A name and a date

You have a testimony now, and you can say it. This last chapter is about the half people drop — where the invitation actually sends someone — and about making sure this class does not end the way most classes end.

Point to Jesus, never to a building

Go back to the woman at the well one more time and watch her aim.

Come, see a man. She had every reason to send them somewhere else. She could have pointed at the mountain her people argued about, or at the teachers, or at anyone more respectable than herself — and she was the least credentialled person available, so passing it upward would have been the humble-looking move.

She pointed at Jesus.

That is the rule under every invitation you will make. We take people to Jesus and his Word — come and see — not to a service and not to a professional. Not because church does not matter. Because it comes later, as fruit, when they want it, and putting it first quietly tells your friend that the thing you actually have to offer is an organisation.

There is a grace note here that matters, and people get it wrong in the strict direction. If somebody asks to come to a service, never forbid it — go with them. The rule restrains our invitations. It was never meant to restrain their curiosity.

Go home first

The other thing people get wrong is distance. There is an instinct that witness happens far away, with strangers, in a context you have to construct.

Scripture keeps sending people the other direction. A man is freed from something terrible and begs to follow Jesus, and Jesus says no — and the no is the point:

Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.” — Mark 5:19 (OTB)

Go home. Tell the people who already know you. They are the hardest audience because they remember your before, and that is exactly what makes your now worth something.

Your list is not a mission field somewhere. It is four or five names you could write down in the next minute.

Gently, and with respect

One line to keep beside the whole thing:

but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect; — 1 Peter 3:15 (OTB)

Ready is the word this class has been about. Not eloquent, not trained — ready, so that when somebody asks, there is something in your mouth.

And gentleness and respect is the register. Speak equal to equal — de igual a igual, nunca de arriba para abajo. You are not delivering a verdict from above. You are one thirsty person telling another where the water is.

A name and a date

Here is where this class stops being a class.

Una idea sin nombre y sin fecha no produce nada. An idea with no name and no date produces nothing. You can agree with every chapter of this, tell your testimony beautifully to your spouse, and never once say it to somebody who needs it — and nothing about the agreeing will have made any difference at all.

So write the name. Write the day.

Recite this

I found better water. Come, let me show you where.

Try it this week

Two lines, and then a prayer.

I will tell my story to ________________ before ________________.

A real person. A real date. Not “sometime”, not “when it comes up” — those are the same sentence as “no”, said politely.

Then pray the prayer this material has always ended on, which asks for both halves at once, because either one on its own goes wrong:

Make me bold. Make me humble.