PLAN A - Sowing

What’s the worst meal you’ve ever eaten?

The worst meal I’ve ever eaten was probably some fish and chips we brought one day.

Do you know how bad it was?

We could not eat it.

Have you ever tried a dish with too much salt.

Perhaps the cook has been to heavy handed withte salt shaker and there is more salt than chips.

Or perhaps you have cooked a meal and mixed up the salt and the sugar and instead of being sweet the meal is incredibly salty.

Or you have just about finished preparing the meal, somethign like a stew or a gravy or maybe some pasta and you go to add a little salt and the lid falls of the salt shaker and the whole pot of food is ruined.

Salt is beautiful, but it needs to be used wisely.

We season our food with salt, we don’t dump in a load.

When it comes to faith sharing or evangelism I think both Christians and non-christians live with the same fear.

That our spiritual conversations are going to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, like there was too much salt added.

That when spiritual matters come up the conversation is going to feel unnatural, too pushy or forced and both the non-Christian and Christian are going to walk away thinking “I hope I don’t have to do that again."

Too much of our approach has been to try and make every member of the church an evangelist, the one who gives the public appeal.

The problem with this appraoch and especiually with seeing a certain approach as the way to do it is that it makes ordinary church members and the general public scared.

“One of the most disheartening findings regarding evangelism is that a large proportion of evangelisers share their faith with non-Christians the same way, every time, regardless of who the nonbeliever is or what the circumstances may be. We have found, in contrast, that the people who are most effective at sharing their faith are those who are most lifelike - that is, the people who do not fall back on formulas, stock answers and tired phrases, but who are genuinely engaged in a creative conversation with the seeker” George Barna, “Evangelism that Works” p119

No one want to be that “religious person” who forces their message on people because we all know that we don’t like it when people do that to us.

How can we have conversations with people that are full of grace, that leave people thinking “that was nice.

I hope we can do it again sometime?”

We don’t need to preach people all the time, in fact it is counter productive!

Instead we need to be having everyday conversations with people - conversations that talk about football and family and occasionally faith.

It’s Ok just to like people and spend time with them, I don’t need to be trying to convert them every time I see them.

Colossians 4:2–6 NIV84

2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Colossians 4: 2 to 6 gives us a pattern for the ordinary member of the church.

We are going to learn that for everyday Christians we can share our faith by;

1. Speaking to God

2. Letting our life Speak and

3. Let them speak

Our passage this morning comes from a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to a local church in a city named Colossae, so we call the letter “Colossians”.

Paul was previously known as Saul a religious leader, a Pharisee who had been travelling around trying to stamp out the Christian movement that was spreading.

Saul did not like that people were starting to give their allegiance to Jesus.

But Saul met the risen Jesus, he had an encounter with the risen Jesus and it changed his life. and his name.

So instead he started travelling around the known world, city to city declaring publicly that Jesus is the Risen King.

That people should turn to him and trust in him.

And in these cities where people believed, they formed communities, what we would call the local church.

And later on Paul would write to these communities to encourage them to stick with Jesus and to live like Jesus people.

Occasionally he would write about how they should witness in the city.

How they could continue to share the good news of Jesus.

What we are looking at this morning is part of those instructions to the local church in the city of Colossae.

And we will see that what Paul tells the local church to do, is not what he does.

He doesn’t tell them that they have to start preaching in public places, he doesn’t tell them they need to go from street corner to street corner declaring Jesus is the King.

That’s his job.

He’s the evangelist and missionary with the public ministry.

To the church - to the people who live in the city, work in the city and rest in the city, he has different instructions.

He wants them to pray.

He wants them to live wise lives.

And he wants them to have conversations seasoned with salt.

Three very practical and every day ways to be part of the Great Commission.

They are to be devoted to prayer, to live wise lives and to have gracious conversations.

So that’s what we are going to learn this morning.

I’ve called those three things

Speak to God

Let our lives speak

Let them speak

And they are still three very practical ways for Christians to sow into the lives of others.

So let’s take a look.

Firstly: Speak to God.

Our first conversation is with God.

“Let’s start by speaking to God about our neighbours and our city”.

I mean that’s where Paul starts isn’t it?

Paul says in verse 2 to “Devote yourself to prayer, being watchful and thankful”.

