10.4 - People Want to Hear - Talking to Others About Jesus

This week, we spend more time discussing last week's "People Want to Hear" topic: Talking to Others About Jesus. How can we overcome the awkwardness we feel and tell people the good news?

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Paul and Noah both preach and teach with the Cedar Park church of Christ in Cedar Park, TX. You can visit our site at: https://www.cedarparkchurchofchrist.org/

Transcript

Paul 0:22

Well back in the studio here, and you know, Noah, we kind of dealt with the people, what, what people want to know they want to hear more about, and, and we were trying to have a conversation about having a conversation with others about Jesus. Yeah, about the gospel, about the things that matter most in this life. I mean, Jesus, only he can say people need more Jesus in their life. I need more of Jesus in my life. But sometimes there's an awkwardness to this and people say, okay, I want to talk to my friends more about Jesus. I want to be better at this, but sometimes it's so awkward. How can I do that better without it being awkward, uncomfortable, fill in the blank. We talked a little bit about that last week. Let's talk more about that.

Noah 1:06

Yeah. So we're, we'll spend some time unpacking that today. And I, I think last week for those of you who are listening and listen to last week's episode you know, you remember that we, we talked about some, some general concepts that I think undergird a lot of the practical application that we could make. But before we get into any. Like tips and tricks, you know, if, if you came here for tips and tricks, that's fine. Hopefully there are some practical things that, that you'll get from this. But I, I think it's important that we talk about at least one more undergird, what I would call undergirding principles. Something that we have to keep in mind about the whole process. Mm. And that is that it is a process.

Paul 1:49

Mm-hmm.

Noah 1:50

And it's not a process that's dependent. On me or on you, it's not necessarily localized to you or to me. And what I mean by that is we play a part in the process, but we're not necessarily there for the whole process. And that's okay. Mm-hmm. So when we have an interaction with somebody else and we, maybe we have the thought, I, I need to tell them about Jesus, or I want to reflect Jesus to them somehow. Like we talked about last time, sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves about how that's gonna turn out. Somebody once put it this way to me, and it was very helpful. Their suggestion was just put a rock in their shoe. And the idea being you may never see this person again. If this, this could be a one-time interaction and that's okay. You're not there to walk them necessarily from A to z. But you're there at, you know, you came in at sea and what you can do is you can put a rock in their shoe and they may never, never see you again. But they've gotta dig that rock out. It's gonna, it's something that's gonna be roll rattling around in their brain, something that they're gonna be thinking about, something that's gonna stick with them, and they're gonna have to pull that back out and examine that on their own time. And you may never see the fruit of it. And that's okay. The, the Bible talks about this in terms of, I, I think of planting and watering, we know the verses about you know, planting, watering and who gives the increase. Right. God gives the increase. Right, right. So recognizing that the, the process of, of bringing someone to Christ. Is a process that we are just one part of. And when we can set that expectation for ourselves, it reduces a lot of that pressure. It helps us recognize this is my opportunity to water, or this is my opportunity to plant. And now. I'm, I'm leaving the rest up to God.

Paul 3:50

Yeah. Part I, I, I love the way you illustrated that, you know, especially part of the process, rocking the shoe. Mm-hmm. I get a rock in my shoe. I'm getting it out pretty quick. It's irritating me. But y'all are hearing Noah, and I agree with him. This, this is a way to stimulate, to stir in a, in a positive way. Yeah. And you're just part of the process. You know, I, I, I thought we can't have this conversation with. You know, this conversation about Jesus and trying to make it turn to get people connected to Jesus. I love the John one. You know it's Philip and Nathaniel. Mm-hmm. You know, Nathaniel Philip says, we have found the one, we found the Messiah and Nathaniel's like, can any good thing? No, no, no, no, no. This we're talking about Nazareth here. Can you And I love Philip says in John one, I think it's 46, he just come and see. Yeah. I like to come and see.'cause I think there's, it's, it's connected to what you said about the rock in the shoe. What, what we're trying to do is we're trying to get the person to think for themselves to where, hey, they can't ignore this interaction they had with me. I, they can't ignore this very brief conversation. It's going to open a door for another conversation, for another interaction. And whether I'm the one mm-hmm. I'm a part of. Plan B, the next level or not, but at least there's a next level. There's another conversation, there's another interaction,

Noah 5:18

right?

Paul 5:19

And just come and see, Hey, just. You know, let, let me offer this, let me offer this. Yeah. I I think that's good.

