What Do We Share?

This past Tuesday was my birthday. It was an interesting one because it was the first one since my mom passed away. We actually shared the same birthday, so this year was a little different for me. Despite this glaring absence, it was still a very nice birthday.

Recently, our church has started “Guitar Club” to teach some of our students how to play the guitar.

This past week Guitar Club was on my birthday, and one of the families decided to surprise me by singing Happy Birthday.

The mother came in with her four boys, and clearly this is something they had talked about ahead of time, and began singing.

The problem was two of the boys were still coming down the hallway, one of the others clearly forgot what they were supposed to be doing, and the other was actually singing along with the mother.

The mother also asked one of her boys to try and strum something on the guitar for musical accompaniment, which was met with an interesting guitar solo…

We all laughed, and I thanked them for their attempt.

I am fairly close with this family, so we all appreciated the joke, especially since I have talked to the boys about starting our own mariachi band at the Mexican Restaurant down the street when we get better at the guitar.

After Guitar Club, we were talking about the botched Happy Birthday attempt, and I asked them if they had ever seen the 1999 video of Patty LaBelle singing “This Christmas” at the National Christmas Tree Lighting in Washington, D.C.

This of course led to us watching the video and laughing hysterically, except our minister of music – who was horrified at the idea of this happening to her or anyone else.

We watched Patty LaBelle as she pushed through the song despite not knowing the words, the cue cards being in the wrong order, and her background singers not showing up to sing.

I told them the story of how my friend, Joel, had introduced me to this video and how much fun we had watching it and retelling the story to just about everyone we meet.

I told them how I shared this video with people at my last church and how much fun we had with it, and how every time we hear the song we think of this video and text each other about it.

I love to tell this story and share this video with people.

In this day and age with social media and the internet and cell phones it is so easy to pass all kinds of information to other people.

It makes me think, “what do I share with other people?”

I can share videos, articles, social media messages, memes, gifs, emojis, and anything else I think of, but many of us shrink at the idea of sharing our faith with people.

And I am not talking about liking a Bible verse on someone’s page or watching a Christian music video online.

I am talking about actually talking to people, verbally or electronically, about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

How God has created us to be in a relationship with Him. How our sin has caused a division between us and God. How our sin problem cannot be removed or healed or fixed by being good enough or doing good deeds.

How Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the price for our sin – to reconcile us to Him. How that act of Jesus opens the door for every single person who believes and puts their faith and trust in Jesus alone to have eternal life.

How life with Jesus starts now and last forever – it is not just something to hope for but something that can change our life right now.

It doesn’t mean life is easier. It means we have the God of the universe walking next to us to help us, guides us, and encourage us along the way.

Psalm 66 verse 16 says, “Come and hear, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me.”

We love to tell stories and share information with people all the time. I encourage you all this week to share the story of Jesus and what He has done for you with someone this week.

Love God. Love others. Tell others about God.

Anyway, I was just thinking…