Being a Witness where you are

If you are in either Anderson or Woodford County school system then you are back inside the walls of public education. You are in the trenches of the largest mission field and I wanted to talk to you about being a missionary to your friends. Now ladies, please forgive me for this illustration, but it fits perfectly. Okay.

He was one of the outstanding place kickers in the National Football League, helping his team win some memorable games with his field goal accuracy. But he had a spiritual hole in his heart. As he tells his story - which he did before tens of thousands of people at a Billy Graham Mission - it was a sudden, debilitating disease that got his attention. He began to be aware how desperately he needed the God who could do what he could never do. He points to the man who was his ball-holder as the one who really showed him Jesus. Of course, when that football is snapped to the holder for that field goal attempt, it's the sure hands of the ball holder that the kicker depends on completely. But this former star, now a highly visible ambassador for Christ in his community, tells insightfully how much his Christian teammate really meant in his life. He explains it this way: "He wasn't just holding the football in his hands, he was holding my eternal future in his hands!"

If you're on Jesus' team, that's the position you're playing for people around you whether you realize it or not. You are, in a sense, holding their eternity in your hands, because you know Jesus and they don't. And if you don't tell them, they probably never will. Which means they have no hope of this life ever making sense, and no hope of heaven when they die.

Many of us just don't realize the amazing position God has given us; a position that gives you the possibility of your life mattering forever and ever. That position is spelled out in II Corinthians 5:18-20, "God ... reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (That's bringing together someone Jesus died for with the Man who died for them.): that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are, therefore, Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."

So that's why you are where you are, doing what you do, knowing who you know - you're there to take those folks in one hand and Jesus in the other hand and bring them together! How are you doing? It's as if we're saying, "Jesus couldn't be here in person, but He put me here to tell you about Him." Your message isn't about your religion compared to their religion. It's about life's most important relationship! Remember, it's a message of reconciliation! A relationship we were created to have, but a relationship we don't have because we've run our own life. A relationship, though, that we can have because of what Jesus did, and it's a relationship you must choose. It's that simple, and it's life-or-death information - eternal life-or-death.

It isn't so much that Jesus is asking you to go out on some witnessing raid of people you don't know. He wants you to do what you already do every day for eternity, by trying to take some of the people you're with all the time to heaven with you.

You may think there's someone more qualified but you're the one who's there, and you're there by God's divine assignment. Don't miss the mission He put you there for! Jesus has placed you in the middle of some people whose eternity depends on them knowing Him, and you are holding their eternity in your hands!