Noah 5:27

Yeah. And, and with Philip and Nathaniel, the come and see was, come see who I'm talking about.

Paul 5:35

Right,

Noah 5:36

right. And, and we could go into, obviously they had a concept of the Messiah. They, they were studied in the scriptures. They knew what they thought they were looking for at least, and they, they would come to grow and mature in their understanding of that. But it all began with come and see this person come and see Jesus. And I think that that is, that's really, really crucial to everything else that we are gonna talk about in terms of how to talk about this, is that we are trying to bring them to Jesus. Mm-hmm. We're trying to bring them to the person of Jesus that, or how scriptures talks about it, the knowledge. And understanding of Jesus. The knowledge and understanding of Jesus is what grows our love. It's what grows our, our spiritual selves. It, it's what renews our minds. That's what we're trying to, to get across to them. And people are gonna be at various stages and their understanding of Jesus. Mm-hmm. And kind of like Philip and Nathaniel, we're gonna have to meet them wherever that is. And some people, they may be. They may have, in some ways, a more understanding of scripture. Maybe they've done way more reading than, than we have maybe, but they haven't come to the knowledge of Jesus.

Paul 6:53

Mm-hmm.

Noah 6:54

And then there are gonna be other people who are blank slates. You know, they're the, they're the Athenians on the Areopagus where Paul says, listen, you have got this altar of the unknown God. And here I'm gonna tell you about this unknown God. So we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to meet people where they're at because we're trying to get them somewhere.

Paul 7:15

Right.

Noah 7:15

Not to, we're not trying to get them to a certain building. We're trying to get them to a certain person.

Paul 7:21

Oh, okay. Say that again. Say that again.

Noah 7:26

Paul's trying to get me in trouble here.

Paul 7:27

No,

Noah 7:27

no. We're not trying to get them to a certain building. We're trying to get them to a certain person. And to get them there, we have to meet them where they are right now.

Paul 7:35

Yeah. The rea And let me tell you why that resonated with me. Here's a, here's a real Paul story. We are, you and I are communicators. We value ourselves in relationship to our work in the kingdom, in trying to connect people to, to Christ because of our ability to communicate Christ. Mm-hmm. Not that you and I are the experts, but we've got some experience.

Noah 8:00

Sure.

Paul 8:01

And, and, and we're passionate about. It's something we want to do.

Noah 8:04

Yeah.

Paul 8:04

So we keep wanting to grow and grow and grow and grow. So here's a Paul story. I, I, I was approaching this person and, and, and I had, I had all my, I, I was loaded. I mean, I had everything ready to go, and I was ready to tell him something. And a person that was with me, we were, we were driving to have this conversation and the man I had, I was ready to go. The person that was going with me looked at me and said, okay, I know you're going into this and you're going into this. What this approach gonna say? This gonna say this, gonna say this. And here's what they said to me. Why should they listen to you?

Noah 8:43

Hmm.

Paul 8:45

And man. Oh man. Oh man. I thought, okay, now I, I get, I get You don't have the same amount of coin with everybody in the bank, especially if you've, if you've met them for the first time.

Noah 8:57

Yeah.

Paul 8:58

But that, that waitress that, I mean, we have our favorite restaurants maybe and sometimes, look, Amy and I have our favorite restaurant and it's so, it's such a favorite. I'm not gonna tell you how many times we go there. But we go there enough that we have our favorite waitress and we walk in and say, can we sit at such and such table? Are they? And we get there, man. We feel pretty good about the VIP treatment. Okay, so I know this waitress on some level. Well, do you think she's gonna listen to me? If I've been gripy complainy, critical, negative and a terrible tipper, now somebody hear me and say, oh, now that's carnal, that you're a big tipper. So that, so somebody to listen to. You have a conversation about Jesus look that, why should they listen to you? Conversation that somebody had with me or what they said got my attention. What do we want to do? We want people to be naturally drawn to the Jesus that we want to have a conversation about because they typically realize or understand that we really do care about'em. Mm-hmm. We really do value them as a person.

Noah 10:05

Yeah.

Paul 10:06

And, and to come and see why should they come. Why should they act upon an imitation from me?

Noah 10:13

Mm-hmm.

Paul 10:14

What do I want them to see? I mean, all of those are relevant

10:17

Yeah.

Paul 10:17

To this conversation, I think.

