Jesus Among Secular GodsSample

Conversations that Count

A lot of Christians want to honor Jesus’ final wishes by sharing the gospel with others, but they find doing so intimidating and do not know where to start. We have learned that an excellent place to start is by taking conversation seriously as a spiritual discipline and as a key aspect of Christian discipleship. That is why we included a conversational goal in each week of this study. 

Jesus was a superb conversationalist. In all of the Gospels we see that Jesus spent a lot of time talking with people, and it is not at all unreasonable to think He had as great an impact through His conversational ministry as through His preaching ministry. It is surprising, therefore, that growing as a conversationalist is rarely mentioned in discussions of what it means to follow Jesus. 

One reason we often find it difficult to move conversations from shooting the breeze to talking about Jesus is that we spend so much of our conversational time merely shooting the breeze. Nothing is wrong with shooting the breeze, but Jesus always made the transition to deep, meaningful conversations. Like Him, we need to spend more of our time conversing about meaningful topics, especially spiritual ones. 

God knew that the best way to establish a relationship with humanity was literally to come and speak our language. Jesus asked a lot of good questions (one estimate is that 307 of them are recorded in the New Testament), but our most common questions tend to lack creativity: “How was your weekend?” “Did you have a good summer?” “How’s it going?” “How’s work?” These are questions that can be and usually are answered in three words or less, without any meaningful information being shared.

Will you accept God’s invitation to be involved in asking good questions and inviting people into relationships with Him? If you do, you will be surprised by how many people will say yes to your invitations, and you will know the incomparable joy of seeing the light go on in their eyes when they begin to see Jesus for who He really is and to appreciate the fullness of life that only He can bring.  

For more information on the Jesus Among Secular Gods Bible study by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, please visit LifeWay.com/JesusAmongSecularGods.