Time To Share With Others

When you were a child, your mother or father probably told you more than once to SHARE!

You may remember playing in the park with your favorite toys – your best friend would come up and want to play with your toys, but you wanted to keep those toys to yourself. After all, those were your favorite toys.

And more than likely your mother or father would intervene with the very clear instruction – “Share your toys!”

Hopefully, you grew up with a sharing attitude.

You share your income with the church and with charities.

You share books with friends who enjoy the same sort of literature as you enjoy.

You share your home with family and friends who come to visit.

You share your political opinions.

Big things – small things – you share with others.

And as we explore our purpose of life, today we will discover that sharing is one of our purposes.

Now we have been talking about the purpose of life, and if you look on the banner on my right – your left – you will see a growing list of our purposes in life. This list won’t get much larger.

Our purpose is to Worship – or to give pleasure to God.

Our purpose is to Fellowship – we were formed for God’s family.

Our purpose is Discipleship – we were created to be like Christ.

Our purpose is Ministry – we were shaped to serve God.

Now we come to our fifth purpose. Evangelism!

Evangelism is our mission!!

Today is Halloween!!! All Saints’ Eve. If you want to scare a Presbyterian, don’t say “boo.” Say “Evangelism”.

I don’t know why, but the word “evangelism” is a scary word to many.

But the word “sharing” is a good word – a comforting word. We like to share with others and we love it when people share with us!

Evangelism is nothing more than sharing!

Specifically, we need to share the love and salvation of Jesus Christ!

Now, where am I supposed to share it? Well, let’s look at the next verse. Acts 1:8: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

Now, when Jesus told this to his followers, do you know where they were? They were in Jerusalem. So here’s the point. He is saying, first, I want you to start at home. I want you to start with the people closest to you, right there in your own city, your own community.

Then he says I want you to go to Judea and Samaria, that’s like the county next door, and Samaritans happen to be different culturally and different racially. So He said, “I want you to go to people nearby, but they are different from you.”

Then He says, “I want you to go to the ends of the earth. I want you to go reach everybody else.”

Imagine this verse saying, “You will be my witnesses in Gwinnett County, and in all of Georgia with all of the Hispanics, Immigrants, and people of other races, and even to the ends of the earth.”

Also notice not only where you are to do this mission, but notice specifically what Jesus calls you to be in this mission.

He does not say, “You will be my defense attorney.”

He doesn’t say, “You will be my prosecutor.”

He didn’t say, “You will be my salesman.”

You don’t have to defend God. You don’t have to be a salesman for God. All God wants you to do is to be a witness.

What is a witness?

Have you ever seen a trial on Court TV? Or have you ever seen an episode of Law and Order?

In a courtroom, a witness is called to take the stand. Then they put their hand on a Bible and they have to take an oath to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

And then they say what they saw.

If they say something like, “Fred told me he saw an accident and Fred said, ‘the blue car hit the red car,” then the defense attorney will stand up and say, “Objection – your honor, that’s heresay,”

The judge and jury don’t want to hear gossip, they want the witness to give first hand testimony.

A good witness will say, “I was at the corner. I saw the blue car. I saw the red car. I saw the blue car hit the red car.”

A witness is somebody who just tells what they have seen.

I saw this, and then I saw this; and this is what happened.

And a witness tells what happened to them.

You see, you are the expert on your life. Nobody can be a better witness on your life than you. Nobody can be a better witness of what God has done in your life than you, because you are the authority on your life, not some pastor, not some priest, not anybody else.