People listen to operas, watch movies, read novels, and attend plays to get lost in the story.  My son played Pinocchio in the school play (he’s in the red hat).

Personal God Stories as Testimony

In our team meeting last night, we spoke about stories and gathering stories from our congregation.

• How did God work in your life?
• How did you find your faith in Christ?
• Where is God working now in your life?

Each one will be about 3 minutes and we’ll record them for our church webpage.  They will become content that people can share on facebook and twitter and whatever other social networks.

5  different ways to tell your story of God’s activity

In a 2004 article of the Discipleship Journal, author Elizabeth Turnage writes “Told Any Good Stories Lately?”  At the end, the editors have this personal exercise.

Consider answering the questions yourself to find some of the stories of God’s work in your life.

God works in our lives in many ways. Choose one of the following, then write about how you’ve experienced God’s hand in that area of your life.

• A tale of redemption: How have you seen God bring something beautiful out of a hard situation?
• A story of comfort: How have you experienced God’s gentleness and shelter during a painful or difficult season?
• A tale of victory: How has God helped you overcome a weakness?
• A story of provision: Describe a time God met a pressing need—exactly and on time—in His providential way.
• A tale of reconciliation: When have you witnessed God heal a relationship that seemed damaged beyond repair?

Imagine sitting in a coffee shop talking about life with a friend.

The conversation begins to go deep about some personal issue: your friend is confessing a deep sense of remorse over some sin in their life and how they seek forgiveness.

Your friend looks at you and says:

How do I find forgiveness to bring peace to my soul?

The Best Gospel Conversations Are Never Planned

Now this doesn’t happen to me all the time.

But perfect opportunities like this  to share the gospel and point people to Jesus  happen.

It’s never planned ahead.

It’s never organized on my calender.

It is never at a scripted moment (unless one manipulates the conversation).

Rather, opportunities to point people to Jesus are surprise impromptu events in life that catch us off guard.

Are you ready to seize the moment?

Several years ago, this happened to me.   A new acquaintance asked me ”What is the gospel?”

I fumbled the opportunity and made a verbal mess in my answer.

I was not prepared to answer the question, even though I had been to seminary and was a pastor.

Many factors got in the way of a clear and simple answer to the question.

How do we prepare ourselves?

I came across an interesting article, quoting Captain Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of geese.

At a Hero’s Homecoming in Danville, CA, where he lives with his wife and daughters, Captain Sullenberger finally spoke:

“Circumstance determined that it was this experienced crew that was scheduled to fly that particular flight on that particular day,” he told the crowd.

“But I know I can speak for the entire crew when I tell you we were simply doing the job we were trained to do.”

Source: http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2009/01/16/i-knew-chesley-sully-sullenberger-us-air-hero/

Here is the phrase that struck me:  ”We were simply doing the job we were trained to do.”

Training gives us a chance to learn what we need to do when we are put on the spot.

Training gives us an internal calm when surprises catch us.

You might think you know the gospel already since you’ve likely heard it hundreds of times.

But when you have to put words to what you think you know at a moment you are not expecting– you suddenly discover you don’t know.

• You don’t know where to start.
• You don’t know what content to include.
• You don’t know what order to present the claims of the gospel.

You might know all the theology of the gospel, but when given a chance like what happened to me, the reaction is one of disorientation, not one of content.

Personal Evangelism training gives you the place to learn

• A functional outline to conversationally walk through
• A big picture framework

There are plenty of gospel summaries out there.  Each one of these can provide a script that we can use as a “default setting.”  We need to master one so that we can answer questions in a calm, clear, and concise manner.

Even though the disciples didn’t have any formal personal evangelism training, we can increase our confidence for those unexpected moments by taking regular ongoing personal evangelism training.

Personal evangelism training removes alot of the “I don’t know what to say” fear.

Next Steps in your  Personal Evangelism Training:

If you haven’t mastered a gospel outline, choose one from the List of Gospel Presentations and master it.

