Speak the Truth Boldly

Tom Shrader continues his series on finishing strong by addressing the Christian's responsibility to share the Gospel boldly. Drawing from Romans 1:16, he explains that witnessing is not optional but inevitable for believers, flowing naturally from a life that makes the invisible God visible. He emphasizes that sharing faith requires both demonstrating Christ through our character and speaking truth about Jesus when opportunities arise.

“If you know enough to believe the Gospel, you know enough to share the Gospel.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Tools for Finishing Strong

Recorded: October 31, 2018

Duration: 46 min

Themes: witnessing, boldness, truth, evangelism, courage, gospel, testimony, faithfulness, afraid to share faith, new believer, parent, grandparent, struggling with witnessing, young adult, mentor, feeling intimidated

Scripture: Romans 1:16, Matthew 5:14, Matthew 5:16, John 3, Romans 10, Galatians 5:22-23

Theological Themes: great commission, evangelism, gospel witness, biblical authority, romans, sharing faith, christian testimony, spiritual boldness

Full Transcript

We are working our way through a series that has now titled Tools for Finishing Strong. Just again, make sure we're all on the same page. This is the culmination of a year, year and a half dealing with the topic of aging and realizing that there's a lot out there on that. But what we found is that as we talked to people who had aged out, it was almost too late to cover some of this stuff. Now in one sense, it's never too late to figure out how to finish strong, but it's never too early to start on this.

So I want to try to create a series that literally could be transgenerational. It's something you could do with your kids and your grandkids. My daughters the other day were telling me how they value having all my CDs so they'll be able to hear my voice when I'm dead. I had a new doctor. I went to a new doctor Monday. And I'm not sure, but I think we're now legally married in four states. We're tight. And he tells me we're going to get even closer the next time.

A Series Worth Passing Down

But this is a series that I could give to my girls. My two least favorite holidays are the Fourth of July and Halloween. Fourth of July, all I think of is mosquitoes. And Halloween, I just think of 18-year-old kids begging me for candy. And I hate it. We were joking. We should have a maximum height like the reverse of Disneyland on this.

But my grandson's coming over, and Sandy's out of town. My grandson's coming over, and he passes out candy. And there's an interesting human lesson here. When they're getting the candy, they take it in handfuls. When I gave him the responsibility to pass it out, he gets very tight with it. I mean, a bag of candy will go a long way.

But my rambling point was, I could sit down with him, honestly, at the end of this series and say, "Here, buddy, if I can just tell you something, it's this series. If you get this, you're going to be okay." Even in a world that I really do think is just going to go upside down. You'll be okay. Because here's what you've got to do. You've got to know who you are. Not who Rush says you are, or not who Chris Matthews says you are. You've got to know who you are and what you believe. And then it doesn't take away the pain, but it gives you a compass. You can figure it out.

Building on Biblical Foundation

And so that's what we've done in this. We established the Bible. And this is getting tougher and tougher in the world we live in. This is the final authority. This is the truth. This is what we believe. This is where we go to find our answers.

And then we said, if we know, and this almost makes too much sense, if we know that this is where the truth is, then I need to go here when I'm trying to figure stuff out. And I don't know, and I'm sure some of you want to tell me, but I don't have the energy to talk to you about it, but I don't know where Jesus lands on charter schools. I don't know. Some of you do. I do think I know where He lands on abortion, or on same-sex marriage. Not because I'm trying to deal with the tradition of Jesus, but I think God's spoken on that.

So once I've got that part in place, I've got a baseline. I can start to make decisions. I can start to talk about my life. Then I make decisions that flow out of this. So if God in His Word says, do it, I do it. If He says stop it, I stop it. But what's amazing is there's a lot of area of freedom in there. And so I have to make choices, and we get tense here. People get uncomfortable, and I'm amazed at how I like it where a lot of times God says, just do what you want to do within these parameters. And we want to nail them down.

Two Inseparable Tools

Last week and this week are inseparable, though we separated them for the sake of discussion. If you're here this week and not last week, you're in trouble. Or if you got last week, but not this week, you're in trouble because they go together. Here they are. Last week, make the invisible God visible. This week, speak the truth boldly. And you can't separate them.

