Sharing Your Hope

If there’s a contradiction between what I want to do and what He wants to do I must yield to what He wants to do. If I wake up on Sunday morning and want to sleep in and He wants me to get up and worship with others then that’s what I do. It turns out for my best when I do what He wants – so I’m not being given the short end of the stick.

If I want to gossip about someone because they did me wrong and I want to get back at them and He wants me to keep my big fat mouth shut then I do what He wants. He’s Lord. Not me.

The fringe benefit is people cannot help but see Jesus in us when we practice this kind of lifestyle!

I mentioned Tony Dungy’s book, Quiet Strength. In it he also talks about the year he entered the NFL at Pittsburgh. The Steelers were Super Bowl champs and had the famous “steel curtain.” They had this image of being a tough bunch of hombres. But the first week of camp Dungy said he met a bunch of the members of this team who were Christians and they had a daily, intense Bible study to which he was invited.

He says, “I had known from a young age that I was going to heaven, but I had never fully engaged God and let Him direct my life moment by moment until I saw these guys doing it. I had been a good kid, by and large; I stayed out of trouble, was usually polite, and stood up for my values. Yet the concept of putting God first in everything I did hadn’t been my primary focus. Finally I understood, and I started to move from being a casual Christian to a fully committed follower of Jesus.” (Page 43)

This is where sharing your hope begins! Moving from casual Christianity to being a fully committed follower of Christ.

Others will be able to realize that Jesus is your Lord. It’s like someone that just experienced their first kiss. You can’t hide it.

So, if I’m to share my hope...first I must...

I. Set apart Christ as Lord in my heart.

Next, I must...

II. Be prepared to explain why I have hope.

"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason of the hope that you have." 1 Peter 3:15b (NIV)

Be prepared.

For a lot of Christ followers this is precisely the problem. Some have Jesus as Lord of their hearts and lives – and that causes people to seek what they have – but when they are asked about it, they don’t know what to answer.

“Why are you so positive when everything and everyone around you is negative?”

“Well, I just am.”

“Well thanks, that helps.”

Various excuses are given. “I don’t know the Bible all that well. I’m not that quick on my feet. I’m afraid they’ll ask me something I don’t know about.”

In the early days of the church Peter and John healed a crippled man and for their efforts they were persecuted. The hypocritical religious authorities tried to intimidate them from continuing to proclaim Christ as their resurrected Lord. But they couldn’t scare them.

"The leaders saw that Peter and John were not afraid to speak, and they understood that these men had no special training or education. So they were amazed. Then they realized that Peter and John had been with Jesus." Acts 4:13 (NCV)