Hey Stranger

I was listening to Mark Cahill’s message Hey Stranger yesterday while driving in my car. Mark cites statistics from Jon Speed’s book Evangelism in the New Testament and then gives real examples of how sharing the Gospel with strangers has been a blessing to him. Not only was his own personal salvation related to strangers talking to him and giving him tracts, but he named countless times when strangers he witnessed too would come back to him and later and say that he shared the Gospel with them six months or a year before. Most of those cases, the person would remember the exact day, time and location of their encounter. And most, we extremely thankful for the encounter. A couple of things that Mark pointed out really stood out to me.

First, everyone that we know was at one point a stranger. All of our friends were at one point in time strangers to us. Even our spouse was at one point a strange to us. Every single relationship we had started out as two strangers. It all starts with someone taking the first step in talking to the other person.

Second, it is not about whether we are being effective in our efforts, but whether we are being Biblical. He quotes an unnamed “famous” pastor (and I don’t have the exact quote written down since I was driving my car and unable to take notes) saying essentially that we need to “earn the right” to share our faith with someone by developing a relationship with someone over time. Mark goes on to describe how he has asked people that have this mentality how long that takes. Six months? A year? The problem is that that approach is not Biblical. And the reality is that it is much easier to share the Gospel with a stranger than it is with a friend anyway. As Mark put it, “we don’t have to earn the right to share the Gospel. We have the right.” In fact, we are commanded by Jesus himself to do it!

Third, if a person really knows Jesus, they will talk about him. Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 12:34, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” If Jesus is the most important thing in a persons life, they will talk about him. People talk about the weather, their jobs, their families, their favorite sports teams. If Jesus is more important than all of these, then they will talk about him.

One final thing, I took from the message. In the closing prayer Mark, says “Let’s not have 2010 Christianity, let’s have Biblical Christianity.”

I encourage you to listen to the message yourself. Then go share your faith with someone. The message is the first resource listed on his free audio downloads page.

As I was driving, I felt the urge to share the Gospel with someone. So I stopped at RaceTrac to refill my free drink cup. When I got out of my car, one of the managers of the store was standing nearby smoking a cigarette. I grabbed a stack of tracts, headed over to him and said, “did you get one of these?” He looked at it and I added, “it has a Gospel message on the back.” He said thanks and started to read the card. I went inside and refilled my drink. As I went back out, he was still there. So I asked him what he thought of the card.

He said that it was really interesting because the card had the same verse that his pastor had preached on the previous week. So we talked for a few minutes and got to know each other. I asked him how he got saved and he told me. So I asked if he ever shares his faith. NO! He then explained the exact reasons that Mark was talking about in his message. I encouraged him to share his faith with others because they might not have tomorrow. Then I gave him a copy of Ray Comfort’s book God Has a Wonderful Plan for your Life. I encouraged him to read the book and then pass it on to his pastor.

He thanked me for me time and I left.