Romans 1, verse 16, Paul writes this: "For I'm not ashamed of the Gospel." Now, it's an odd way to start. We would have a Gospel pride t-shirt. We would say it, I guess, in the positive. I'm not ashamed. Why? "It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes."

Real Power vs. Political Power

This whole election, and not that I can't stay away, it's all about power. I got up early this morning. And it's become my Wednesday. I'm finally now, this is week eight, I'm finally into a routine. So I get up at four on Wednesday. And I get my coffee and I watch local news. I used to only watch national news because I didn't want to watch local. The surgeons at St. Joe's are having a pumpkin carving contest. I don't know. I don't want to know. And one guy was doing it with a robotic surgeon.

If you watch the local news, somebody's spending a bazillion dollars on this election. It's like everything. Follow the money. Follow the power. I want power. If you want real power, Paul says, here it is. It's the power of God. It's the power of God for salvation.

He says, I'm not ashamed of it. And I think he'd say that because I've been beaten. I've been imprisoned. I've been embarrassed. I've been ridiculed. I've been mocked. I've been attacked. I'm not ashamed of it. Why? It's the power of salvation. Deliverance.

The Power of the Gospel

I just listed three things. It moves me from death to life, from darkness to light, and from danger to protection. My past is gone. I'm forgiven. The penalty's paid. I live in a present of power. And my future's in the presence of God. And that's not just wishful thinking. That's the reality.

And again, I know I reference this stuff all the time, but it's the world I live in. I'm in two different doctor's offices this week. Now, I'm going to tell you something about doctor's offices. They're filled with sick people. And it sounds obvious, but when you hang around

long enough, I'm in one doctor's office a couple months ago. There's five of us in there. Four of them are asleep. And if you wake them up, you'll say, "How are you doing?" And they'll go, "My PSA's 13. My blood pressure's 170."

If you live in that world long enough, you want relief, and the ultimate relief is absent from the body, present with the Lord. And Paul says that's salvation, deliverance. I find it in the gospel. And it's for, Paul says in these words, everyone.

Now, in this room, here's my conviction and suspicion. In this room, the majority of the population has responded to the gospel. We know what it is. What this is all about, and I think I'm convinced of this: the Christian life. I stumbled onto this phrase four or five weeks ago. We believe in God, but to live we need to believe God. I believe in Him.

The Power of the Gospel in Action

We had one of my favorite moments in church two weeks ago. It's baptisms, and I can become a crotchety, old, cynical man about everything, including faith. But that baptism, you see these faces. The way we do baptism now, it's videoed onto the screen, but there's music playing, so you don't hear the testimony, but you see it. And you see these faces, and they're smiling, and they're fresh.

There was one—I don't even know the term anymore: girl, lady, woman—but I would guess she was about 22, and she had this great smile. I think Paul was baptizing her, and he's talking, and she's shaking her head, and the tears are pouring down her face, and it was so sweet. Paul says, "That's the power, that's the gospel."

Now what? That's not the end, that's the beginning. Now, I'm on a team, I'm in an army, I'm part of God's army. And to execute the responsibility, the job, the privilege I have, I need to make the invisible God visible and then speak the truth boldly.

Making the Invisible God Visible

We started last week in Matthew 5:14: "You're the light of the world, you're the salt of the earth." Matthew 5:16: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." So I make the invisible God visible. They see something different about you, something unique about you, something special. Not—this is so important—not odd. They see something different.

What do they see? Well, it's not that they see Bible study or church. They see all that, but what they ultimately see is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Now is that what they see? And you'll have to do a little self-exam here.

If I talk to the people in your neighborhood, the ones at the gym, the people at Costco, the people that you work with, your family, your friends, do they see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control? I watch a lot of television, and one of the things I do is I watch a lot of it muted. Not because I don't care what they say, but I want to see how they say it. And watch them.

Go to—if you're on DirecTV, if you're not, you need to really get saved and move to DirecTV—but if you're on DirecTV, go to the 360, that's Fox. You hit the weather channel, then you hit the religious channel. And pick out somebody on there that's preaching the gospel and mute it, and watch what they say. And they look so mad, so angry. I want to see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

The Need to Speak Truth

So what Jesus says in Matthew 5, His words: "Let your light shine in such a way that people see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Let me ask you this: how are they going to know to glorify your Father? The only way they're going to know is if you tell them. They won't go there naturally. If they see your good works, their tendency is going to be to glorify you. "You're a good gal. You're a great guy. You're a great person."

