I really love discipleship and I think it was something that was missing in my walk with the Lord early after I received salvation. The church that we attended didn’t really have a discipleship program, so I wasn’t plugged in to any one-on-one bible study or group study at that time. However, later as we joined a new church and started getting plugged in, I learned the importance of discipleship.

Just getting together with other believers, studying God’s Word, having more mature believers pour into your life and help you learn God’s Word, what it means and how to apply it to your life, it was so beneficial and fruit-bearing in my life! There was one time that I was meeting a friend for discipleship, and I will never forget the encounter we had with a complete stranger. I had started discipling other women, and on this particular meeting we decided to gather at a fast food restaurant. We were going through one of our discipleship lessons, and while we were in the middle of our lesson, this older gentleman approached our table, and he looked very distraught, and we asked him, “Are you okay?” And he said “No.” He put both of his hands on our table, and he said, “I see that you are godly women, and I see that you are reading the Bible. Will you please pray for my daughter?” And my friend and I looked at each other like we’d seen a ghost. Our eyes were huge as saucers, and we were skeptical, so we asked him, “Where is your daughter?” And he said, “She’s in the car.” I thought, okay, I’m not sure about this. So, we kept asking more questions, “Is she sick?” And he just started crying, and we could see that it was genuine, and so my friend looked at me, and she said, “We should go.” I said, “Yes, we should.”

So, we picked up our purses, Bibles, and books, and we took off out the door behind him. We got out into the parking lot, and the passenger door was open, and she was sitting in the front seat reclined, hanging over the console, and clearly in addiction, clearly inebriated. She had drugs and alcohol in her body. She had a horrible infection in her arm from needles, and our hearts were just broken. I spoke with her, and I told her, “You need to get help. You know, your dad wants you to get help. But do you want to get help?” And she said, “Yes I do.” I proceeded to give the contact information for the local rehab clinic to her dad, and we exchanged phone numbers. I asked her if I could pray with her before they left, and so we prayed together in that parking lot. I will never forget our encounter that day!

I was not planning for or expecting that encounter with this woman and her father that day. I did not know our discipleship meeting would be divinely interrupted with an amazing witnessing opportunity. And I most definitely didn’t know that it would be the beginning of a seven-year relationship with that woman and her father.

It reminds us that we need to be ready to give an answer for the hope we have, just as it says in 1 Peter 3:15. That includes not only bearing witness of our faith in Christ, but also being willing to show with our actions. God may put you in a particular place at a particular time for the purpose of being able to witness and minister – even if to a complete stranger. Will you be faithful? Your obedience and faithfulness to the Lord has the ability to greatly impact others.

1 Peter 3:15, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”

We need to be ready to give a defense for our faith, not only to those who are lost and searching, but also to fellow believers who are weary and worn and who may have backslidden. The father of this woman was looking for hope – not only for his daughter, but for himself as well. He was looking for peace. He later revealed to my husband and I that he had been enduring his daughter’s drug addiction and alcoholism for many years. He and his wife had raised his children in church, they were very active in the church. He knew the Lord, but he had lived for so long in exhaustion as he prayed and interceded for his daughter who was living in darkness.

Everybody everywhere would like to have a deep inward satisfying peace, and true peace only comes from God. There’s nothing like it. It doesn’t come from your circumstances; it comes from Christ and having a relationship with Him. The Bible says that we can have peace as we place our faith in God. When we receive salvation, we have God’s peace inside of us. We have peace with God, and that leads to having the peace of God. As a result, we can then have peace with one another.

Many believers today shy away from witnessing opportunities because we have become jaded toward the lost in our world. We see drug addicts and alcoholics on the streets all the time. We look at them as a hindrance to society and a burden; therefore, we harden our heart toward them and become complacent and apathetic. We need to pray and rely on the prompting of the Holy Spirit whenever we encounter divine interruptions in our day. For my friend and I, as we met this man that day asking us to pray for his daughter, it was the Holy Spirit that gave us peace to know this is genuine and we needed to go help. As we abide in prayer and God’s Word each day, He will give us wisdom and discernment to hear His voice and obey wherever He calls us.

