Devo series 1: Are you ready?

1 Peter 3:15: “Always be ready to give a reason for the Hope that is in you.”

Are you ready to give a reason for the Hope that is in you? Is there Hope in you right now? Peter tells us that we must always be ready to give a response for our Hope. “Do you really hate people enough to let them go to Hell when you have the gift of eternal life?” Someone told me this, and it hit me hard. Every time we see someone and go along with our day, we are showing them hate, we are keeping the key to heaven to ourselves when we do not know if they have a place in heaven yet. What matters more? Are comfort, friendships, and maybe luxury or sharing the word that God commanded us to give? We are supposed to make disciples of all nations, aren’t we?

I heard a very powerful sermon once and in it the preacher told us a story. In this story he had a friend on his volleyball team and knew he wasn’t doing the best. He was doing drugs and just was not in the best place. He hanged out with this friend a little but never shared the gospel with him. Then his friend died in a car crash. Tears started in the preacher’s eyes as he told us he could of, he should have shared the gospel with him. Are we going to go on with our lives or are we going to speak up? What if one of your friends dies soon, is he/she going to heaven?

How often do you have a fruitful conversation that you get to share Jesus with someone? In our culture we say, “we should not talk about important things around anyone, keep religion and politics out of the conversation.” But aren’t these the two biggest issues? Not bringing up religion means we don’t want someone’s feelings to get hurt or we want to be tolerant, but this is exactly the opposite. We don’t want someone’s feelings to get hurt, so instead we don’t share the way to heaven with them. We want to be tolerant, so we accept their views but to be tolerant you must disagree with them.

If we love our family and friends, we will want to share eternal life with them, wouldn’t we? People change the meaning of tolerance and say that we must agree or accept what they believe. We should have tolerance in our conversation, but love and truth must be above tolerance. If tolerance gets in the way of love and truth, then we are failing. Tolerance is essentially lovingly disagreeing with someone.

What does all this mean? In a conversation about the Bible or God we should love them by sharing eternal life with them, share the truth with them by saying that they will not make it to heaven on their own and they need to trust in Jesus (Romans 6:23), and then we can show tolerance and kindly say I don’t agree with you but I see your point.

Not every conversation is going to convert someone, but aren’t we called to speak up for the truth? If we can just plant a few seeds every day and someone else waters a couple of them, we will have a new harvest of crops.

In Matthew it says that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Are you one of the workers or are you just letting the harvest go out of season? If not, then what are you prioritizing more than sharing eternal life?

Rebel Cry is an organization that wants to equip everyone with knowledge and wisdom on how to do the most important things in life; defend your faith and share the gospel. As a society we have become okay with being shallow in our conversations. We focus on the little things that don’t matter and exclude from our conversations the things that do matter. We must stand up against what is wrong and cry out against it.

We must become rebels against society and fight the good fight. Are you ready to join in this rebellion against the world and join God’s side or do you want to keep living life how you are and not help anyone in a lasting way? By giving someone water you can help them continue to live but by giving them the water of life you can help them live for what matters and live for eternity. The choice is yours, fight the good fight, share the gospel, rebuke and correct the evils of the world, cry out and rebel, or live your comfortable life. What will you choose?