Discover God's Power in sharing your faith at work

we are asking a very important question, but also a very difficult question. The question is, as a Christian, how does God want me to share my faith at work? Or another way to put it would be like this—how am I supposed to talk about Jesus at my workplace? See, if you are here today and you are a Christian, today’s message is going to be very challenging for you, because I am going to challenge you to step outside of your comfort zone. I am going to challenge you to go public with your faith. I am going to challenge you to share your faith in your workplace. And if you are here today and you’re not yet a believer, and you are here because a friend invited you, or you just wanted to check out this church and this Jesus thing. That’s great. You picked a great day to be here

once a person becomes a Christian, he or she has to ask the question—what does God want me to do with this new life that He has given me? Because you see, when you become a Christian, God enters your life, He transforms you, He creates something brand new in your life. What was once dead is now alive. What was once empty is now full and we have to ask the question—God what do you want me to do with this new life? Do you have a mission for me? I want you to listen. In case you were unsure about it before you came today, you need to know this. God does have a mission for your life. Once you become a believer, God has given you forgiveness. He has given you hope. He has given you purpose. He has transformed your life and He wants you to take this new life that He has given you and to go out into the world and help other people find the same thing that He has given you, to help other people find God and use your life to draw people closer to God. God wants your life to make an eternal difference.

Matthew 9:37–38 CSB

37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. 38 Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”

This is what Jesus is saying. You have been given a wonderful new life from God. Now take the advice that He has given you. Go out into the world and draw people towards God, helping people find God. Help people make a connection with their Creator. Now, you might say to me.

We have been called to go out into the harvest. And God is pretty clear about this. If, as a believer, I don’t use my life to help other people find God, if I don’t use my life to help people draw closer to God, the Bible says, Jesus said, I am wasting my life. Look at our next passage in Matthew 5, from the Sermon on the Mount. These are Jesus’ words again. And He says, “You are the salt of the earth.” He is talking to believers. “But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor. Can you make it useful again? You will be thrown out and trampled under foot as worthless. You are the light of the world like a city on a mountain glowing in the night for all to see. Don’t hide your light under a basket. Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see so that everyone will praise your Heavenly Father.” Let’s take a look at this passage for just a moment. Jesus said, as believers, that we are to be the salt and the light in the world. We are supposed to make the light of those around us better and more interesting and more complete. But you notice, He says that if salt loses its flavor, it’s useless. And if light, you hide it under a basket, that light is useless. What He is saying is, as Christians, as believers, we have this new life that is within us, if we don’t use it to help other people find God, connected in a relationship with their Creator, if we don’t use our lives in that way, then our lives are useless to God. We are just taking up space. We are missing our purpose. Maybe you are here today and you are a believer and you know you have gotten that settled, you belong to God, and you have a relationship with God, but for some reason you are struggling spiritually, and you don’t know what it is. You are going to church most weekends. You are even in a growth group. You do your best to pray and read the Bible, but it feels like God is so distant, that He is so far away from you right now, one of the issues that you may be struggling with is that yours is a life that is left unused. You’re not sharing your faith with others. You’re not using your life in the workplace, in your world, to help others get closer to God. You are missing out on what God created you to do. Well, as of today, it’s time for many of us to step into the game. To get into the game. It’s time for many of us to step outside of our comfort zone and to begin to make a dent in the world around us with our lives.

So let’s take a look at how we are going to do it. Today, we are going to look at four steps to defending my faith at work. Here’s step number one. I want you to write this down.

Defending my faith at work means:

1. Being open about my faith.

That doesn’t mean at next staff meeting when asked if you have anything to report that you say, well I want to report what Jonathan Edwards said, “unless you know Jesus, your soul dangles over the flames of the devil by a spider’s thread. So you must repent now!”

1. Being gracious to unbelievers

While you don’t need to carouse with them.

Don’t be unnecessarily judgmental. It’s one thing to defend a lady’s honor and say guys lets not talk that way and another to say, Away you whoremongers.

Don’t be obnoxious

Billy Graham will say people come to Christ because of Christians.

Now I will tell you I’d prefer to have Bull Dog that needs to know how to bark without biting than a couch dog that won’t go.

Now you can discuss points with a person but, if you just argue dogmatics with them, you can win the argument but lose their soul. You need to present your claims.

Don’t overstate the claims. If you “argue” them or gas light them into faith. Oh God will give you all the money. God will heal you. You can lose them.

Now remember we are talking about work relationships. You will see these people five days a week. I know that if you pray for opportunities

2. Being Christlike in my actions

a. I need to live with integrity in my life. Integrity is character

Colossians 3:23 CSB

23 Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people,

b. Act with Love towards those you work.

Offer to involve them in a food drive like meals for Haiti, Sheltering Wings.