If you want more personal evangelism training, consider my personal evangelism audio course, a 5 CD set that can be shipped to your house.  It covers topic such as motivation, cooperating with the Holy Spirit in conversations, and testimony development, along with a basic gospel sharing plan.

But as I’ve given many evangelism seminars, particularly in more traditional Protestant denominations, I find that many people don’t know their own story.

If you are wanting to learn about evangelism, I can assume at some point, you became a Christian and a follower of Jesus.

You might have been a dramatic conversion like the Apostle Paul, or a gradual awakening like Timothy.

You might be able to point to a day and time (like walking forward to an altar call, or kneeling alone in your bedroom), or might be able to say “It happened, but I’m not sure when.”

No matter how it happened, you need to know the story of your conversion and know it well so that you can share relevant portions at a moment’s notice.

The purpose of this conversational guide download is to give you some guidelines to

• think,
• remember, and
• see the process

of your conversion experience.

Your conversion did not happen in a vacuum, but rather as the fruit of a process that God used in your life.  If you are not sure what I’m getting at, watch the Macaroni video at:  http://www.evangelismcoach.org/2010/links-in-the-chain-video/

Likewise, the non-Christians you encounter will be in some part of their process of conversion.  Gaining an understanding of your own story will help you see where your conversational partner might be in their journey towards Christ and will release some of the pressure to “get them converted.”

Doing this Personal Testimony Exercise

This may not be easy to fill out in 5 minutes.

Some of these questions are meant to provoke deep thought.

So I suggest you take the time to journal and reflect and ask the Lord to help you remember if it was some time ago.

You’re experience of personal evangelism will be much richer if you can master your own story.

The questions might seem like they overlap. That’s ok.  Sometimes we get insight by answering the same question a different way.  You also might not have answers to some of these.  That’s fine as well.

All of us have unique stories, and if we’ve not thought about our story, this exercise may be a little hard.

Key principles I hope you see

• Your conversion was a process that had a back story to it.
• There were significant moments / events along the way.
• Through the Holy Spirit, God was at work in bringing you to faith, probably before you even realized it.
• You had some restlessness (spiritual thirst) that began your journey to faith.

At the end of the day, I’d like you to know your story of transformation.  You can learn to summarize elements of your story and expand elements when needed.

What people need to hear is

• HOW God has worked in your life to answer your deepest questions, and
• HOW you are experiencing transformation right now.

I’ve learned this often sets up further conversation towards their own journey.

Download Your Personal Testimony Questionnaire Here

English:

Czech (thanks to a volunteer translator):

This is an Adobe PDF format.  You’ll need the latest PDF reader to view it.  You are free to distribute.

If you are having a problem with the download, make sure

• you have the most recent version of Abobe Acrobat Reader.
• most recent browser version.

Then contact me by email or on the Contact us page and I’ll help you get it.

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The book offers

• solid theology of appropriate Bible passages
• specific actions steps one can take after each chapter,
• Questions for personal and group reflection.

Kevin looks at relational evangelism through the lens of a journey process, using the agricultural analogies of

• preparing the soil,
• planting the seed,
• nurturing the seed, and
• harvesting the seed.

What is “organic outreach?”

Here is how he answers that by defining his terms.

It’s organic – “living the kind of life that naturally draws people to Jesus.”  This involves speaking and revealing the presence of a loving God and loving people in a genuine way.

It is outreach – where people live and communicate their faith in a way that lets people know there is a God who loves them and sent his only Son to open the door to a restored and wonderful relationship with them.

It is for ordinary people – everyone, including those who find personal evangelism intimidating or scary.

He writes:

“My desire is that you will find this book to be hope-filled, optimistic, and practical.  I don’t spend much of my time critiquing outreach methods and programs.  . . It’s not a system or a program.  It is a collection of simple and biblical practices that Christians can incorporate into their lives.”

If you’ve been doing a lot of reading in the field of relationship evangelism, you’ll

• recognize most of the favorite passages used in the book,
• enjoy the personal illustrations of those passages
• appreciate the easy read and renewed passion you’ll feel for sharing your faith.