Oftentimes than not, we say, “It’s not my problem to worry about other people.” Well, if you’re a believer, you’re wrong because as a believer, you have a ministry. Everybody is given a ministry and the Bible calls this the ministry of reconciliation. It’s found in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19. It says, “Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” This passage goes on to say we’re ambassadors for Christ. So, we are to beg people on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. And so that’s what we are called to do. It’s easy to check out and say, “It’s not really my problem. It’s not my job. It’s not my calling. I don’t need to go and get involved in things.” But we need to be ready. We need to be ready when those divine opportunities or divine interruptions come into our life so we can spring into action. God gives you a special purpose and that is to share the Gospel while you’re alive. And that’s how we are being used in the ministry of reconciliation. We have a purpose. We’re to go out. We are to love others and lead them to the Lord. That doesn’t mean we save people. Our responsibility is not to cause that reconciliation. Our job is to introduce them to the reconciliation that comes from God through His Word. We can’t reconcile other people to Him. We can’t bring them to him and force their hand to make a decision. All we can do is give the invitation and obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

It’s important to note that we can’t do that effectively unless we have spent time in God’s Word. We need to be prayed up. We need to be read up in His Word. We need to be strong and healthy in our walk with the Lord. If we’re distracted, if we are tired and we’re not mentally invested in doing God’s work, we’re not going to get it done. So we need to be focused. We need to be attentive, looking all around us and being passionate about doing it. And that’s why we are to be ready, the Bible says, in season and out of season.

2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.”

When we are not strong and healthy in our walk, when we are not focused and attentive, there is a tragedy that falls to these lost people. Not that their eternal damnation is our fault, because ultimately it’s a personal decision every one will be held accountable for making by the Lord. Everyone makes their own decision whether to accept Christ and His salvation or to reject it, but it is our responsibility to share the Word with the lost while we have time. We need to redeem this time. We need to be ready because we have that responsibility as believers to introduce other people to salvation that’s found in Christ.

The tragic fate that awaits lost people should be why we witness and why we take time to minister. I have a friend who is a missionary and she sent a message a while back and she had told me that they had gone out to do some witnessing and evangelizing and one of their friends from that country had come in that morning and she said she was really sad. She asked her friend, “Ae you okay? Did something happen in your family? Was there something terrible that happened?” And the friend said, “No”. She had been reading the book of Revelation. And the American missionaries thought that was great because Revelation is where we read that Jesus wins in the end and evil is put away forever. But the lady from this country told my friend that she was sad, broken and grieved because so many of her people in that country have not heard the Good News. Immediately my friend said a quote from Carl Henry entered her mind. And the quote is: “The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.” It’s good news for those who’ve heard it, but what about those who have not? My missionary friend told me the sad reality of the country where she is serving. Millions of people in that country worship idols that are made by human hands. They go into temples. They try to do good things to earn their salvation.

We need to stay attentive. We need to be looking around, always looking for opportunities to witness and share the gospel because there’s so many who do not know. This is not just a necessity in other countries, but right here in America as well. Many believers in America are too comfortable in their faith and live with a complacent or apathetic attitude. What if we approached life with urgency for the Gospel like the people in other countries who don’t have the same access that we do to Bibles, podcasts, printed and published studies and commentaries? I don’t know if you are aware, but the Bible is an illegal and banned book in some countries. Why does the enemy target the Bible? Because saving faith comes through the hearing of the Word of God. That’s why it’s crucial that we share the gospel with others. They need to hear the God’s Word, read God’s Word, and understand it. And that’s why it’s so important for churches and pastors to be preaching the pure Word of God. Less fluff, more truth. That’s not to say that hearing the message is going to save. People still have a personal responsibility to accept the message and believe it in faith. When the day of judgment comes, no lost person will have a defense, and that should burden us to pray for our lost family members and friends and pray that God will soften their hard hearts toward Him and His Gospel. One way you can share the Gospel is through prayer. If you have the opportunity to pray with a lost person, you can include the Roman’s Road passages in your prayer. You can include John 3:16 in your prayer. Maybe you aren’t sure of the salvation of the person you are praying with. That’s ok. Saved or not, this is a time to point that person back to Christ.