This is the PLAN A principle “Showing Up and depending on Jesus”, which we are going to explore in a couple of weeks, but it’s worth thinking about now because Paul ties our conversations with our prayers.

If we want to have conversations about Jesus, we need to be praying about opportunities to have those conversations.

Now whatever “devote yourself to prayer” means I think it means we could be doing it more.

We could bump it up one notch.

So if you pray once a week, maybe you could bump that up to twice a week.

If you pray for five minutes every morning, maybe you could bump that to 5 minutes before you go to bed as well.

If you pray for hours, well then, you’re good.

I’d say you are devoted to prayer, come and teach the rest ofd us how to pray when this is finished.

But I don’t think Paul is asking us to pray more for ourselves here, I think he is asking us to pray for people to come to know Jesus.

To ask God to give us opportunities to be his witnesses in the city.

These are prayers that focus on our community.

To speak to God about what he is doing in the world.

To ask God help us watch for where God is at work.

We want faith filled eyes that can see where God is working in our city.

And we want to be thankful because God is working.

And we can be thankful for the people who don’t yet know Jesus that are in our lives.

It’s not US V THEM.

God loves everybody.

Every person outside these walls is precious and loved by God.

And so we can thank God for making them, we can thank God for bringing them in to our lives.

And what we find when we pray these kind of prayers is that God changes us.

God gives us hearts to care.

God loves the people of this city and he wants them to come to know Jesus, and he wants us to speak to him about it.

And the reason we do that is because God works when we pray.

In us and in our world.

Let me share with you a story about what happens when speak to God.

Amelia Taylor was a 13 year old girl who was concerned about her brother.

They had been brought up in a loving Christian home but her elder brother had wandered from the faith after he started work at the bank.

His work colleagues mocked him for his outdated belief in God and he soon joined them in living as if there were no God.

But Amelia was a young lady who understood what it meant to be devoted to prayer and she committed to praying for her big brother three times a day until he came back to God.

Her prayers were answered one month later when her big brother, bored at home picked up a booklet that explained the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and was hit with the Holy Spirit and gave his life to Christ.

His life was changed, and he decided to become a missionary.

Now you have probably never heard of Amelia Taylor, but you may have heard of her brother.

His name was Hudson Taylor.

He took the gospel to China about 150 years ago, to people who had never ever heard of Jesus.

He and his team planted churches in the unreached regions of China that would survive being forced underground during the communist regime and 100 years later emerge as one of the fastest growing Christian movements in the world.

The church in China is now measured in the millions.

The fruit of that 13 year old girl’s devotion to prayer is measured literally in the millions.

Amelia prayed three times a day for her big brother.

How much are you willing to pray for those you know who do not know Christ?

We devote ourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

And God works when we pray.

But God works through people.

The reason this training is called “PLAN A” is because it is God’s PLAN A for people to go to people with the good news of Jesus.

So how can we do this in a way that isn’t over-bearing or forced?

Well that’s the next point.

We let our lives speak.

In Collossians 4:5 Paul says “be wise in the way you act towards outsiders, make the most of every opportunity”.

The opportunity is our relationship with outsiders.

Now here is something you won’t hear an evangelist say very often.

You cannot speak about Jesus every day.

You cannot say to your neighbour every time you see her “Good morning, Jesus died for your sins”.

That is like dumping the whole container of salt into our conversations every single time.

That is not the way people need to talk about Jesus.

Don’t be the pushy religious nut job!

But you can always let your life speak about what you believe.

You can live wisely, you can be invested in genuine relationships.

When the Bible talks about being wise it means living life the way God wants us to live life.

For Christians, this means living like Jesus.

And when we look at the life of Jesus we see that he was no hermit.

He didn’t live in a holy huddle.

Yes, he went to the Synagogue, which was the religious building of his day but he also went to people’s houses.

He got out there.

He went to parties and weddings.

Jesus was out there building genuine relationships with people.

He spent enough time eating and drinking with sinners that he eventually was accused of being “a friend of sinners”.

Jesus’ friendship with sinners spoke to people about the invitation of God.

Our lives need to speak of that same invitation.

If we want to follow Jesus, we’ve got to follow him straight out this building and into the lives of the people in our city.

We’ve got to open up lives to make room for friends who don’t yet know Jesus.

