Recommendations and Reservations

These days we look up recommendations for restaurants, movies, books, holidays, experiences before we dive in. With handy personal devices and so many apps, we don’t mind getting recommendations even from strangers on the internet and we take their word for it. Once we decide on one, we move in to make a reservation so that we do not miss out on the experience when we arrive there! Recommendations and reservations – we all do it all the time. Sharing the good news of Christ or evangelism is exactly that – we make a recommendation on our experience to the people in our world and then check in with them whether they are ready to make a reservation to experience the eternal life!

Too often we hesitate to share our recommendations, our stories and our own experience with Christ to others. We tend to focus on our own inadequacies and hold back thinking wrongly that we may offend the other person in our world. Research groups suggest that as many as 95% of Christians have never shared the good news of Christ with others. We need to realise that God is the one who reveals Himself to others and draws them to Him, convicts them of the need to come into relationship with Him and change their lives. We are merely instruments that God uses and God’s initiative precedes anything that we do. If we are truly honest, the reason we don’t share the good news of Jesus with others is often we care more about ourselves and not enough about the other person. Ouch!

The first part of recommending the gospel is to cultivate the soil of people’s heart by arousing a curiosity in them to know more about Christ. This takes time to listen to people, to understand who they are and their worldview. We do this with the intention of just loving them and getting to know someone who is made in the image of God. The choice for that person to accept Christ is theirs alone but we need to do our part by giving them the best opportunity to witness our love and life in the process. We need to arouse curiosity on their part, stimulate them to bring to the surface deeper and spiritual questions that they are grappling with. Jesus is our model for this. Jesus was intriguing in the way He engaged with people stimulating their curiosity, arousing their interest and drawing them into a deeper conversation. When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman, he aroused in her curiosity by telling her that He would have given her “living water”.
John 4:9-11
¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 

The second part involves planting the seed of the gospel by sharing our story and pointing to God’s story. We can pick aspects of our redemptive story that will most resonate with the person. Share about how God touched your life, transformed your life and redeemed you. It may be a time when God healed you, when God directed your steps, when God answered your prayer or even maybe your conversion story. Listen to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit in your heart and be open to what the Holy Spirit is already revealing to the other person and help join the dots. This is what happened in the encounter between Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip was doing his normal routine of working in Samaria when the Lord prompted him to go to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. The eunuch was simply going home back to Ethiopia after a pilgrimage. One brief afternoon, the stories of these two strangers intersected and one man’s destiny was changed. The Ethiopian eunuch was reading the book of Isaiah. Phillip joined the Holy Spirit already at work by checking with Phillip whether he understood what he was reading. This interaction gave Phillip the opportunity to share the good news about Jesus and letting him know that the portion of scripture from Isaiah was indeed pointing to Jesus Christ!
Acts 8:29-31
²⁹ The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” ³⁰ Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. ³¹ “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

The third part involves reaping the harvest. We need to ask the question on whether the person we are reaching out to understands who Jesus is and whether they are willing to make a commitment to Christ. If they are not ready, we can ask the question as to what is holding them back. This gives us insight to go deeper and help answer their questions if they are genuinely seeking. We need to understand that often others in their life may have already cultivated the soil and planted the seed in addition to us coming along and they might be ready for harvest! If we don’t check with them whether they are ready to make a commitment to Christ and have a reservation for eternity, we are missing the harvest.
John 4:34-38
³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Jonah was reluctant to share the Gospel with the Ninevites. He ran in the opposite direction because he had contempt for the people who were vastly different to him. Jonah was against God’s plan as he did not think the Assyrian Gentile city was worth preaching to and he ran away instead to Tarshish on a ship. While at sea, he was thrown into the sea to calm the storm when the others in the ship discovered that Jonah was running away from God in disobedience. God provided for a whale to swallow him and vomit him on the shore after 3 days. God again commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh and this time Jonah obeyed albeit reluctantly.

The city of Nineveh repented on Jonah’s preaching and they were saved from God’s anger. However, Jonah was angry with God. He could not understand why God had saved the people of Nineveh, who were Assyrians and a powerful kingdom that could rise against Israel. In order to make Jonah understand, God provided a vine to provide shade for Jonah but a worm ate the whole vine the next day and Jonah was very concerned and angry about the vine. Here is what God told Jonah in response to let Jonah know about His heart of love, compassion and grace for the people in Nineveh.
Jonah 4:10-11
¹⁰ But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

God is concerned about the people in our world. He has placed us strategically and uniquely to intersect with their lives to make a recommendation for the reason for our hope and then ask whether they have a reservation to go to heaven for eternity. Who in your world needs to hear your recommendation of what Jesus has done in your life? Are you going to obey and join the Holy Spirit at work by cultivating the soil in their hearts by asking intriguing questions, by planting the seeds of the gospel by sharing your story and pointing to His, and finally reaping the harvest and ensuring they have a reservation for eternity? Like Jonah we too need to learn about the grace, compassion and love that God has for the people in our world and understand why He strategically thought of us and placed us to act.