Share Your Life | Share the Gospel
Serving as a pastor overseas, I get asked the same question over and over again, whether I’m in Eastern Europe or visiting the states. “What is it you do all day?” The answer is simple, if not easy. The reality is my life and work in Eastern Europe is almost exactly the same as it was in America. I pray a lot, I study and teach Scripture, and I spend a significant amount of time with a small group of men and women, doing my best to show them that following Jesus is the answer to all the problems in their lives. And none of what I do is original to myself; what I hope my disciples learn from me is simply what I’ve learned through other brothers and sisters.
Everything I have to offer others I learned through imitating the Christians I most love, admire, and aspire to be. There’s a lot of ways to explain what that looks like, but I think Paul gives us the best explanation in 1 Thessalonians 2:8: “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” I love the simplicity of this verse; it doesn’t require a lot of deep theology or thought. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy had so much love for the church in Thessalonica that they were willing to share everything with them: the gospel of God and their own selves.
If you want to, you can share the gospel with a lot of people; it doesn’t take knowing them well (if at all). We can share the gospel on the street with strangers, preach to thousands at a time, post on social media or hand out pamphlets. That’s not true when it comes to sharing our lives; it’s impossible to share our lives the same way we share the gospel. It doesn’t matter if you’re introverted or extroverted, if you’re a full-time ministry worker or work a 9 to 5 job, or if you’re married with a big family or single with roommates. All of us only have so much capacity for intimate relationships with whom we share everything.
When I think of Paul in Thessalonica, or Jesus with his 12 disciples, or the men and women that massively shaped my life and faith, there’s a basic principle I think we often miss in our (good) desire to reach as many as possible: If you want to be truly effective in growing the Kingdom of God and if you truly want to make an impact on others’ lives, share the gospel and share your life with a few people at a time.
That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t empower and anoint some people to have huge impact in other ways. But the primary way that the Kingdom of God grows is when each of us takes responsibility to share everything we’ve got with a few people at a time.
That might sound odd to you if you (or your church) have a different definition or approach for discipleship. Often our aspiration for growth and our zeal to see others come to know Jesus cause us to move too fast and stretch ourselves too thin to truly be effective in discipling and changing others.
“For most of us, trusting and loving Jesus usually starts with trusting and loving a Christian.”
Sharing both the gospel and our lives with others doesn’t involve social media or online resources at all. And it means more than 1-hour coffee meet ups every week or two where we check-in and manage somebody’s sin struggles. It isn’t holding back and not sharing the difficulties, struggles, sins, and insecurities in our lives, and it certainly isn’t sharing a carefully crafted and cultivated image of who we are. If that’s what sharing your life with others means to you, I’m betting your discipleship, your friendships, and your community feel really dull, lifeless, and ineffective.
Rather, when we share both the gospel and our life with others, transformation happens. For most of us, trusting and loving Jesus usually starts with trusting and loving a Christian, and that happens when we share the gospel and we share our life for years at a time. That’s my story. Men and women who for no other reason than their love of Jesus and love of others freely shared everything they had with me, not just the good news of Jesus but their lives, their homes, their food, their friendship, their time, and their secrets. I am who I am and I do what I do because I’ve learned to imitate them as they imitate Christ.
Of course, intimately sharing your life with others comes with a cost. It’s slow. In my experience, this sort of discipleship takes a minimum of three years before change is evident. That kind of pace will both convict us of sin and grow fruit in us in ways that preaching, street evangelism, and social media posts never do. It takes our money, our time, and our emotional energy. We lose all our privacy and all our secrets when we willingly share the depth of our lives with others. But here’s our hope: We find no greater joy in life than watching our disciples walk in truth (3 John 4).
Nothing has grown joy, patience, self-sacrifice, prayer, and reliance on Jesus more in my life than prioritizing a few people and sharing everything I’ve got with them, hoping that through our friendship they learn more and more what it means to love Jesus and love their neighbor. That sounds like an impossible and futile task; but that’s how God grows us, grows others, and grows his kingdom! Christians sharing and spending everything we’ve got for the sake of others’ souls. That’s our charge, that’s our invitation, and that’s our hope: through sharing both the gospel and our lives, we find no greater joy in life than watching Jesus grow his kingdom in and through the lives of our disciples.