This new doctor I had on Monday, I'm going to see him way out. I had no idea it was this far out. He was east, I mean, it's halfway between here and Albuquerque. First of all, there's five numbers in the address, and that should have told me something: 21321 East Ocotillo in Queen Creek. I mean, you just go and go and go.

And I went in, and I did my work. I looked on the website. He went to medical school in Wisconsin. So I came in, and I'm sitting in this little room with "Best Doctors in the Country," not "Best Doctor in Phoenix." So I'm thinking, I wonder what that cost him to get that printed up.

A Personal Encounter

And he came in, and he had this kind of weird look. It was the medical look. It was self-assurance, but still a little bit of, enough of a smile, and he was fact-finding. He's got my chart. I said, "This is complicated." I said, "You know, I keep hearing that, but let's just do it." So we go through it, and we're all done. And he said, "All right, we got some more work to do. Let's set an appointment." I said, "Okay."

And then I said, "I see you went to the University of Wisconsin Medical School." He said, "Yeah." I said, "Are you from the Midwest?" And he said, "Yeah, outside Milwaukee." Well, I'm a sucker for Midwest people. They're the best people on the whole planet. I just, they just are. And he changed. And I said, "Are you a football fan?" And he said, "Yeah." We're talking about Wisconsin. We're talking about golf. He was a terrific guy.

He changed. He went from doctor to human. And I attribute it to him being from outside Milwaukee. Now, he may be a believer. I don't know. But without him saying it, I'm going to ascribe his politeness, his kindness, joy, to Midwest.

The Danger of Separation

I need to make the invisible God visible and then speak the truth boldly. If I separate these, I have a problem. If I make the invisible God visible, but I don't speak the truth boldly, I'm a coward. If I speak the truth boldly, but I haven't made the invisible God visible, I'm going

to be a hypocrite. So I'm going to give you three examples. Two of them, I'm in it, and they're bad examples. And then one, I'm not in it, and it's the good one. And I want to illustrate each point.

Making God Visible Without Speaking Truth

In the first one, I've made the invisible God visible. So I've got a guy down. He's visiting. He's thinking of moving here from Iowa. And so he is with us for three or four days. It's the night before he's going to leave. And we're having dinner.

Salad comes, and he says, "You know, there's just something different about you." We went to kindergarten together, grade school, high school. First beer I ever drank was with him, Ham's Beer. We did a lot of stuff together. He said, "You're different." I said, "Well, I've lost a little weight."

Then the entree came, and he said, "There's something different about you." And I said, "Well, a little older. Older, a little grayer, you know, one more wrinkle." Then the dessert came, cheesecake. And for the third time, he said, "There's something different about you." And I looked him right in the eye, and I said, "Living in Arizona really agrees with me."

My third denial. I heard audible, "er, er, er, er," in the back room. But I want you to see what happened there. I had created the thirst. I don't mean I, but you know, the Holy Spirit working in me, all of that stuff. But it's time for the payoff pitch, and I don't deliver. I made the invisible God visible, didn't speak the truth, but only a coward.

Speaking Truth Without Making God Visible

Now, the other side, I speak the truth boldly, but I made the invisible God visible. I got saved in March of 1980. So this is about June of 1980. And I'm with a buddy, and we decide we're going to take Friday off and go to Prescott Downs, the racetrack, horse racing. And I just read in the paper that it's a quarter hot dog dime beer. Well, it's horse racing, and I'm a bit of a nutrition fanatic, so I figure this is a perfect combination. We were way ahead of our time.

And our admin hears us. She said, "Can I go with you guys?" And she's a great gal, by the way. And I said, "Sure, you can drive," because somebody's going to have to drive, because I know what's going to happen. Dime beer is almost irresistible.

