Top 10: Ways to Let Your Friends Know

Top 10: Ways to Let Your Friends Know

10.  Have friends.  Sounds simple, even a little patronizing, but the point IS simple.  Be the kind of person that has friends; kind, generous, caring, compassionate, humorous, engaged.  It’s hard to share the gospel with friends you don’t have, and continue to avoid/repel.

9.  Use the advantage you have of knowing your friend(s) well.  You can speak life and peace into very specific situations because of your previous relationship, and experiences together.

8.  Use your social media connections.  ReTweet the authors, pastors and friends that post good content.  Share videos, blogs, and conversations that point to God’s goodness and grace.

7.  Love your friend enough to put yourself out there.  True love will lay itself down for the good of another.  Say what needs to be said because you love them too much to let it go unsaid any longer.

6.  Avoid being a grumbling, selfish, arrogant, angry twerp.  If your life is not lined up with what you say it will put up a stumbling block for them.  This doesn’t mean you can’t share, it means you need to be honest about your own shortcomings and willing to address them through God’s grace.

5.  Invite your unchurched friends to hang out with you and your churched friends.  Evangelism isn’t a solo sport.  Get others involved, encourage new friends between your “camps” of friends.  You don’t know it all, and you shouldn’t pretend to.  Let others speak into their life as well.

4.  Use your regular activities to preach the gospel with your actions and your words.  You don’t need to start a Bible Study to reach your friends, just utilize your normal Friday Night hangout to display God’s love and proclaim His Word.

3. Show some initiative.  If you are really friends, then there is a level of trust that has been built.  Initiate the conversation, be bold, knowing that you’ve been

2.  Share YOUR story.  This is the most basic and most effective means of Letting people Know. Your story cannot be refuted or discounted, because it happened to you, and especially if your life is actually showing signs of being changed it can be a powerful way to show and tell of the Good News of Jesus.

1. You guessed it…Pray.    Pray that God would do what only God can do, which is save.  You can share, tell, show and encourage, but God must open their eyes, God must change their heart.  So pray that He will, and be prepared that He may change you in the process.

Top 10: Ways to Let Your Neighbors Know

10. Don't hide in your house.  Get outside, especially as Spring is coming, and meet your neighbors.  Think it through, how many of them do you really know, by name?  How many do you know well enough to pray for specifically?
9.  Offer to help a neighbor with a project in the yard or the house.
8.  Invite your neighbors to the concert you're going to, or the comedy club.  If your family is going out, bring their family with you.
7.  Have a cookout/game night.  Gather friends from church and friends from the 'hood in the same place.  Allow the Spirit to work in and through the variety of gifts and personalities.
6.  Maintain a good testimony at your kids sports games.  Don't be one of "those guys" trying to live vicariously through their sons athletic achievements.  Speak encouragement, be a calming presence, be an influencer.
5.  Get involved in your neighborhood's HOA or Civic Association.  Getting involved in the wellbeing of your community can send a powerful message that you don't just care about "getting someone saved" but you genuinely care about them.
4.  Maintain your house and your property like it's the Garden of Eden.  A care for God's creation and a love of beauty and order can speak volumes and open many doors.  At the very least it won't close a door by being "that house".
3.  Go deeper.  "Hey, how are you?  Good, you?" is fine and dandy, but life happens beyond the surface.  Let your neighbors know you care.  Ask them what you can pray for them about, ask how you can help. Invest in their lives through conversation.
2.  Invite a neighbor and their family over for dinner.  Opening your home is a great way to engage people with the gospel, as you invite them into what is usually a guarded and protected area.  This allows them to feel comfortable and open as well.
1.  Pray for your neighbors. By Name.  Specifically.  With their wellbeing at heart.  Seek to bring them before God, and ask that He would work.  Ask that they would be given eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand the goodness and greatness of Jesus.

Remember this.  We often pray that our neighbors would hear God's message.  But in John 17:20, Jesus prays that they will hear our message.  The message we have about God has done in our own life, is much more powerful then some general, theological dissertation on how Paul lays out the gospel in the book of Romans.

Share your message, Jesus is already praying for you and for them.  Join Him in His prayer, that they would hear and believe, and have their own story to share.

You may be the only gospel they ever see or hear.  You may be the voice they hear God through, and the life they see His handiwork in.