Even if you have plans to be elsewhere, even if it feels like you need to be moving forward. You are where you are for a reason. You are friends with who you're friends with... for a reason! God is giving you an opportunity to share about his love with everyone you have a relationship with. Don't waste it! We hope you enjoy our discussion between House to House staff, Monica and Colleen, on sharing God's love with the people around you!
Raed grew up as a Muslim and then decided to dedicate his life to follow Jesus. Raed lived in Arua where our House to House team member, Korwen, met him. They developed a discipling relationship over the last few years and this past year Korwen trained Raed to use an app developed to help guide Bible Sharing groups through scriptures.
Raed has since used the app as a guide to found a bible sharing group at his nursing school. He as also taken the opportunity to reach out to the youth, in his home town, sharing Gods love with them during his school breaks.
Raed has grown in his love of Jesus, developed as a servant-leader and grown in confidence to share his faith with those around him.
I grew up in a time when a common training in the church was to learn how give your salvation testimony. In these trainings, the framework often prescribed was to share how you once were bad and then Jesus came into your life and finally, how everything was better. Though my own personal testimony fit this mold in many ways, I often shy away from these salvation testimony formulas. I would cringe as I watched many of my Christian friends, who had been raised by loving parents in a Christian environment, struggle with how to package their conversion moment as a 4 year old child. In reality their childhood conversion moment was not the end of their journey of faith, merely the beginning. But we were told to share that we were saved; that was the end of our salvation testimony, lets put a nice little bow around it.
This, however, is not the real life of a believer.
I feel that we are setting up new believers for failure with these types of testimonies. These salvation stories do not embody the ups, downs, doubts and faith filled moments of a life lived with Jesus. Those of us who believe that Jesus is our savior are still in a process of maturity of faith every day. He paid for our sins so that we could live our whole life with God. Believers still have struggles; they still have doubts and fears but the difference is that God is present with us and we go through it with Him.
If we can share with non-believers our honest life as followers of Jesus, then we can show them a life in relationship with an active, loving God. We can show them how God works through us in hard times. We can show what it’s like to live faithfully, trusting God. Even when the circumstances are stacked against us. When we are vulnerable enough to share with non-believers all of the ups and downs, then we can show them the realities of a life lived in a relationship with Jesus. Then whenever they choose to engage with Jesus they will not be disillusioned by a “fix-everything”, “there are no problems” God. They will experience what you’ve shown, God’s ever loving presence that is with them in all the hardships of life.
God calls us to make disciples and one of the most important ways to draw people to God's amazing love is sharing our own story. Not the fairytale where it all ends up magically ok, but our REAL story, our PERSONAL journey of faith. About our difficulties, our struggles, our realities and the ever present love of God through it all. That's how we make disciples... so go and share your story.
God gave us the free gift of Jesus. All we have to do is recognize that we need him and believe that he died for us, then we are welcome into the kingdom. Those are the only steps necessary when people are deemed “Christians” or “Born Again.” All done. You are a Christian. The end….
Except that’s not the end. We are called to make disciples not just converts.
People, in Uganda, are hungry for more of God. They are so hungry that we see them repeatedly attending the many tent meetings, conferences, crusades, evangelism outreaches, and prayer meetings that come through our region. They raise their hands to be counted as a “born again.” Sometimes this is for the first time, but often it's for the 10th time. The result is thousands of coverts to Christianity that can be tallied and marked as a job well done, but there are no disciples of Christ made from these moments.
Making disciples is our goal, knowing that after someone accepts the free gift of Jesus, they will then need help learning how to follow his teachings. We help people work through the Bible in a really simple way by focusing on small, attainable obedience steps that people set for themselves (with the help of Holy Spirit). People take small steps, focusing on getting one foot in front of the other. Each time their community meets to seek God together, they encourage each other to continue that slow but important growth in their faith.
Up close it doesn’t look like much, but when you zoom out, you see many people who are growing in their faith as directed by the Holy Spirit. In time, these people will be confident disciples of Christ because He matured them through these small steps, week-by-week, through a simple methods anyone can do and fit into an already busy schedule.
We are all called to disciple people. We at House to House are simply providing tools to help that happen.