So we are there all day, and we got a quarter hot dog and dime beer. We're coming out of Prescott, and in those days, the last thing on the way out was a Circle K. So I said, "Marianne, let's stop at Circle K. We better get some trail juice, because you don't know what can happen on the way down." So we get some beer. We drink all the way back. I'm in the back seat. They're in the front seat. We get to Dunlap and the freeway. And I said, "Jesus Christ has changed my life." And the guy that's in the passenger seat turns around and says, "You look like the same effing drunk to me."

It was devastating. Obviously, I can remember to this day. Now, I'd spoken the truth boldly, but I hadn't made the invisible God visible, so I sound like a hypocrite.

Learning From Spiritual Crisis

It was my first spiritual crisis. I called Larry Wright, and I said, it was Friday. I said, "We need to meet." And he said, "Well, we meet every Tuesday." I said, "Larry, I'm not going to make it till Tuesday. I'm falling apart here." He said, "You'll be fine." A little tough love there.

So we get together Tuesday morning, 6 o'clock, and I tell him what happens. And he just started laughing. He said, "That's really a good story." And here's what he said. He said, "You're in a moment where you're going to find out one of two things. Either you're a hypocrite or you're a sinner saved by grace." And then I had to ask him to tell me what all that means. But you see what happened is that, I mean, that pretty graphically illustrates it.

The Right Way: Making God Visible and Speaking Truth

The third illustration is a guy I used to work with. And some of you may know him, so I'm not going to give you his name. But he's just a pompous, arrogant kind of guy. And he gets saved. His wife leaves him. It's all falling apart. He's getting cancer. He's in the hospital dying.

And a friend of ours, a mutual friend, went to visit him. And we're talking afterwards. And I said, "How'd it go?" He said, "It's unbelievable. This guy has been through a divorce and a sickness. They told him he's going to die soon." And I said to him, the guy speaking, I said to our friend, "You're amazingly strong." And he said, "No, it's the Jesus in me."

See what happened there? He made the invisible God visible. And then when the guy said, "You're unbelievable," he said, "No, my God is."

Being a Witness: Personal Knowledge, Not Perfect Answers

You've heard the term, we're a witness. Here's how Webster defines a witness. It's to attest to a fact or to have personal knowledge of something. We get all hung up—and it was easy for me because I tend to be lazy—we get all hung up on having all these answers. And most often, the most effective answer is, "I don't know."

I don't know how this happened. It's the blind man who's healed, who his friends begin to ask him, he says, "I don't know. I was blind. Now I can see. That's all I can tell you." Can't explain the doctrines of grace to you. Can't talk about what happens to people that never hear. I don't know. I was blind, and now I see.

So I want to put a little pressure on you. If you know enough to believe the Gospel, you know enough to share the Gospel. Now that's going to change over time. Because over time, you're going to know more. And I'm not anti-intellectual. But it can almost get in the way. You know so much that you start to answer questions that nobody's asking. They don't want to know about all this stuff and how the cosmos came together. I don't know. And you don't either. All I know is He said, "Let there be light," and there's light. That's all I know. I was blind, and now I see.

The Inevitability of Witness

Now grab this. This is not optional. Nor is it mandatory. It's inevitable. You are

a witness right now. You may be lousy, but you're a witness right now. It's like legacy. You don't have to build one. You're building one. If you die today, you've got a legacy, whether you set out to do it or not. This is who you are. This is what you're about.

Witnessing isn't optional. It's not mandatory. It's inevitable. And the minute you start to distinguish yourself by carrying a Bible or going to a Bible study or going to church, I'm going to put more pressure on you. Everybody's going to watch you, and they're going to judge you, and they're going to judge you more harshly than you judge yourself.

What's amazing in this is, this is God's plan. When Edwin Gibbon wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire about the expansion of the Christian faith, he wrote this, and I quote, "It became the most sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and neighbors the blessing he received." The blessing he received. How did this thing grow? One person at a time. One person sharing.

The Power of Informal Witnesses

Justice, the early Christian historian, wrote this: "The feat of Christianity was accomplished by means of informal missionaries." That's just you.

I read a book this summer called Bad Blood. Have any of you read that book? It's absolutely one of the most enjoyable, intriguing books that I've ever read. And the other night, Santa and I were talking to somebody, and I started on Bad Blood. And when we were done, she said, "You've got to let this go. Nobody wants to hear you ramble about this book." And I said, "I doubt that's true, but I do need to let it go."

