"Share your Story"(Luke 15:11-24)

Luke 15:11-24

 

God is blessing us to be a blessing to others. To bless others, we can use B.L.E.S.S..

 

·         Begin with prayer

·         Listen with care

·         Eat together

·         Serve with love

·         Share your story

 

These days more and more people are becoming depressed and anxious. Many church members have stopped coming to church and just watch online services. Church is being shifted to the side when really our relationship with God needs to be in the center.

 

Begin with prayer

OEM church members are being encouraged to reach out to those that God puts on their hearts. After we identify those people that God wants us to be involved with, we can pray for them. Jesus led a prayerful life and started his day with prayer and constantly prayed for others.

 

Listen with care

Jesus asked many questions and listened intently to what people were experiencing and thinking. Jesus listened and this allowed people to feel valuable and heard. We can do the same by taking the time to listen. Too often we want to give advice or our opinions, but it is so important to really listen to what people have to say to make a genuine connection with that person.

 

Eat together

We can also be a blessing to eat together. Zacchaeus ate with Jesus, and this brought about the occasion for Zacchaeus to share his thoughts, feelings and dreams with Jesus. During this meal, he realized how much he needs to follow Jesus as his savior. We don't need to convert person, but we can bless people with our time of fellowship. God can use us to encourage others.

 

Serve with love

Committing time and resources to serving people seems hard, but If we are prayerful and intentional, it is not difficult to be a blessing. Jesus taught us this through example and He relied on God to supply His needs to serve others with love.

 

Share your story

The story of the prodigal son gives a framework to share your story. The prodigal son cannot wait for his inheritance and asks his father to pretend the father is dead. The prodigal son squanders his wealth and later comes to his senses and returns to the father. The father accepts the son and later has to correct the older son.

 

To share our story, it is good to look at three chapters in our life. We need to look at our lives before Christ, when we accepted Christ and our life after accepting Christ. It will follow this pattern.

 

1.       I was lost.

2.       I was found.

3.       I have grown.

  

We need to think about how we are lost. Going back to the prodigal son story, we can see ourselves as one of the two lost sons.  One son wastes his life because he wants things and rejects God. The other son does everything God tells them, but he is focused on the rules and how good he is. Both are lost, but in different ways. If we do not know we are lost, how can we find the right path?  Knowing that you are lost and need to be saved is the first step to salvation. We must also tell people how we were lost, so they can understand what God has done in our lives and saved us because we are special. The shepherd went out to find the one sheep even though the 99 sheep were protected. This applies to us and others who are lost.

 

The father saw that the son was returning before the son saw the father coming. For every step the son took, the father took ten. Our God is one that embraces us, who runs to us who waits for us to make the first step to return to them. This is the God that we serve. This is the God who blesses us when we are found with robes and rings.

 

Why does God put the robe of honor on you? Because Jesus was stripped naked, so that we may be honored. Why does God put a ring on our fingers? Because Jesus called out, "my God" and not, "my father" so we could have an inheritance from God. Being found brings a blessing of grace that we do not deserve.

 

God will use you to share the good news. Therefore, God blesses you in Jesus Christ so that we can bless others.

 

So, let us pray for two people and share our blessings with them. We will find that we will become more generous and find more surprises if we commit to to blessing others.