You see, God wants our love to those in our workplace to be a sign of what Christianity is all about. We can love one another outrageously, in a way that no one else in the workplace because we can show love in a practical way to those. Caring for people in the most minute areas of their life when they are going through a difficult time, to show them love, to go out of our way to show love. To go out of our way to show them practical ways, bringing gifts, bringing coffee, not holding our conviction over other people, but serving people. Showing love in practical ways in our workplace. Then people will notice that there is something different about you. They will be attracted to what you have. They will want to know what you have and they will want to know how they can get it in their life. Well this week, I want to give you a practical way to be Christlike and to show love in your office. We have done this once before. Last year, on your way out today, you are going to receive a bag and we are doing a canned food drive for the homeless and hungry in our city. This is a big deal that we can show God’s love in a practical way as a church.

Loving doesn’t mean that you don’t hold people accountable. It doesn’t mean that everyone gets a smiley face during review. Sometimes the most loving thing to do would be to let someone know the job is not a fit.

Story of King Gillette. People loved him but he didn’t make enough money. His boss told him.

King Camp Gillette was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in 1855. His father was a sometime patent agent and inveterate tinkerer. His mother was an innovator of sorts too; her years of experiments led to a cookbook (1887) that remained in print for 100 years.

The Gillette family moved to Chicago in 1859. Then in 1871, after the Great Fire destroyed their hardware supply business, they moved to New York City. At the age of 17, Gillette became a traveling salesman, who made improvement to his wares as well as selling them. By 1890, he had earned four patents. More importantly, he had learned from the President of his company that disposable items made for big sales.

On the road, Gillette used to shave every morning with a Star Safety Razor, which is a heavy, wedge-shaped blade fitted perpendicularly into its handle. It would have been downright dangerous, in the lavatory of a rumbling train, for Gillette to shave with the type of straight razor used by most men at the time. However, the safety razor did share a major shortcoming with standard razors: the blade had to be sharpened frequently on a leather strop; and even so, the blade eventually became too worn to sharpen.

Its 1895 Brookline Massachussets. He sold bottlecaps. He had success. People loved him. But he hates rejection. He was much happier making things. He’d tinker with existing inventions and improving them.

Gillette looked up to his boss and mentor William Painter who created the bottle top. Painter told Gillette to consider creating a product that people use and then would need to replace. He began to think about.

3. Defending my faith at work means being prepared to share.

1 Peter 3:15–16 CSB

15 but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. 16 Yet do this with gentleness and reverence, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame.

a. Be prepared to share your story.

That is the tool that is available to me when we need to be available to talk about my faith. The most powerful witness you have is your story of the difference that Jesus has made in your life. And there are several reasons why your personal story is the most powerful tool that you have in talking with other people about your relationship with God. Number one, you co-workers are going to be interested in your story. You see, they may not be interested in church. They may not be interested in theology or the Bible, but because you have developed a friendship with them, they are interested in your life and in your story. So they will listen because it’s your story. So, number one, your co-workers will be interested.

Number two, your co-workers will be able to relate to your story, because your co-workers, no doubt, have something in common with you. You are working in the same place. They will be able to connect on a level of your personal story that they might not be able to connect if you were just throwing out Bible verses, if they were listening to a pastor on television. So your co-workers will be able to relate to your story.

Number three, your story is powerful, because no one can dispute your experience. See, while people may be able to argue with the Bible. They may be able to argue about the church. They may be able to argue about the Da Vinci Code about whether that is true or not, one thing that they cannot argue about is your personal experience because we live in a world that everything is so relative because of that, your personal experience, your personal story carries so much power when you talk to an unbeliever.

I want you to take a moment and in your program, you will see there is an insert called “Sharing My Story”. I want you to pull that out for a moment. At the top it says—why should I share my story, and the three reasons that I just shared with you. But beneath that, there is a section that says---writing your story. On a separate sheet of paper, take time to work through these six questions that we have laid out. These questions, they ask you: (1) Where were you spiritually before receiving Christ and how does that affect your feelings, attitudes, actions and relationships?

b. Be prepared to share how to become a Christian.

c. Share an invitation to church.

Write down a tract or a gospel presentation you would like to use: ____________________

4. Being ready for divine moments. Defending my faith at work means being ready for divine moments. You see, a divine moment is when God interrupts my life with a mission.

1. Number one: pray for God to provide opportunities for you to share with your co-workers.

2. Number two: be aware that those divine moments come into your life every day.

3. Number three: you must be ready for divine interruptions.

Write down the name of someone you’ve sensed God wants you to pray for and share the gospel with: ________________

Build Margin in your work and day.

If you are always getting somewhere late, you will not be able to seize these opportunities.

Colossians 4:5 CSB

5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.

Action Plan:

Pray that you see lostness for what it really is in your friends and coworkers.

When someone at work shares a need, offer to pray with and for them on the spot.

Use the Fall Festival handout and media to invite coworkers to the event.