Making The Message Clear

By Brian Mitchell     When the Apostle Paul, was concluding his letter to the Colossians, he asked them to pray for two things. First, He asked them to pray that God would open doors for the message. Second, He asked them to pray that he might proclaim the message clearly.     Those are very good things to be praying for, and as we seek to get back to our mission today, let us pray for open doors and a clear message. Because Here’s the Truth: I don’t care who you are or what talents you feel you do or do not have, every one of us Christians have some good news to share with others. The only question; do we have a desire to share it?     I like the story told of the little boy who greatly concerned his parents. The boy’s parents could not get him to utter a single word. So they took him to a specialist, and after a thorough evaluation, it was determined that the boy had nothing wrong with him physiologically that was keeping him from talking. So the doctor grasped him firmly by the shoulders and gave him a sound shaking, saying, “Why don’t you say something?” The little boy defiantly replied, “Cause I ain’t got nothing to say!”     What about Us? Hopefully, after the last 3 months, that’s not the way we feel about our faith any more. In truth, I know that everyone of us has some great news to tell others about and I choose to believe that we want to tell others about it. Sometimes, however, we are still afraid that we can’t or we shouldn’t. It’s like the story of the preacher who loved to golf.     Unfortunately, it had rained every weekend for a month and the preacher was dying to play a round of golf. So the first sunny day in weeks ended up being a Sunday. So he called some of the leaders of his congregation and told them that he had been called away to an emergency and that they would have to cancel services that Sunday. Realizing that he could not play on a local golf course, he drove two counties away and teed up on a course that sunny Sunday morning.     Meanwhile, God was watching all this from heaven above. So He called an angel and said, “I’ve got a preacher down there who canceled church to play golf. I need you to go and administer an appropriate punishment.” So, the angel went down and as the preacher teed off on a par 3, the angel caused the preacher to hit the best shot of his life and the ball went right in for a hole-in-one. God said to the angel, “You gave him a hole-in-one? What kind of punishment is that?” The angel replied, “Yes, I gave him a hole-in-one. But think about it, who can he tell?”     Sometimes we are just like that preacher in the sense that we’ve got something that we want to share so badly with someone, anyone, but feel at the same time that we can’t tell anyone. Or at least don’t know how to. We have some great news to share—in word and in deed—and there is no reason for us to keep it to ourselves; we have nothing to hide and no reason to be afraid. In fact, there is no reason that we can keep it to ourselves.     What do we need? The same 2 things Paul asked the Colossians to pray for: we need open doors and opportunity for sharing—and again, a lot of those doors will be opened by the lives we lead. Secondly, we need the ability to clearly communicate the good news. In the end, no matter what we do, we have to share the message and we have to do so in a way that people can clearly understand what we are trying to communicate.

- Brian Mitchell serves as a minister with the Jackson Church of Christ in Jackson, MO. He may be contacted through the congregation's website at https://www.jacksonchurchofchrist.net