Some people will accept the message of Christ, and some will not. However, just like we read in 2 Timothy, we are to proclaim it anyway. Jesus ran into those kinds of troubles when He was calling people to follow Him and they would come out with all of these excuses: “I have a wedding” or “I have to take care of some affairs.” In other words, they were saying, “Maybe down the road I’ll follow You, Jesus, but not right now. It’s not a good time for me.” People really haven’t changed in 2,000 years. People are still self-absorbed. They’re self-focused on wanting to gratify the desires of the flesh and enjoy the pleasures of this world more than they want to follow God and do His work. When you go into evangelism with a haughty attitude and high expectations for what you do, you are placing all the results of the work on yourself. You are attempting to take the credit that belongs to Christ and Christ alone. My good friend and pastor, John, once said, “We are not responsible for the results of our obedience.” We are going to receive some pushback. It’s ok. We are just called to be obedient to share the Good News. God is the One responsible for any fruit that comes from that obedience. One thing I have learned is to expect God to move in ways that you can’t see.  He will orchestrate divine interruptions in your life. Be alert and ready to respond and learn from each experience.

If people only knew the eternal consequences of declining the gospel invitation! If they could see the future, I can’t help but think it would change their mind. But that’s why we have to be about the Father’s work. As Galatians 6:9 tells us, “Don’t grow weary in doing good.” Keep working. Keep proclaiming the Good News, which is to repent and be saved. The harvest is plenty, but the workers are few and it’s not time to sleep. It’s time to work. Sometimes we look at those situations where we get interrupted or we see a situation and we know the Holy Spirit is telling us to go and minister or go and involve yourself in that person’s life. Yet so many times we take the easy way out. We say, “I don’t want to. I don’t feel like talking to them.” We make up so many excuses, don’t we? Some of the reasons why I think we don’t get involved willingly in the lives of others is because of how messy it can be. Ministry is messy. You’re going to get hurt. You’re going to be tempted to become jaded. When those we are trying to help end up go back in cycles of sin, it’s easy to be tempted to want to abandon them and not pray for them. But again, I’m reminded of Galatians 6:9, “Don’t grow weary in your work.” It makes me think about believers from the previous generation who planted the seeds and watered the seeds, and we benefit from their work! When ministry starts to get messy, or we get hurt, or we’re tempted to become jaded, I think it’s because we’re trying to be the one who tills the soil, plants the seed, waters the seed, and then become upset because we didn’t bear any fruit. We fail to remember it’s not ours to bear anyway. God’s the One who bears the fruit. We need to remember that when we are ministering to others and witnessing to the lost and being available when people approach us and ask us to help them or help their family, we need to remember that we are just one small part in the process. Maybe we are just tilling the soil and that’s all we do in their life. Or maybe we are the one that plants the seeds of the Gospel. And someone else is going to do the watering. The most important thing to remember is that God’s the One who bears the fruit. It’s not our job to save them. Even though ministry is messy and we do get hurt, it’s not an excuse to be lazy. We can’t take someone’s hurt or sin personally and allow it to harden our heart toward serving God. Their rejection of the message is not their rejection of you. It’s their rejection of God. So don’t get offended because it’s not about you.

