One of the most effective ways for us to be the “salt of the earth” is for us to bring the God conversation to our friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors. It is noteworthy that many of the gifts of the Spirit are verbal and designed as essential components of God’s conversation with the world through us.
For the conversation to be meaningful it is essential for the communicators to understand their audience. As the “salt of the earth” we seek to understand the mind and heart of those with whom we share.
In Times Like These
We Get It: Understanding our Audience
Previously we studied four components of “In Times Like These: Understanding Your Role in the World.”
1. Get it.
2. Salt it.
3. Don’t can it.
4. Don’t refrigerate it.
Today’s conversation is an invitation to further consider the components of “Get it.”
Previously we conversed about the possibility that “influencing the God conversation may be the most powerful way that we are the salt of the earth.”
We get (understand) the importance of understanding our audience’s journey to faith in Jesus as Lord.
Everts and Schaupp (I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus) map out the spiritual journey in phases:
1. Distrust to trust – shift to trust a Christian
2. Complacent to Curious – the shift of spiritual thirst.
3. Closed to change to open to change – hardest threshold to cross (personal life)
4. From Meandering to Seeking – the shift to intentional pursuit of God
5. The actual conversion to the Kingdom of God – the shift to surrender
What is happening inside the person I am influencing and what is my role in their spiritual journey?
In Stetzer’s “Evangelism Journey” we learn that our audience is journeying through misconception or rebellion to a place of faith in Jesus for salvation.
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For what and whom are you most thankful?
Consider the Apostle Peter’s message through the lens of The Evangelism Journey Acts 2:14-41.
1. Did the audience have misconceptions about God or rebellion to him?
2. Did the audience have misconceptions about Jesus or rebellion to him? 2:36
3. What stirred the interest in the audience to consider their misconceptions and rebellions? Acts 2:4, 11-12
4. Peter clarified their misconceptions and they reconsidered their rebellions and quickly came to being (2:37) “cut to the heart.” What would be similar in your ministry today?
5. What, in this passage, are the two evidences that the audience’s journey reached regeneration and conversion? 2:41