For Family who think there is no God, for workmates who believe in new age spirits, for team mates who drink too much.

And why not do it the way Jesus did eating and drinking, going to parties and sitting around tables.

That’s making the most of every opportunity.

That’s why the second principle of PLAN A is all about “knowing others”.

We aren’t called to bunker down, we are called to be open to relationships with people who don’t yet know Jesus.

We are called to be with people who don’t yet know Jesus.

In our “post-truth” society, wise living isn’t bunkering down, but opening up.

We are called to come alongside people and do life with them.

We need to like people who don’t yet know Jesus, we need to build real and genuine relationships with people.

And this is a principle that each of us needs to work out.

The way we live it out will be different for each one of us depending on our personality and season of life.

Even in within your family there will be different ways that this is worked out.

What does it look like for you to let your life speak of your relationship with Jesus.

Is anyone near enough for them to notice?

And if you don’t know anyone who doesn’t know Jesus, then come back to the first point.

Speak to God.

Devote yourself to prayer.

Ask God to send you that one person that you can get to Know and build a relationship with.

Like them, care for them.

Let your life and relationship speak about the invitation of God.

And then look for opportunities to Sow seeds in Conversation.

We’ve spoken about the other principles of PLAN A this morning because it’s important that we build “sowing seeds in conversation” on the other principles, just like Paul does.

Too often we try and live out this principle in isolation.

But opportunities to speak about Jesus are built on the back of the other principles.

Now I’ve said we can’t always talk about Jesus, but that doesn’t mean that we never speak about Jesus.

There may be those small moments here and there to sow seeds about Jesus.

I know when we talk about “Sowing Seeds in conversation”, our minds immediately jump to “what do I have to say?” “What are the right words to say about Jesus?”.

But again, I don’t think that is where we should start.

I really want to take this back to basics.

I think we need to start by thinking “what does it look like to have conversations that are seasoned with salt?”

And I think before we learn to speak about Jesus, we need to learn to listen.

We need to learn to “Let them Speak”.

Can you see here, that Paul doesn’t even tell the Colossians what to say?

He says in verse 6 “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everybody”.

So much of our evangelism training is based on what we have to say that I think we can forget that we are having conversations.

He doesn’t say “preach at people over the work room lunch table”, he doesn’t tell them that they have to go door to door.

But he does want them having conversations.

The kind of conversations where people think “I enjoyed that. I trust that person. If I have a question about spirituality, I know where to go. I’ll go to my friend who I trust, and I’ll ask them.”

You know people often won’t even remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel.

We want our conversations to be seasoned with salt.

And the thing I’ve learned from trying to speak about Jesus is that I need to speak a lot less, and let them speak a lot more.

I need to “Let them Speak”.

I have found that when you listen to people, you show them that you care for them and that you are a trust-worthy person to speak to.

And this one thing - learning to listen - learning to let them speak has transformed the way I have conversations.

I’m no longer trying to give presentations, but I am trying to have conversations.

If I have about an hour with someone, how about you try to simply listen to them for 50 minutes and then ask them if there is something that you cvan pray for.

Often they will be very happy to accept that invitation.

It opens the door to further conversations and follow up.

If there was one thing, one thing I wish Christians knew about this principle of Sowing Seeds in conversation it’s that listening prepares the soil.

Letting them speak prepares their hearts and minds to receive a seed.

When it comes to spiritual conversations do you know what people want?

They want to be part of the conversation.

They want to be heard.

They want to be listened to without judgment.

And that is the greatest thing I’ve learned in ministry and I believe it is essential in evangelism..

We need to sit and listen to people without judgement.

Listen to people talk about their weekend and listen to people talk about their hobbies and listen to people talk about their struggles and then you may get to listen to people talk about their faith.

This is the skill we need for the culture we are now living in.

So there are three things, three practical ways to help us live out the principle of “Sowing Seeds in Conversation”.

How can you

1. Speak to God

2. Let your life speak

3. Let them speak.

Let’s pray.

Apologet i c s : Dan Pa t e r son, Quest i o n i ng Chr i s t i a n i t y h t t p s : //

www.questioningchristianity.com Dan is an Australian apologist creating high quality

videos, blogs and tips to help answer some of the questions non-Christians (and

Christians have).