This is the lesson that I taught a couple of weeks ago at our women's night at church. It's the last lesson I'm going to have from the class for awhile, as I am stepping down from the position for awhile.
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I started out naming some local (and not local) people to see if anyone knew them. Some of the names only one person knew, some a couple of people knew, and some all of them knew.
Do you guys see a pattern here? Some of these people, only one person in here knew. Some of them, a few people might know. Some of them, just about everyone knows.
Tonight, I’d like to talk about our spheres of influence as Christians.
Each of us has a circle of people that we can influence for Christ like no one else. No one’s circle will look the same as mine or yours. Even your best friend’s circle won’t be the same. Your spouse’s circle won’t be the same.
Draw circle with my name in it and an overlapping circle with Matt’s name.
My husband and I share many of the same friends and our families are now intertwined. There are still people in his life that I will never meet or if I do meet them, I won’t ever have the opportunity to influence them for Christ.
Draw circle with Jessi’s name overlapping my circle quite a bit and part of Matt’s circle.
Jessi and I have been best friends for over a decade. That may not seem like a long time to some of you senior saints, but it’s the longest friendship I’ve ever had. We both know a lot of the same people but there are still a lot of people in my life she doesn’t know and people in her life I don’t know.
Add Jackie’s circle overlapping just a hair with mine and a lot with Matt’s.
Jackie and I are family now. But she’s lived around here for her whole life. I’ve lived in Head of the Creek for five years. There are A LOT of people that I’ve never met that she’s interacted with over the years.
Are you guys starting to see my point?
Let’s look at Matthew 28:19-20 – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
We call this scripture the Great Commission. Because Jesus commands us here to GO! We aren’t supposed to sit around our houses and churches waiting for the lost to come to us so that we could share the good news of the Gospel with them. Jesus tells us to go.
This doesn’t mean that we have to go to Africa or Honduras or Italy or China. It doesn’t mean we have to fundraise to buy a plane ticket to India to go and tell.
We can start across the street. I have someone that’s lived across the street from me for five years now. I’ve seen her one time. And that one time, I decided a nap was more important than going over and offering to help clean up her yard.
We can start with the office or desk next to us. I sit with the same eight people every day. There’s been new people come into our department, but it’s been the same people for the last three years now. Have I mentioned the gospel to those I can see plainly need it? Nope. But it sure is easy for me to sit there and gossip with them.
We can start with that lost family member. My dad told me a few years ago that he didn’t even know if he believed there was a god anymore. I believe God has been working on his heart since then, and I don’t believe his answer would be the same today, but have I actually shared the gospel plainly with him? Nope. I beat around the bush and pray God sends someone to tell him.
Jody Gaston spoke at our last food pantry. If you weren’t there, you missed a really good (and I mean convicting) message. He gave us some statistics about people, some about people who were addicted to video games, some about single parents, and this one: one out of one people die. Unless Jesus comes back, we will all one day die in this earthly flesh. Don’t let that fool you though. We are eternal beings.
We had this wonderful mission opportunity a couple weeks ago. We had hundreds of people come to our back to school bash this year. Way more than we were expecting.
Back to Jody’s lesson. He asked if we had prepared for it. Had we prayed for our event. Had we asked God to speak salvation into the hearts of those that were going to be there. BAM.
That stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t once yet prayed for the people that we were going to be serving that day, just a week and a half later. I’ve known the back to school bash was coming up for months because we do it EVERY YEAR.
I was SO convicted. I’m guilty of putting great effort into planning an event. I can help plan, set up, tear down, run things behind the scenes. But to interact with people? To call out to God on behalf of people I don’t even know? The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Thank you, Lord, for Holy Spirit conviction. I love journaling my prayers. I’ve been doing that probably as long as I’ve known Jessi, maybe longer. I can look back to a specific day and see where my heart was that day. Side note: When Matt and I were engaged, I was able to pull out my old prayer journals and show him how I had prayed for him (as a husband) and for him specifically.
I’ve looked back at my prayer journal from that Thursday morning after Jody taught at the food pantry. I’m not reading this to lift myself up at all. Please don’t focus on the wording. I just want to show you how the Holy Spirit was guiding me through His conviction that morning:
“Forgive me for failing to pray and prepare the people that will be at our back to school bash this year. Lord, I call out to You on their behalfs. Prepare their hearts to hear the beauty and trust of Your gospel. As we share the good news with them, remove the blinders from their eyes. Let us not fail in discipleship afterward, Lord. In the meantime, Lord, help us to speak out right where we are. You have given each one of us a sphere of influence, Father. What am I doing with mine? … Spark revival in our hearts, our homes, our church, and on out into our spheres. Amen.“
That right there is where God sparked the idea for this lesson. He chose to use another teacher in our church to convict my heart. I feel this message is so desperately needed, for all of us.
Jody continued talking about that statistic. One out of one people die. 100% of people will not live forever in these earthly bodies. Every day, people are dying and going to hell. EVERY DAY. People that we pass at the grocery store. People we work in a factory with. People who we follow dropping our kids off in the school drop-off line. People in our families. People we pass on the street.
That convicts my soul like nothing else. I’m sitting here living my comfortable life with my ticket to heaven and helping people right into hell as I do it.
By living in silence, I am guilty of casting people right into the place of eternal torment.
I heard a preacher on Moody Radio the other night. He was preaching about hell. This truth really stuck out to me: “Hell wasn’t created for humans. Hell was created for the fallen angels, Satan and his demons. To get there, people have to trip over the cross of Jesus to get there.”
In my silence, it’s like I’m saying, “Here, let me help you over that piece of wood.”
I feel so ashamed of myself for keeping my mouth shut. I was at a friend’s house the other night. I’ve been praying for opportunities to share Christ with this friend for YEARS. We rarely get to talk alone, but we were talking about the adoption. She mentioned how it gave her chills just thinking about it. I elaborated with something along the lines of, “Yeah, it’s just such a beautiful picture of the gospel,” and stopped there.
This friend knows nothing of God. She knows nothing of the gospel. She may not even know what the word means. We throw these words around like people are just supposed to magically know what they mean.
What a wasted opportunity for me to share the beauty and grace and mercy of the gospel and it’s full and wonderful meaning. What a wasted opportunity, not to help someone over the cross of Jesus toward hell, but right into His open arms.
So I want to ask you, as I teach my last lesson to you, at least for a while, what are YOU doing to reach the people in your spheres of influence?
We can’t just wait for Matthew to give an invitation and call the lost forward. We can’t just sit around waiting for someone else to do it because we are scared or nervous or worried we will say the wrong thing.
We have to follow what Jesus tells us in Matthew 28:19-20.
First, we need to GO. We need to step out in faith and let the Holy Spirit give us the words to say.
Second, we need to MAKE DISCIPLES. Do you know what that means? We need to tell them, and we need to show them, and we need to lead them. It’s not a “here, say these words” kind of activity. It’s an investment into the life of the person you are telling about Jesus and who makes a profession of faith.
Will you join me in making an effort to step out of our comfort zones and stepping into our spheres of influence to share the love of Jesus and the truth of his gospel?
Thanks for reading.
In God,
Emily
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