The book has study questions and accountability questions for use in small groups and I think this is where it’s strength is – small group material for beginners.

The One Degree Rule

I think the most important contribution he makes to the discussion on evangelism is in Chapter 4, entitled the 1 degree rule.  What is the level of passion that burns in your heart for those who don’t know Christ?

Here is a video to explain it.

He refers to a the Christian’s personal evangelistic temperature – can be hot, colde, or somewhere in between, but the Christian witness has the responsibility to keep it hot.

The purpose of the scale is to provide for self-examination:  To honestly evaluate yourself and ask “how can I raise my evangelistic temperature by one degree today?”

The issue is not the current number, but the effort you make to raise it by one degree.

Ways to Raise Your Evangelistic Temperature:

Kevin gives us three ways, which many of us will be familiar with:

1. Regular Prayer for non-believers.
2. Regular Proximity unbelievers
3. Regular Personal Testimony – stories of Changed lives.

“How much time do you spend in a normal week with people who are not yet followers of Jesus?  What can you do to increase this amount of time?”

I’ve taught a similar principle in my workshops, and have written about this area before.  It’s refreshing to see it spelled out in a book in a simple manner like what he’s done here.

Order from Amazon: Organic Outreach for Ordinary People: Sharing Good News Naturally

How does the seed grow?

I remember science projects I did in elementary school to make seeds sprout.

We played with the variables of soil, light, water, and even gravity (by using a record player) to see what might happen.

I recall the wonder and marvel that the seeds sprouted.

My children have repeated similar experiments with guandu and papaya seeds, and I got joy at watching their excitement over the shoots peaking out from the soil.

Watching a seed actually sprout and turn into something else provokes awe in my spirit at the great marvel of God’s design.

Scientists can probably describe

• the mechanics of how a seed grows,
• the right elements that contribute to helping a seed spout
• how a seed shoots forth it’s roots
• how genetics help it turn into the right plant,
• how the chemical interactions with water, soil, and light make the seed sprout.

But the inner workings remain a mystery of wonder to me that seeds sprout and change into something beautiful.

Even without my attention, my care, seeds grow once they are activated.

Silently.

Mysteriously.

Over time.

Transforming into what they were designed to become.

The mystery of Christian conversion

As evangelists, we sow the seed of the word, but God makes it grow.

How the individual seed grows in the life of the person who receives it remains the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit.

How did you come to surrender your life to Christ?

Can you remember a day or even a particular moment?  You had come to place in your life where the invitation to follow Christ became irresistible and you surrendered your life.

Or maybe it was more of a gradual awareness and personal ownership.  You grew up surrounded by Christians, in a Christian environment, and somewhere along the way, you owned your own faith.

Either way, your conversion and surrender to Christ was at the end of a quest, a journey, a path of spiritual restlessness and need that led you to see your need for Christ.

A seed had been planted.

The journey began.

Eventually, it led to your conversion.

That mysterious inward journey is the Holy Spirit drawing you faith: “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

That journey is unique

That seed cast by the evangelist or sower fell on the unique soil of your life:

• the circumstances of your life at the time,
• the people of spiritual influence around you,
• your own background, upbringing, and personality.

These elements all make for a totally unique and mysterious process of conversion under the sovereign guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique to each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  There is no on/off conversion switch.

There is a mystery of the journey that we must acknowledge.

Today’s Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for helping me place my faith in You as my Lord and Savior.

I eventually saw my need for You.  Thank You for that drawing work of the Holy Spirit, bringing me to the place where I have found forgiveness, longing, and a peace that passes understanding.

I thank You for the circumstances that led me to surrender my life into the joy of following You, those trials and inner questions that helped me see my need for you.

Thank You for the people who influenced me to follow You: for their conversations with me, their patient answering of my questions, their trustworthy representation of a Christ follower.

I pray for my friends today that you would help the seeds that have been planted in their life to sprout.

Amen.

Today’s Action

Take some time to day to journal about your journey to faith in Christ.

