Our teams are like our family. We spend an exceptional amount of time together. We eat together, practice and prepare together, pour our sweat, time and tears into games together. We operate as one unit, and what effects one person effects the whole.

Our coaches and teammates mean a lot to us, but it’s in this everyday closeness we wonder if they’d be receptive to learning why we live the way we do as a Christian. Maybe a large part of why we shy away from sharing our faith is we get too wrapped up wondering what to say and how to say it. We realize the magnitude of the discussion and fear if we don’t get it just right, or our own faith story is too boring, there won’t be interest.

Have you put unneeded pressure on yourself to share your faith or set unrealistic expectations on what that even means?

Stop the pressure and press into Him. Understand your part in His great story, and how He’s met you at a personal level.

God can and does use your own story to draw people to Himself.

Our testimony is our greatest tool to share the gospel. The gospel is the grand redemptive story of how through His death and resurrection, Jesus came to bridge the gap between us and God because of our sin. Our testimony is the explanation of redemption in our own lives, our faith journey with God.

If you think about your timeline from how you lived before, where God met you, and where the journey together has led, you may feel overwhelmed with gratefulness and awe and are compelled to tell of God’s goodness. Why does it mean so much to you? Because it’s yours, it’s special, and you want that same experience for family and friends.

To help share your faith story, here are a few tips to consider:

Relationship First

If you have a close relationship, you have great affection for this person. And it makes you want to tell everyone about how wonderful this person is in your life. You can’t keep from talking about them.

This is the relationship Jesus desires with us. To grow in closeness and love Him so much that we just can’t keep Him to ourselves and tell everyone about how great He is.

We love each other because he loved us first.   – 1 John 1:19 NLT

It’s A Conversation

Genuine is gold. There doesn’t need to be a PowerPoint presentation or a well-rehearsed speech. What it comes down to is casual conversation. Talking from the heart, openly, about someone you deeply care about. Share what He’s meant to you, what He’s done in your life. Sharing your experience is relatable, and gives other people permission to think, He’s thought that way too? She’s struggled with this situation? So, I’m not alone in my questions and doubts?

Feel free to ask them to share their experiences too, and what they believe. It’s two-way dialogue, and you never know how God has been preparing someone for that moment.

Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.  -Colossians 4:6 NLT

Be Yourself

You don’t need to try to impress anyone with fancy words or elaborate theology. Be true to who you are and speak how you normally do. If you carry on with mindless chatter or put on an air of self-righteousness, people will sniff out insincerity. Instead, set the tone with vulnerability and truth. It can help create a non-threatening environment and allow space for real and open conversation.

And this righteousness will bring peace.
    Yes, it will bring quietness and confidence forever.  
                                                                 -Isaiah 32:17 NLT

Remember and Share

Click The Four to learn how to share the Gospel in a clear and simple way

Remember the feelings of loneliness that tightly gripped you and you feared you’d never find a way out of the darkness. Remember the longing that pulled at your heart, and your quest to fill it. Remember when God came to you again and again, His kindness and love allowing you to open and understand how He really sees you.

Look to the faith markers of your path and use them as guiding stones moving forward. Tell them to your teammates, as encouragement that the same God who parted the waters and stopped the sun still speaks to them today.

But then I recall all you have done, O Lord;
    I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.   - Psalm 77:11 NLT

Be yourself. Reflect on God’s goodness and pray that God moves in the hearts of those who mean the most to you. Who knows? By sharing your story, you could be part of changing someone else’s.



-FCA-

Want to read more about sharing your faith? Check out these other FCA articles:

The Great Call to Share Your Faith
It’s a bold and daring invitation: step out of our comfort zone and share the most important message anyone could ever hear. Read now.

Four Fears that Keep You From Sharing Your Faith
What are the fears that keep us from sharing our faith and how we can hold to God's truth about it? Read more.