Many times, the problem is that we fail to go to God in prayer. How many times do we pray before we do things or make decisions whether to help someone or how to help them? I think back to that day when my friend and I were meeting for discipleship and that man approached us. As he was talking to us, we were waiting. We did not act in a rash manner. We did not get up in haste. We waited. We waited for the Holy Spirit to give us peace before we proceeded to go out. It was like an internal prayer of “Lord, please protect us, please help us to do what You want us to do.” And that’s how we had prayed before we even started our lesson that morning as we met in that fast food restaurant. We prayed, “God use us. Help us to be an example to those around us who are in this building completely mindless of what we’re doing. They’re just completely oblivious to the fact that we are studying Your Word and conversing about Your Word. Use us to witness, even as we study together.” God answered that prayer before that man ever even came into the parking lot with his daughter. We need to be prepared. How do we be ready? We pray. Jesus is our greatest example.

When I think about ministering to the lost or being available when people are presented to us, I think about Jesus and how it was for His disciples. In Matthew 8:5-6, it says, “When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, entreating Him and saying, Lord, my servant is lying, paralyzed at home, suffering great pain.” So, here’s Jesus and the centurion approaches Him. He wasn’t actively looking for somebody to go and witness to. This centurion is the one who approached Jesus saying, “I need your help. I need you to come to me and help me and fix what’s going on in my family, in my household.” We find a similar situation with the friends of the paralytic in Luke 5. They knew that they could not fix that man. They could not make him whole again. They knew they had to get him to Jesus. It was the same for that man who approached our table that morning during discipleship. He was needing help to carry his “sick” loved one to Jesus. He could not do the heavy lifting alone. He was weak in his faith. He’d been struggling with his daughter’s addiction for years and he needed someone to come alongside him and hold him up because he was weary and weak in his walk. What did we do? We came alongside him and we took his daughter to Jesus in prayer. We reminded her of His Word. We ministered to her as we witnessed to her. We shared with her how she needs the Lord, to surrender her life to Him.

How many times have people come to you and just said, “Hey, can you pray for my family member?” They personally sought you out. They called you or texted you or spoke to you in-person, sharing about their situation. Maybe they asked you to meet them for lunch and they personally say to you, “I need your help.” We need to be people who are approachable so that others feel comfortable coming to us and asking for prayer. We need to be people that others can come to in their time of need and say, “Will you pray for my family?” Are you that person? Are you a kind of person that’s easy to approach? Do people trust that you will pray when you say you will? Do people think of you as dependable, as someone who shows compassion? Are you strong in your faith and can it be seen on the outside by other people? Can others see the condition of your heart and your relationship with the Lord by how you live your life? If we are reflecting Christ, if we are being formed and shaped and molded to look more and more like Him, then we should be people like Him. Did you know that Jesus was so approachable that children would even flock to Him? He was not a threat to children. He wasn’t intimidating. He was perceived by others as a safe place. He was and still is Someone you can trust! We can practice His example by being easy to approach, friendly, showing a kind demeanor, being compassionate, never giving others the feeling that they are a burden. Jesus made time for people, and we need to be more like that. We need to take the time to be available, to make ourselves available. There’s a lot of people in this world who are in need. A lot of people are hurting. We don’t always have to be the ones to go out and insert ourselves in their lives and their business, but we should be available for if and when they come to us.

We mentioned earlier about being ready in season and out of season. Well, it also means we need to be willing. Willing to obey whatever God calls us to, just like Isaiah. He answered the Lord when the Lord said, “Who will go?” Isaiah said, “Send me! I will go!” He was willing. He didn’t go looking for it, but he was ready to respond when the Lord presented the opportunity. Isaiah had the option to say no. He could have declined the offer to go. We have the same option today. It’s easy to decline the opportunity to witness and not care about the other person because it’s an inconvenience to our day. We get selfish and stuck in our own flesh and we think, “I don’t want to make time for this. I have enough going on in my life. I work a full-time job. I’m busy. I just want a break. That person is probably not even serious. What if this is just a waste of my time and they’re just trying to get a few bucks off of me?” Ultimately, that’s the bad view to have because then we’re making it all about us.  We need to remember that as believers, we are slaves of Christ. We need to come to the realization that it’s not our house; it’s God’s house. We use it for His ministry. It’s not our car; it’s God’s car. If we need to go pick up someone and take them to rehab or bring them to church, that’s what we’re going to do. It’s not my time; it’s God’s time. It’s not my life; it’s God’s life. I’m a slave to the Lord, just like Paul says when he received salvation, he got into the mindset of “I don’t belong to myself. I belong to the Lord. He owns me. He bought me with His blood. So I will do whatever He tells me to do whenever He tells me to do it – however that may be.” We need to always ready ourselves to be obedient.