1. What circumstances in your life helped you see your need for Christ?
2. Who were people of significant influence in your journey and what did they do to have that significance?
3. What was in your upbringing and background that helped you see your need for Christ?

Spend some time writing out your answers.

Image Source: Morguefile.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

Matthew 13:44

In contrast to the parable of the fine pearl where the merchant was intentionally looking for the special pearl, this farmer seems to have accidentally discovered something of great value.

He was surprised by joy.

His spiritual blinders were instantly removed and he immediately saw the priceless value in what he found.

Some people come to faith in Christ through an intense searching – the merchant looking for the fine pearl.

Other people might come to faith by a seemingly instant awakening or discovery upon hearing the message for the very first time.

CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy

CS Lewis lost his mother to cancer before he was 10.

He felt bitterness towards God and by 18, he considered Christianity “one myth among many.”

He writes however, that in his hostility towards God, there were influences in his life.  He began reading some Christian authors, and was surrounded by other Christians like JR Tolkien.  He writes:

“I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

There are traps everywhere…. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

As he tells the story, on one occasion during this time he happened to take a bus ride.

When he got on the bus he was an atheist.

When he came to his stop, he got off the bus believing in God’s existence.

Not that Lewis was seeking God. He said he didn’t really want to find him. The revelation about God’s existence was something of a fright to him. He wrote in Surprised by Joy:

“Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.”

There was an awakening that happened in his heart, a discovery of God’s love for him that started his process of searching.  A historian writes that 2 years later, he fully surrendered his heart, mind, and self to Christ.

[Source: CS Lewis history]

He was surprised by joy.  He had found the treasure in the field when he wasn’t really looking for it.

I think of my friend who needs to find new life in Christ

I look at her life and don’t not see any evidence of searching for God. I don’t hear themes of spiritual thirst in her conversation.  In fact, I see a hostility towards God, much like what CS Lewis may have had.

Right now, she is not the merchant looking for the fine pearl.

It is my prayer that she stumbles upon the treasure hidden in the field and is surprised by joy.

When it comes to my friend, I pray for her conversion to happen.  I pray that I will get the opportunity to share the gospel with her.

I pray that she will find the grace that has captured me and experience the presence of God.  I pray that others will share the gospel with her. I want her conversion to be genuine, real, and effective.

I want to know her conversion has been made by the Holy Spirit, not my slick presentation, or her desperate grasping for a lifeline because it might work and she have nothing to loose.

I want my friend to find the treasure in the field and see immediately its amazing worth.

Today’s Prayer

Lord, you know the spiritual condition of the heart within those that I am praying for.

I pray that you would lead some of them to accidentally discover the treasure in the field and that in that instant, their eyes would be open to the priceless message of the gospel.

You are capable of awakening the heart in an instant – may they have the eyes to see their need for you, and be surprised by joy.

Today’s action

Pray through your list of names, one name at a time.

Linger in prayer over them, asking God to show you their spiritual thirst.  If there doesn’t appear to be any, spend some time interceding that they would discover the treasure in the field.

It’s a very short read at only56 pages, but it tells a very powerful story of his life.

He self-published it in hopes of getting the story out.

Freddy admits his addiction to work and things destroyed his marriage, his family, and nearly his own life, but through a series of circumstances, God brought him to a place of faith.

The Principles of Testimony

Pastor Valcarel uses key principles of telling your personal testimony. It follows a basic outline for those who have a conversion experience at a particular point in time.

• My life before Christ
• How I met Christ
• My life since then

Read more:

• Post Modern Evangelism Story
• Personal Testimony Questionarie

Evangelism is a Process

Another key take away from this story is evidence of the process of evangelism in Pastor Valcarcel’s life.

God used circumstances, people of influnence, a few sermons in a church, late night reflections, all to bring him to a place of surrender. It’s a prime example of the links in the chain principle of helping people find faith.

• Links in the Chain Video (Mister, I need God!)
• Links in the Chain of Conversion (how comments from slave girl led to a miracle).

The more I listen to stories of conversions and faith awakenings, the more convinced I have become that people need to see the process of evangelism from the beginning of the seeking journey.