Noah 10:19

Yeah. No, I, I, I agree. You know, there's there's the common phrase that people, it's, it's a platitude that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And I think that rightfully so, there's been some critique of that idea in the sense that the truth of God is the truth of God, regardless of our relationship to the person. And the, the, the power of transformation is in the gospel, not in our relationship with the people. Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. I purposefully don't use that phrase, but I do think, I do think that what we have to recognize is. If we do not treat people with respect and honor as fellow image bearers of God, then our message will ring hollow. Mm-hmm. It's not, not because, well, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. It's because our message inherently contains a, a, a message of you are God's creation. You are loved by God. You are valued by God. This is what God did for you. This is how much you matter to him, and this is why it's I, and if we're preaching that message. But in our lives, we are treating them with no honor, no respect. We're not placing value upon them. As fellow humans and fellow creation, you know, special creation of God, our message will ring hollow.

Paul 11:50

Mm-hmm.

Noah 11:50

No matter how much truth there is in it. And so it's less about the relationship and it's more about the consistency of our message with our life.

Paul 12:01

Yes. Consistency of the message with our life. I love that. I love that.

Noah 12:06

Sorry, I got on a little, little preachy rant there. I'll stop.

Paul 12:09

The, the less awkward I'm coming back to. Yeah. Yeah. I'm coming back to, well, so for, for Paul this Paul in the room, the less awkward. When, when I, when I can partner with someone.

Noah 12:21

Mm-hmm.

Paul 12:21

Now that's, that's not always doable because look, you're, you're, you're going out on your own and, and you haven't had time to partner with somebody and it's just you and this other person and. It's time to have a conversation. It's time to ask a question to stimulate thought or it's time to do the next right thing. A good action to show that you care about them to try to build the bridge. So this can't, it can't always be planned to where someone goes with you, right? But sometimes it's someone goes with you. Now we think about that as well. What, you know, what the Jehovah's Witness.

Noah 12:58

Oh, right,

Paul 12:59

right. Or the Mormons and ringing doorbells and there's always at least two people out there and you're like, okay, come on. I mean, we don't want to answer the door. That's not what I'm talking about when I say partner so much as teaming up with someone that has a different gift than you.

Noah 13:16

Hmm.

Paul 13:17

You and I are are gifted differently. I mean, we share some similarities. I think you and I would be a great team to, to try to build a bridge with someone. Yeah. But I can think of people at Cedar Park. I can think of people where I've traveled in other places. If, if I want to try to go have the next conversation back to the rock in the shoe that is somebody setting me up, I'm the next person to go and I'm gonna go have this conversation. If I know more about this person and this scenario and situation, I get to sit back and think this is who I'm taking with me. Mm-hmm. And sometimes the person I'm taking with me is not the super deep Bible scholar like I might be going and saying, okay, I I, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but, but I have enough knowledge of scripture. I mean, you can't share what you don't know. So I've got the knowledge side in me. If they have ask a Bible question or I say, well, let's talk about this later, but what about this? I mean, I've got the knowledge side in me, but I may be taking somebody else that's a better listener than I am.

Noah 14:18

Mm-hmm.

Paul 14:19

It's a different skillset, it's a different gift, and I don't have, I'm not very gifted as other people are, and the ability to listen to someone talk. And know the conversation needs to turn here.

Noah 14:33

Mm-hmm.

Paul 14:34

There are people that are better listeners than me. Maybe less awkward is I've got somebody that's a different gift skillset I'm taking with me and the two of us tag teaming. Naturally I'm less awkward'cause you're with me.

Noah 14:47

Mm-hmm.

Paul 14:47

That's the two by two. Jesus. Pretty smart

Noah 14:50

Right.

Paul 14:50

Sending out. But the second thing is I, we work as a team.

Noah 14:55

Yeah.

Paul 14:55

And that's, that's, I'm trying to take the awkwardness out or as much of it as I can.

