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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alix Lopez

Sharing is Caring

Dear Heavenly Father, I just want to thank you for this opportunity to be able to share all the things that you have taught me through your word and through the experiences you've given me.

And Father, we just ask that your Holy Spirit would be with us today.

I pray Lord that it would be your words that I'm speaking today and that Christ would be lifted up so that everyone would be drawn to him and what he can do for us.

And I pray that the Holy Spirit would be with everyone here, be with their minds, be with their hearts, that they would hear the message they need to hear personally.

Thank you, Father, for hearing this prayer.

I looked up Webster's dictionary on what evangelism means and it says the winning or revival of personal commitments to Christ.

And when we think of evangelism, what do we often think?

We often think it's something big like an initiative going on or something like an event, like an evangelistic series.

And basically it's something that we think the pastor should do, or maybe that's someone else's job, like that's the evangelist's job.

I don't know enough, or I don't even know how to share or where to begin.

And so that actually holds us back from reaching people.

So the first thing is I wanna ask you is how many of you here have had an experience with Jesus?

How many of you have had an experience with the Word of God, the Bible?

And so did you know that every single 1 of you who raised your hand actually has the potential to be an evangelist?

And so, the first point here is just how to share, actually becoming a friendship evangelizer and how that works.

I have this quote here from Desire of Ages, which if you haven't read already, it's an amazing book, that actually changed my life from just knowing about Christ to actually knowing Christ.

So if you haven't read it already, I want to encourage you to read it.

But what it says here, it says, we should all become witnesses for Jesus.

Social power, sanctified by the grace of Christ, must be improved in winning souls to the Savior.

So how many should become witnesses for Jesus?

And says let the world see that we are not selfishly absorbed in our own interests, but that we desire others to share our blessings and privileges.

We have a lot of blessings and privileges in our church, no?

The health message, the sanctuary message, knowing about Christ's second coming.

People out there really need to know and hear about these things, right?

Let them see that our religion does not make us unsympathetic or exacting.

Let all who profess to have found Christ minister as He did for the benefit of men.

And so I want to encourage you, let's remember that God's chosen people in history, what did they do when they had all these truths?

They were judging others because they didn't live according to the light they knew.

But we don't have to let history repeat itself today, right?

Okay, and so I'm going to break it down into 3 types of sharers.

Right here, You are going to see 3 types of sharers, and this is essentially what happened in my journey of Friendship Evangelism.

The first 1 is the scared sharer, the second is the zealous sharer, and then the third 1 is the balanced sharer.

I'm hoping that this covers at least all of the different types of people, different types of sharers in here.

So we're going to start with the scared sharer.

I would be scared of what others would think.

And I wouldn't share when there was an opportunity to share, an obvious opportunity to share.

I remember an instance in high school when I was in a church youth group called Pathfinders.

And they were asking the young people to share testimony and to give a devotional thought.

And 1 of the leaders asked me, and I was like, I can't do it, I can't do it.

And so I actually just ran away and just waited until someone started going and presenting their testimony.

And then I was like, okay, good, I'm off the hook.

And that was a moment that really stuck with me for a while.

Why was I so afraid to share at that time?

And I remember another instance, which was years later, where I was at work.

And this was where I was getting convicted on the health message, eating vegetarian, becoming a striving vegan.

And my co-worker was like, oh, why are you eating healthy?

And that could have been an opportunity to talk about God and share about how my body is a temple But I downplayed and I was just like, oh, I just want to try to be healthy think clearer and and live better That's it.

And I was like, oh my goodness, Lord, forgive me.

That was another opportunity where I could have shared.

And I had to ask myself, why am I so scared?

And even now, when it comes to speaking, just 5 years ago, I would have never thought I would be speaking here today when I started attending Advent Hope.

And so God can really take you from where you used to be as a scared share or even if you're a scared share now, see that God wants to actually use you.

He can use your weaknesses and His strength will shine through.

And here's a quote from Christ's object lessons.

It says, he who begins with a little knowledge in a humble way and tells what he knows while seeking diligently for further knowledge will find the whole heavenly treasure awaiting his demand.

The more he seeks to impart light, the more light he will receive.

The more 1 tries to explain the word of God to others with a love for souls, the plainer it becomes to himself.

And the more we use our knowledge and exercise our powers, the more knowledge and power we shall have.

Realize that you don't have to know everything.

Here on Earth, we're probably not going to know everything.

But start with the little that you know or the little experience you have had that Jesus has shown you, and God's going to grow your understanding.

He's gonna grow you to be able to share more and more.

1 of the reasons that I couldn't share is I was just so focused on myself.

Sharing is Caring

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