him, but our sins separate us from God. Those sins cannot be removed by good deeds, so paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. Everyone who trusts in him alone has eternal life, and that life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.

Luis 18:02

Wow. You can put that on a card. Yep. You can put it in the notes app in your phone, you can write it on a napkin, but even more importantly, you can teach them to your child word for word, and it's easy for them to memorize, understand, and repeat.

Nate 18:19

And actually, Life in Six Word or Dare to Share has an app. So if you go in your app store, if you are one of those few who uses an Android, no hate or maybe a little bit of hate, it's in the Android store, the Google Play Store. If you've got an iPhone, it's in the the Apple store, the Dare to Share app, and it's it's a great thing because you can go through and and it you just swipe through and it's got them with Bible verses and stuff. You've got that too? Okay. So it's a great app. I've used it before, it kind of keeps you on track. Okay. So where do we go with this, Lewis? Once once we kind of know and understand this framework, like I'm not gonna just repeat verbatim everything you all just said to my kid.

Luis 18:58

Like,

Memorize And Practice As A Family

Luis 18:59

what how do I use this? And so we know that discipleship matters because discipleship multiplies, right? We're not just trying to raise kids who believe the right things, but we're trying to raise kids who who actually go, kids who see their school as a mission field and their friendships as gospel opportunities. And the Life in Six Words model was literally built for that, right? For kids who actually go. So you need to memorize it together.

Nate 19:26

Yep. Yep. It's and it's gonna start right there, right? You walk your child through it, talk about it. You can use this as dinner conversations, go through one a night or one a week. And the goal is just for the sixth sentence to be so familiar, you can say them without thinking. When I was a youth pastor, we we did a big series on this and a big push. And ever since then, like I did it with the teens in my youth group. Like it's just it it rolls off the tongue now because you use it a lot. So did you use the word of life curriculum? I did use the word of life curriculum. Shout out to Chad Harwell. If this was, I don't know, it was probably episode 10, 12. It was in that range. He talked about the word of life quiet time and all that. So go back and listen to that episode. But we use that, you know, and and we went through this DARE to share gospel acronym. And so it's good because when you're familiar with it, your kids are familiar with it, it will make you more comfortable with when something comes up in conversation. You can actually jump into the conversation anywhere in those six, right? If somebody's talking about our purpose in life and we're just all random, start at the beginning, right? God created us to be with him. If somebody's talking about, oh, I'm just gonna try hard enough, you can start with sins cannot be removed by good deeds. And so each of those becomes an on-ramp to that story. You may not need some before that, right? You can just jump right in.

Luis 20:49

And this is just a good reminder, too, is we're recording this. Our school is out for the summer. Yep. And so a lot of families are going into summer mode. This is a good devotion time, discipleship time for your family this summer, right? Like just spend time memorizing, practicing it, and role-playing it, right? So practice with your child, you be the skeptical friend. Let them walk through the gospel using the gospel acronym. Yep. Uh, it might feel awkward, but do it anyways, right? If your child's an athlete, remind them that they don't show up to the game without practicing. Yep. And so why would we expect our kids to share the gospel in a high-stakes real world moment if they've never done it in a safe space at home? And here's what usually happens with this your child teaches you something, right? Yeah. They say it in a way that you hadn't thought of it. And then everybody grows as a family in sharing the gospel.

Nate 21:47

Yep, yep. And that kind of leads us to our next point is looking for those open doors.

Spot On Ramps In Real Talk

Nate 21:52

I already said this, I kind of got ahead of we got ahead of ourselves, right? Where I talked about those on ramps. But but teach your child to listen, right? Because she Sharing the gospel rarely starts with, hey, can I share the gospel with you? It might, but usually it's a real conversation, a friend's going through something hard, a question about death or meaning or why things are the way they are, or you know, a kid being really down on themselves and is like, hey, you know what? Well, our sins do separate us from God. But thankfully, paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. And you can move through the points that way depending on where the person is. And you just use that gospel acronym as six different on-ramps to help those conversations move towards gospel conversations.

Fear Of Rejection And Pressure Off

Luis 22:38

And we talked about fear earlier and people being afraid of sharing the gospel. Most of the time, that fear comes from the fear of rejection or from the fear of somebody reacting negatively to what we're saying. But here's the thing to remind yourself of and your child. It's not their job to convince the other person, right? And that becomes the most freeing thing that you can remember and remind your child of when it comes to sharing their faith. It's not their job to convince anyone, their job is to be faithful. God, the Holy Spirit, is the one that does the converting, right? Paul says in First Corinthians, I planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the growth. And your job as a parent is to plant in your child, and then your child's job is to plant. It may be to water, right? It may be they may be the third, fourth, or fifth gospel conversation that somebody has heard, but ultimately the growth belongs to God. And when you remember that, that takes an enormous amount of pressure off and removes the fear of being rejected because we're not being rejected, they're rejecting the gospel.

Nate 23:56

Yeah, that's really good. So, Lewis, that was a really good ending there. But any other final words or encouragements uh before we close this episode out?

Simple Next Steps And Closing

Luis 24:05

Yeah, you know, we make the gospel complicated. The gospel is not complicated. And because of that, we've convinced ourselves that sharing the gospel requires that perfect moment, the perfect words, the perfect spiritual track. Um but Jesus, he walked up to fishermen, right? He walked up to tax collectors and he just said, follow me. And and they did, right? The message was that simple. And so this tool, Life in Six Words, gives you and your child a tool to do the same thing. It's simple, it's clear, it's biblical, it's it's memorable. And so take some time this week to memorize it for yourself and then say it in the car with your kid until it becomes automatic, right? Teach it to them, role-play with them, and then pray that God opens a door for you to use it in your life.

Nate 25:00

That's really, really good. So thank you all for joining us today. And if this series is helping you, please share it with another parent who needs it and leave us a review. We'd love to see that. The the five-star ratings and just the comments of of what you guys think. Shoot us an email at podcast at WayneChristian.org if you have suggestions for another episode. Um, but make sure you subscribe so you don't miss our last episode in the series where we're going all in on equipping your child to share their faith with their friends. But until then, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.