QUESTION AND ANSWER
I am always being told that I ought to be a good witness for the Lord. How can I do it?
I am quite certain that you will never be a good witness to Jesus Christ if you start trying to be one because someone else has told you to do it.
We become witnesses to Jesus Christ in our ordinary lives and amongst our friends when we are motivated by Him. If with all my being I know that the Lord loves and cares for every specially, and if I am deeply convinced that Jesus, the Son of God, died for me that I might go to heaven, I shall have reason to witness for Jesus Christ. I shall be so enthusiastic about Him that I shall want to bring others to meet our wonderful Lord.
How then can I set about it?
First of all, it must be by the kind of life that I live. I must try to be a person who is quite simply like Jesus in the world - someone who points others to the divine by the very way that he or she lives their ordinary lives. I shall try to be genuinely loving person, a man or a woman of great integrity.
Secondly I can witness by going regularly to church. If no party or invitation out to a meal ever comes between me and worship, my friends will soon learn that the Lord really does come first in my life.
Thirdly I must do as Thomas Carlyle’s mother once said to him: ‘Speak a good word for the Lord, Thomas’. For there are times when, quite naturally, it will be right to speak simply about the Lord. Remember that these days people know very little about Jesus... and they are interested.
Another thing you can do is to tell people that you will pray for them if they are going through a hard time.
In these ways, without ‘pushing religion down people’s throats', you can gently turn other’s thoughts to the Lord, who loves them so very much.
But perhaps the very best thing that you can do for your friends is to pray regularly for them. If you do, you may be surprised how many natural opportunities arise for saying a good word for Jesus.
John Pearce is Rector of Limehouse, in the diocese of London.