Jesus told us \u201cBut you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth\u201d (Acts 1:8). But he didn\u2019t tell us how to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the rest of the book of Acts we discover more than one way to share our faith. The good news we offer always stays the same, but the techniques are all over the place. You just never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mom is very shy and introverted, but she didn\u2019t let that keep her from sharing her faith. When I was in junior high, she bought hundreds and hundreds of copies of the Gospel of John, went through the phone book to get addresses, and then mailed them out with the thought \u201cGod\u2019s word won\u2019t return void.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe that\u2019s where I got the idea to stuff tracts into all the lockers in my junior high one lunch hour. The principal was furious and yelled threats over the intercom that afternoon\u2014which of course only increased how much people talked about the tracts, about the gospel, and about Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At 14, I didn\u2019t know what I was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I still didn\u2019t know much when I was 18 and 19 and went to Israel twice to work on a kibbutz so I could share the gospel with Israelis as a short-term missionary. All I did there was plant seeds with the Israelis and with all the other volunteer workers from all over the world who were there. It wasn\u2019t just Israelis who heard the gospel message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The older I get, the less I think I know what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s favorite verse was 2 Chronicles 20:12 \u201cOur God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.\u201d We know in part and only see through a mirror darkly, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13. Not knowing the answers, not knowing what to do is part of the human condition. Proverbs 3:5-6 warns us against depending upon on our own understanding, encouraging us instead to trust God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I accept that I don\u2019t know much. As desperately as I want to fix problems, I have to accept that there are some problems I just can\u2019t fix. I can\u2019t cure illness, and I can\u2019t bring the dead back to life. I\u2019m not even so good with plumbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We get mocked for offering \u201cthoughts and prayers,\u201d and sometimes rightly so according to the apostle James (see James 2:14-17). We Christians certainly don\u2019t have all the answers to all the world\u2019s problems. We don\u2019t even have all the questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what we do have is the simple message that Karl Barth, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, was happy to give. He was once asked to share the most profound thought he\u2019d ever had. So he began softly singing, \u201cJesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t need an answer to every question. We don\u2019t need to know very much. It\u2019s enough that we can tell our neighbors that Jesus loves us. And there’s a nearly infinite number of ways we can do that.
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