SOULWINNING EXPERIMENT #4: ANSWERING THE “HOW ARE YOU?” QUESTION

 

(“He who wins souls is wise.” Proverbs 11:30 NKJV)

Dear Readers:

I didn’t directly rescue someone from the fire in the last week, but I shared my love of Jesus with various people and I’m not disheartened at all. I plan to move forward in my soulwinning quest.

Recently I had two men I knew fairly well pass away. I lived with one man and his family back in the late 80’s for a couple years while attending college. The other man was my wife’s late husband’s Dad. One thing they both had in common was to openly share their love of Jesus with other people, including with family members, friends, people they met in the community, and others.

I’m taking their lead in my next soulwinning experiment. In it I’m planning to take a specific strategy when I meet people. It’s based on the one thing that most people ask other people. You guessed it . . . “HOW ARE YOU?” I joke with my family every time we’re in the Taco Bell drive-in line. I tell them “I’m 100% certain that the Taco Bell worker will ask over the intercom “How are you?” They’ve been doing it for years.

My plan in the coming week is to take the “How are you?” question to the next level, and really tell them how I am. What’s the point of exchanging pleasantries if we don’t even share the truth? I don’t mean sharing the details if we’re having a horrible, rotten, no good day. I mean doing the following:

I plan to say something like this: “I’m feeling blessed by Jesus”, or “I’m feeling blessed by Jesus, thanks for asking”, or “I’m feeling blessed by Jesus, how are you?” By doing this you’re sharing a meaningful expression of your heartfelt feelings about how you really are.

I believe this simple response can have the effect of starting the person to thinking about their own relationship with Jesus. I also think it might open up opportunities to dialogue in the future about Jesus.

For example, if we meet the same person repeatedly, they’ll know ahead of time how we’re going to respond to the ‘How are you?’ question. It might make them think over and over again about their own relationship with Jesus, and whether this strange person in front of them is sharing something of value for their own lives.

You might think this approach will scare the other person off, or you might feel very uncomfortable sharing in this way. But what do we have to lose? As I used to say to my people trying to get jobs who were reluctant to call, or communicate with an employer repeatedly about the prospect of getting a job. I used to joke, “Will they call the police to arrest you for annoying them?”

We do feel blessed by Jesus, don’t we? Why not share it with others when they ask us the “How are you?” question.

See you next week,

Arlen