Noah 14:59

Right, right. Which there's even just a, a practical sense in which if you've, if you've ever had to do something that's going to make you feel awkward. But someone else also has to do it. Mm-hmm. There's, there's an inherent comradery that you feel in that, right? And that lowers, that lowers some of that as well. There's just a practical side effect there as well. You, something that you said resonated with a thought that I had had as far as ways to help it be less awkward.'Cause you're talking about different gifts you're talking about. Recognizing our, our abilities and utilizing our abilities and trying to build those out. I think one thing that helps us be less awkward as well is, is an attitude of humility in the whole process. Now, I'm not saying humility is easy. This is coming from somebody that knows from, on a very personal level how, how difficult it is to, to be humble. But when we are able to have a, a humble attitude about what we are trying to do that we're trying to help not bury. Somebody that we're, that we're a part of the process, like we talked about earlier, we're not the whole thing, we're not the answer. We're just a part of the process. That will help us with our awkwardness. Now it involves jumping a huge hurdle of pride in order to do it. That's the hard part. You're getting the hard part out of the way ahead of time so that when you come into the conversation. You're recognizing my role here is one of humble service, not one of grandiose, you know, here I am with all the answers. And so what that's gonna look like and things that are gonna make the conversation less awkward is like we talked about last week listening, and you mentioned it in that as well in your, in what you were just mentioning, that we listen well. That we, we hear people out. We allow them to express what the, the, the questions that they have, the perspectives that they've developed. It means that when someone asks hard or emotionally charged questions, we have the capacity to not take it personally. Nothing's more awkward than feeling like we're under attack or them feeling like we're attacking them. And so having the humility to recognize this isn't about me. This question's not about me. And, and being able to, to go along with that, or even, even when a question is asked that we don't have the answer to what's more awkward? Plundering our way through that or saying, you know, I don't know, and I'm gonna have to think about that and study that more because I haven't thought of that before. Now. That's, you know, eating a big dose of humble pie, but it's a whole lot less awkward than trying to act like we know something we don't. And so I'm just trying to give a few examples of how, if we can jump the hurdle of pride and, and truly go into these kinds of interactions with humility, that will actually make a lot of things less awkward. Less uncomfortable.

Paul 18:18

Yeah. Some, sometimes we, you know, we've, we've talked about. Don't obl overcomplicate.

Noah 18:25

Mm-hmm.

Paul 18:25

Something. And sometimes I make something even more awkward or difficult because of something that's seeded in me that I, I wasn't aware that was seeded in me. A sense of pride.

Noah 18:41

Mm-hmm.

Paul 18:42

And. That has to be buried. I can't, I won't see people the way Jesus saw people as long as I, I've got some semblance of pride.

Noah 18:52

Yeah.

Paul 18:53

He saw everybody as, as needing. Salvation, worthy of salvation. He would be tired, he would be hungry. That didn't matter. It's, it's a person that needs the gospel, that's a person that needs the Lord. And that, that has always helped me. And that what that does is staying humble, allows me to help leave the door open for better and more conversations.

Noah 19:21

Mm-hmm.

Paul 19:22

I don't want to become some professional salesman in this sharing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I don't mean, I'm not saying we mean to, but sometimes with all our methodologies and everybody coming in and saying, let me, let me tell you how to, how to save this many people and baptize as many people. And it almost gets reduced to, and we don't mean to do this, so I don't wanna be sounding like I'm super critical. But it's, it's an approach as a salesman.

Noah 19:47

Mm-hmm.

Paul 19:48

And before I've opened my mouth, I'm looking at someone maybe I've never, ever met before, or somebody I know very little about and I'm already, are you a project or a prospect?

Noah 19:59

Yeah.

Paul 20:00

How much time should I spend on you? I mean, is is, am I really gonna get you to agree with me and get you into the baptistry by we Humility doesn't see people that way.

Noah 20:13

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope I'm, I'm looking at the time and I see that we, we've pushed up on our amount of time that we've kind of agreed on trying to make,

Paul 20:26

but I'd like to hear from other people. I mean, if Yeah, somebody's been listening to this and said, Hey, I got something to offer. Let, let us hear.

Noah 20:33

Yeah.

Paul 20:33

Tell us.

Noah 20:34

Yeah, absolutely. Send us, send us an email, talk to us in person. Something we, we would love to hear, you know in line with what you were just saying, I don't think either of us presume to be the the foremost experts on, on this. We, we would love to learn what other people have found. Has helped with this kind of a thing. So absolutely. Reach out to us, let us know. We've, we've enjoyed this new format that we're doing. I've enjoyed having a little extra time to, to dig into these things, to share some, some thoughts of my own, but especially to hear your thoughts Paul. And I appreciate the work that you're doing in this. So. For those who are listening, thank you for joining us again. We will be back next month, March Will. It's crazy that, that by that point we'll be a quarter of the way through the year

Paul 21:23

away from, away from Sleet and I March. Do you think about. No, that's, well, we could be getting into warmer weather and the birds singing and, you know.

Noah 21:34

Yeah. March is the robin month.

Paul 21:36

Right. I, I'll take it. I'll take it.

Noah 21:38

So, we'll, we will see you guys back here next month, the first Monday of March. We'll be back for our regular episode, and until then, our prayer is that you will stand strong.