But when somebody says to me, "What are you reading?" I'll say to them, "What are you reading?" When it gets to that, I just launch on this book. Nobody told me to do it. I don't know the author. I don't know anything. I just enjoyed the book. Think about this. It's not a book that you enjoyed. It's an act that changed your life.

What's new? "Jesus Saved Me" is new. That's much more compelling than Bad Blood, which by the way, you should read, because it's really good. This book is really good. It just flows out of you. If you go and see a movie, and you really like the movie, you just tell your friends, "I went and saw this movie." "I ate at this place." It just begins to happen. You begin to proclaim the truth. You make the invisible God visible.

Recognizing the Open Doors

So here you go. Somebody's going to say to you, "Tell me about Jesus." Now, you need to be sharp enough, sensitive enough to hear how they say it. Because they may not know to say that. So they may say something like this: "Your marriage is different than my marriage. Why is that?" "Your kids seem as goofy as mine, but you seem to handle it different." "You just got that report from the doctor. That would devastate me. How do you handle that?"

You need to say, "Okay, here it goes." You know it. You need to say it's Jesus. I make the invisible God visible. I speak the truth boldly. Why wouldn't I do that? I'm sure there's somebody here. But I can't imagine you just heard that and you don't go, "That's right. Why wouldn't I do that?"

When We Don't Care

Let me give you a couple of things to think about. One of the reasons you wouldn't do that is because you don't care. Movies, at least it's my experience on TV, the movies loop. Like one of the movies I love is In Line of Fire. I love that movie. And you won't see it for six months, and then it'll loop like every day. A couple of weeks ago, looping through the movies was The Sixth Sense.

So remember that? That's the little kid and the tagline in there where he says, "I see dead people." Well, if you're a believer and you go to Chandler Mall, you should be walking through there going, "I see dead people all around you." Now, I don't know the appropriate way to deal with that, but I know I'm supposed to deal with it. And I'm not talking about building a scenario that's like climbing Mount Everest. I'm not saying that. I'm just talking about as you go.

Witnessing Is Every Christian's Job

James Montgomery Boyce was writing about John the Baptist, and he wrote this: "I suppose the greatest mistake a person can make as he reads about the witness of John the Baptist is to think that John is somehow peculiar. In other words, he's doing something unique. But that is an error and a serious one. Witnessing is every Christian's job. If we're to witness for Jesus, we must forget about ourselves and we must first think about the other person, their need for Jesus."

That's contrary to human nature. I'm by nature, "What about me?" I mean, you'll get a perfect illustration tonight. Ding dong, six kids there. They either push the littlest one to the front so you get the cute factor which opens up the floodgates of candy for all of them. Or they leave the little kid in the back. And the kid's back there going, "What about me?" That's my instinct. What about me? What about me?

If you're going to share the Gospel, you're going to have to think, "What about you?" This whole political thing, the whole season. Imagine, it's impossible, imagine if a candidate said, "Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country." That's not going to sell today. "Ask me what I can do for you. Ask me how much health care I can give you. How much college I can give you. How much social security I can give you."

I got my new Medicare card yesterday. Right there, baby, it's already laminated. I don't want you messing with this. It's not the young college kids who are greedy, it's everybody.

The Heart of the Messenger

If I'm going to share, I'm going to have to say what John the Baptist said: "He must increase, I must decrease." And that's the heart of the messenger. It's a humble heart. I'm going to have to humble myself. And I feel so hypocritical saying it because I'm really guilty of it, I need to expunge personal pronouns from my conversation. I need to get rid of "I," and "me," and "my." Other than to say, "I'm sorry, my fault." "What can I do for you?"

When Sandy goes out of town, I don't mind being alone a little bit, but one of the great things about her going out of town is she leaves me cards. She's taking a pottery class now. We've got more pots than pottery—we've got pots everywhere. They're unbelievable, and I love watching her make them. But she's making these cards.

