We Talk About What Matters Most to Us
Talking about Christ is what we do, because in-Christ people is what we are
One of the most important truths we need to realize is that sharing the Gospel isn’t just something we do from time to time, although we should certainly make time to do it intentionally. We should block off certain times of our week where we mingle, meet people, and share the realities of God, sin, and the cross.
Gospel-communicators is who we are. This is what God saved us towards. When God saved us, He saved us to a personal relationship to Him and a life of obedient living. Part of that relationship, and part of that obedient living, is telling lost people about what Christ has done for us.
We love what we talk about the most. A father who talks about his son a lot and thinks about his son a lot — loves his son a lot. Our conversations with our friends might be centered around video games, or music, sports, or other friends. As redeemed people who are reading God’s Word and are daily being conformed to the image of Christ (Col. 3:18), many of our conversations should be colored by the joys of salvation, God’s daily provision, and eternal life.
We talk about what matters most to us.
Matthew 12:33-34 — “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person, out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.”
Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees who were offended by His healing of a demon-possessed man, explains the root cause for their false accusations towards Him and the Holy Spirit. The real reason they accused Him of doing this work by Satan was because they were simply living consistently with their nature. They have an evil heart, so they speak evil things. They weren’t confused, they were unregenerate.
What we are are in the inside always impacts how we talk and what we talk about.
When we believed that Jesus died for our sins, we received a new heart and a new nature pleasing to God.
Col. 3:9-10 — “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.”
This new nature in each one of us is the new identity God has assigned to us. Out of this new identity comes the desire to talk about Christ and His work in us. Talking about Christ is what we do, because in-Christ people is what we are. Eternal death and slavery to sin is what God saved us from, but obedience is what God saved us to.
Disturbing Numbers
According to Barna Research: “Many Millennials are unsure about the actual practice of evangelism. Almost half of Millennials (47%) agree at least somewhat that it is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith. This is compared to a little over one-quarter of Gen X (27%), and one in five Boomers (19%) and Elders (20%). (Though Gen Z teens were not included in this study, their thoroughly post-Christian posture will likely amplify this stance toward evangelism.)
Society today also casts a negative light on proselytization that many older Christians do not fully appreciate. As Barna found in research published in Spiritual Conversations in the Digital Age, three out of five Christian Millennials believe that people today are more likely than in the past to take offense if they share their faith (65%)—that’s far higher than among Boomer Christians (28%). Millennials are also either two (Gen X) or three times more likely (Boomers and Elders) than any other generational group to believe that disagreement means judgment.” [2]
What can we glean from this? That true Christians are working against the grain, even among those who profess to be believers. By prioritizing evangelism in your life, by talking about Christ and what He did for you on the cross, you are sticking out like a sore thumb.
But that’s kind of the point.