Help others see the evangelism process

As evangelists, we can help people out in their journey to faith, no matter how long we might be in their life.

I yearn for people to come to faith quickly.  There is urgency that drives me to pray, rather than drives me to be obnoxious.

People around Freddy gave him the space to search, and grace to explore and ask questions.  They were present when needed, and helpful when needed.  I’m sure they wanted him to come to faith right away, but God worked to prepare his heart over the course of time.

Now Freddy is a pastor, teaching others to share their faith and helping new people find faith in Christ.

Order your copy here:

Unexpected Turn, An: My Testimony by Pastor Freddy Valcarcel
ISBN: 1-60610-048-3, 52 pages, 6 x 9, English

Freddy is now a pastor of a growing congregation, El Faro de Luz

Iglesia Bautista Faro de Luz, on line at www.elfarodeluz.net

“My father helped me see my need for Jesus and I put my trust in Him.”

“A friend invited me to church, and after a few weeks, I responded to the message.”

“I had a mystical encounter with God.  A few weeks later, I learned I needed to follow Jesus to know this God.”

“I met a group of Christians.  After watching them for a while, I wanted to what they had.”

“A missions team from another country country was doing drama at the park where I was hanging out.  What they said touched my soul.”

“When I was 10, I was laying in bed one night after reading the bible, and I decided I needed to follow Jesus.”

“I talked with a friend about how do I find forgiveness and he told me how it was found in Jesus.”

“I had coffee with a pastor and asked him how do I find unconditional love.  He described the love of God for me and all I wanted to do was to know that love.”

A variety of spiritual journeys

The above list is just a sample of stories of people that I know.

Last night, while leading a bible study on evangelism, I heard 8 different stories of how people came to faith in Jesus.

• An invitation to church
• A message at a camp / conference center.
• A mystical encounter with God
• Restless in the soul that prompted more discussion.

Key events came through contact with family members, with friends, and with random strangers.

Diversity of stories.

Diversity of means.

Diversity of gospel explanations.

Diversity of responses.

With such diversity, how do you do evangelism training?

As I listened to those stories, I saw some themes that give us some guidance in how we might do evangelism training.

1.  Find the spiritual thirst.

Spiritual thirst is that which creates a restlessness in the human heart that drives a person to seek God.

In listening to those stories, there were a variety of expressions of that thirst.

Evangelism Skill: How can we help our members discover what their own spiritual thirst was that led them to seek God?

Evangelism Skill: How can we train others to listen for a person’s spiritual thirst?

2.  Be part of the process of evangelism.

Each story reflected a journey that took months, sometimes years before coming to a place of faith.

Evangelism Skill: How can we help people know their own journeys and become comfortable in talking about God’s work in their life?

Evangelism Skill: How can we train others discern where a person is in the process of their journey to Jesus, as well as discover how to help a person make another step forward?

3.  Significant moments in the process.

Each story had more than one key turning point in the discovery of God.

Each story had more than one significant person that did something impactful or asked one significant key question that cleared up a misconception about God.

It might have been a

• Conversation
• Sermon
• Invitation to a church or event
• Life circumstances
• Late night musings over deep issues.

Evangelism Skill:How can we help our members describe those key moments in their own journey to Christ?

Evangelism Skill: How can we recognize these divine appointments to help a person move one step closer to faith in Christ?

4.  Simple Gospel presentation connected to that thirst.

As we dug into the stories, each person responded to a different message, anchored in the basic elements of the gospel.

The beauty of the Christian gospel is that it appeals to our spiritual thirst.

But each heard a presentation that was structured, clear, and spoke directly to their need.

Evangelism Skill: How can we lead people into remembering what was the presentation that helped them come to faith?  What were the key elements that connected with their spiritual thirst?

Evangelism Skill: How can we help people grow in their confidence to simply explain the gospel that fits the context of a person’s spiritual thirst?

5. The influence of friends and family members.

Each story seemed to have friends or family members play a significant part in the process of evangelism.  A few were “chance” encounters with strangers, but a majority were influenced by people around them.