The fact of where she leaves them is a commentary more on me than on her. There'll be a card right under the channel flipper. There'll be one right inside the coffee maker because the first thing I want to do is wake up, and that's not fast enough. Then there'll be one usually somewhere over behind my hygiene products that she knows I'm going through every day. For sure, she'll put one by the daily medicine.

She has to make these and cut them out. There was one that said, "Don't open until today." So the first thing I did this morning when I got up was open the card. It's handcrafted with goblins and pumpkins—it's Happy Halloween. It's her taking the time. It's not much in terms of money, but I know she took the time and, for those moments, suspended her self-preservation and thought about me. The gospel is that.

The Heart Behind the Message

That's the heart of the messenger. The message is Jesus died on the cross and He rose from the dead. If you don't believe that, you aren't saved. I mean, that's simple. That's what Paul says in Romans 10: believe that He died and He rose from the dead.

So if you're sitting with somebody and they don't believe He rose from the dead, you don't have to grapple with whether they're a believer or not. This is what the gospel is. It's John 3: I must be born again. Somebody says, "Well, I don't like that." Well, I don't know whether you like it or not, but I know that it's true.

Your Job Is Complete When You Speak Truth

Let me slam all this together and shake it up real quick. I make the invisible God visible. I speak the truth boldly. Your job, at that point, is pretty much done. You are not designed to be a soul winner. Your job is not to convert somebody. Only God can do that.

I can't change somebody's heart. I can't change their mind. I can't argue them into the kingdom. If the Spirit of God doesn't open their eyes, then they're not going to respond.

Here's my really simple illustration. Let's say you're a couple, husband and wife. You go out for dinner with another couple. You start talking—you, the guy, start talking to the other guy. The gal starts talking to the gal. Independent conversations. The guy begins to talk to the guy and ends up talking about Jesus. He tells him about Jesus and the guy says, "Ah, no thanks." The gal talks to the gal and ends up talking about Jesus and she receives Christ.

Who is God happier with? The guy who shared and he didn't respond or the gal who shared and she responded? The answer is, He's equally happy with both because you did what God's called you to do. You've proclaimed the truth. You've come to that person and you've shared what God's done.

Don't Carry the Wrong Burden

How they respond—and this sounds weird, I guess—but how they respond is between them and God. I'm not the Holy Spirit. A long time ago, I just realized I can't live under that much pressure. If you think the person across the table's salvation depends upon you accurately articulating and answering every question, you're going to drive yourself nuts and you're going to, most likely, compromise the truth because you want to get it so they can get it down.

You're just going to take this burden on that's not your burden. You can't fix it. That's between them and God.

Witnessing Doesn't Stop with Age

Let me put it in context. As you age, you don't age out of this responsibility. Now, you may be swimming in a smaller pool, but what I've noticed is it's almost a better opportunity to witness.

I have a nurse that comes to my house every week. She comes on Tuesday, so she was there yesterday. I said to her, "I'm your favorite patient, aren't I?" That's my goal—to be patient of the year with every doctor that I have. She said, "You know what, Tom, it's my favorite place to come." Well, that's different than what I asked, but Savannah sees me.

I'm not with a group of 100 people. I'm one on one, but I have an opportunity. She'll just say, "How do you get through all this?" She's got a file like this. I said, "Savannah, here's my story." Two weeks ago, she said, "You need to shave today. Don't you do your thing tomorrow? You need to clean up. You don't look too good." Scraggly was the word she used.

You see what I'm saying? You don't age out of this. In fact, it becomes almost easier when you're laying there with a catheter and tubes and somehow you're smiling or somehow they see it in your family. It opens up. Inevitably, they want to know, "What do you do?"

For me, it's easy. I go, "Well, here's what I do. Here's what I did." That interests you. "What's your background?" Then it starts a discussion. You don't age out of this. Don't cut yourself slack here. Like I said, I think it's easier.

Looking Ahead

I'm living this. Next week, we are in my sweet spot. Next week is my go-to, number one—if I get a chance to talk about something other than the Gospel, it's next week's topic. It's right there. I think, my own view, it's the missing ingredient in most Christians' life. So you would be an absolute fool to not be here next week.

Let's pray. Father, thank You for this. Thank You for what You do in our life. Thank You for loving us and saving us. We pray that to You. In Christ's name, Amen. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.