Sharing The Word Comes With Proper Preparation

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘”(29) The most important one <Commandment>,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (30) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (31) The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”’ (Mark 12:29-31)

My Jeep is rather old, and when I first got it, I focused on the things I am capable of doing, namely removing the back seat to provide more cargo space and replace the soft top with a hard top, along with a couple other minor things to make improvements.

I also hate spiders, and the Jeep had small spider problem.  It wasn’t completely infested with spiders or bugs, so I procrastinated on ‘bug-bombing’ it. However, the occasional pest would pop out at inopportune moments. One of those moments was when our son asked if he could take it for a spin and our daughter-in-law decided to go with him.

As they were going down the road, a spider decided to come and join our daughter-in-law in the passenger seat, and she reacted as one would anticipate.  They pulled off the road, got out of the Jeep, and our son managed to get the spider out and then worked, with some effort, to get her to get back in the Jeep and come back to the house.

Upon returning and hearing the news, I figured since I was going to start doing all this work in and on the Jeep, and to ensure that I stayed in our daughter-in-law’s good graces, I used a home fumigator to kill all pests from inside the Jeep.

The smoke from the fumigator filled the inside with a thick, black fog that seeped out of the small gaps of the soft top.  It took several hours after the fumigator stopped pumping smoke before the fog started to dissipate. 

It was about a week before I could finally get into it to start doing any work.  As of today, there are no more spiders or pests found in it, several years after smoking them out.

Like hunting down a spider before working on the Jeep, we must place our actions in a proper sequence. To work on the Jeep without any surprises, I had to make sure there were no spiders in it.  I also had to get the tools and parts necessary to do the work that I planned to do.

I couldn’t just take the soft top off, then go and order the hard top and wait for the month or so before it would arrive, and hope it wouldn’t rain.  I couldn’t go to pick up a large item at a home improvement store in the Jeep, and wait until I bought the item and take it out to the parking lot to then remove the back seat.

The hard top needed ordering and received first before removing the soft top, and the back seat needed removing prior to picking up large items to fit inside the back of Jeep.  There is a proper order that if I did not follow, would have resulted in failure. 

My failure to not ‘bug-bomb’ the Jeep first, prior to our son’s joyride with his wife, caused an unpleasant situation that, while I can laugh about it today (she still won’t) made for a very uncomfortable experience for the family for that particular visit.

The same is true for our walk in Christ, and for us to share His love with others.  Before we can testify about Jesus’ saving Grace, we must first believe in His Lordship, and then love Him totally.  We must love ourselves enough to love Him in totality before we can share Him with others. 

After we establish our love for Jesus in ourselves, we can then go and share His love with ‘our neighbors’, who we can establish as everyone else who we encounter. 

There is also a proper sequence we need to undertake.  We must set up a relationship with those who we will testify to; at the very least open communications, overcome barriers (like any biases, for example) and then begin sharing the Word.

This set up need not be long. To a stranger we meet in passing, enjoin in a quick chat to see if they are open for such a discussion, or if a more subtle suggestion to plant a seed is needed.  We must seek to understand our ‘neighbors’; for example, discussing Jesus with a Jewish or Islamic follower, we may need to establish a dialogue first to where they would then be willing to listen.

Not all circumstances are alike, and certainly we need to always be sharing the Gospel to all, at all times.  We also must be aware that not all people are open to an immediate questioning of ‘Will you want to accept the Lord today?’ 

There are those steps we must take to first create an environment for people to accept listening about the Lord, and learn more about Him, before they will accept Him as Lord. 

Don’t get discouraged!  Take your time and build that relationship so when the Holy Spirit gives you that nudge to say, ‘It’s time!’ you know they are ready to learn more in taking that next step. 

Also, be prepared by praying, studying Scriptures, and stay involved in fellowship with others, to have the knowledge beforehand of what to say or how to say it, without fear.

Prior preparation may save you from something like the frantic screams of a daughter-in-law meeting a spider in your Jeep…