Maybe you are tempted to validate whether or not to obey by asking, “Will that person fail? If I go and share the Gospel and help that person, will they succeed? Will they reject the message?” Let me calm your fears. Maybe so. Maybe they do fail. Maybe they take your help and you never hear from them again. Maybe they accepted your money or food or clothes and remained in addiction. That’s between them and the Lord. You’re just being obedient to do what God tells you to do. You can’t worry about how other people respond. You have to be obedient to do what God tells you to do. That’s not to say you are to be ignorant and unwise or enable bad behavior. You need to have wisdom and discernment. You need to seek the Lord as to what He wants you to do and how He wants you to do it. We can’t get so focused on seeing fruit in the lives of others that we fail to acknowledge that maybe our obedience is bearing fruit in our own life. What is God doing in and through you and working in your heart during those interactions and time that you spend pouring into other people? There is a blessing that comes when we’re obedient to go to action when God calls us to. We not only bless the people we serve, but they bless us in return.

I immediately think of a lady that I was meeting with a long time ago. She was in a really rough situation in her life and we would meet together each week and study God’s Word together. Looking from the outside in, you would say that I was ministering to her. But if you were part of our weekly meetings, you would realize that she was actually ministering to me at the same time. She was helping me to move forward in my walk with the Lord. Even though I was helping her in a sticky situation, her testimony and her example and her faithfulness to God was such an encouragement and an inspiration to me. God bore fruit in my life from that interaction. And that fruit that comes from serving the Lord and doing ministry comes when we are humble and have a selfless attitude. We can’t receive blessings from interactions like that if we go into it with an attitude of “I’m going to fix this person” or “I’m going to save this person” or “I’m going to do a lot of good for this person.” It’s not our job to fix. It’s our job to obey Christ. As you take the time to be humble, to be willing, to be teachable, to allow yourself to be used by the Lord, you will see the fruit. When God bears the fruit, He gives you a front row seat to that fruit bearing experience. And then you watch God doing a mighty work in someone’s life. They start crawling and then they start walking and then you see them growing up and helping others. We begin to realize God is bigger than us; He is the One doing all the work in the human heart. We have the awesome opportunity to have a front row seat to see all the mighty things that He’s doing.

As we go through our days, we need to pay attention to the people God brings into our lives. We need to realize the awesome opportunities we’ve been given to tell them they are a sinner and we are a sinner, but God came down from heaven and gave us Christ to offer forgiveness for our sins. And now that Christ has come, that He’s died for us, He has forgiven our sins. We have a way for our sins to be forgiven. People need to know Jesus in truth, that He is the Son of God. We need to be proclaiming Jesus as the way of salvation. He is the Only way. As a believer, I’m so thankful for the resurrection and that Christ made a way for us to be with Him forever. But I am burdened for the unbeliever because this life on earth is all the pleasure they have. Whatever happiness they find now is all they’ll ever know. But how different for those of us who are believers! We have eternity secured in heaven with the Lord. If you don’t have a personal relationship with Christ, what will you do? Will you place your faith in Christ and believe His Word? Romans 10:9-10 tells us that if we confess with our mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. Through Christ, God has given you the opportunity to confess that you’re a sinner. Do you believe Jesus is who He said He is? Do you believe that He died for you to forgive you of your sins? Do you believe that God raised Jesus to life and that He’s reigning right now in heaven? Do you want Jesus to be the Lord of your life? You can do that today by confessing with your mouth.