Evangelism Skill: How can we help our members identify those key people in their own journey to Christ.

Evangelism Skill: How can we intentionally become people of significant spiritual influence for those around us?

Get the Training Seminar

I’ve developed a 6 hour training seminar focused on these issues.

It’s been condensed onto 4 audio CDs and a resource CD that will have the transcript, study guides, conversation notes. Click on the banner below to read more.

The Christian Testimony

Shortly after I became a Christian in the late 80s, I learned a phrase “Your Testimony.”

Your Christian testimony describes

• How you came to start following Christ in a conversion experience,
• The process of your faith in Christ becoming your own.
• The life transformation God worked in your life.
• How you came to recognize your personal need for Jesus.
• How you responded to an invitation or nudging or calling
• Story of how you met Jesus

One story ingredient

A good story would also share your process or the mechanics of how you became a Christian.   What did you do (the mechanics)?

• Pray to receive Jesus?
• Believe?
• Make a commitment?
• Answer an altar call?
• Pray in the middle of the night?

I’ve encountered lots of people that want to know what they need to do.  How does one surrender a life to Jesus?

A second story

But a second story is about God’s current activity in your life.  What is God doing in your life today that still makes the gospel good news?  How has he brought healing, restoration, forgiveness to your life this year?  How has he answered prayer this year?

Telling your story turns the information into experience.

Telling your story shows your experience with God and people may question it, dismiss it, but not argue with it.

My story

I became a Christian while I was a teenager in the late 1980s.

I grew up in an irrelgious home, didn’t attend church.  My family of origin was stable, loving, and clearly middle class.  No trauma, no abuse, no drug use, etc. I lived with might be a typical clean and moral suburban life.

As a teenager, I began to feel a yearning to know God, if God even existed.

The extent of my Christian knowledge was that Jesus was born in December, died in April, and did again every year.

I didn’t even have a Bible.

I discovered the reality of God through an answered prayer.  I won’t take the time to write it out here, but after taking a risk and praying, and then seeing the answer to that prayer a few hours later, was enough to convince me that God was real.

The Lord even spoke to me (though I didn’t hear audible words).

That was enough to convince me that God existed.

But I didn’t know what to do with that.

A few months later, after listening to some people talk about knowing God better through a relationship with Christ, it was simple for me to make the connection:

To know God personally,

I need to start following Jesus.

Therefore, I will.

That evening I made a commitment in my heart that I still live out this day.  That was the extent of my conversion experience.

Two major movements that started with a quest to know who God is: discovery that He existed, and a commitment to follow Jesus.

Other pieces associated with conversion came later, like understanding repentance, beginning to read the Bible, attending church.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve discovered more of God’s faithfulness, the power of the Holy Spirit using me, and the faithfulness of his word.

I can’t really say how my life is dramatically different.  After all, I was only 15.   I wasn’t addicted to anything, no major change in lifestyle.

What was different is that I began a discovery of the love of God found for me in Christ Jesus that has captured me these last 25 years.  That is how my life is different.

Developing Your Testimony

There are two types of story for conversion testimonies:

Your conversion experience

Your gradual acceptance of it as your own (grew up in the faith).

Think about your life before you met the Lord or before you knew that the faith of your parents was now yours.

1. What was going on in your life leading up to your conversion?
2. What problems or needs were you facing at the time?
3. How did your life change after that?
4. What was the spiritual need that propelled you to seek after God?
5. What made the offer of salvation attractive enough to repent?

You may not have had a conversion experience like mine or the Apostle Paul’s.

You may have always grown up knowing that you were a follower of Christ, but perhaps there was a season where you tried to set that faith aside and it didn’t work.  This is how my friend describes owning his own faith.

He grew up in a Christian family, lots of Christian influences, and always remembers having a relationship with Christ.  But in college, he tried to set aside that part of his life and it became a mess.  He saw the descent that he was making and put a stop to it.  He evaluated that experience and decided that life with Christ is much better.

Coaching Corner:

Action 1: If you haven’t done so already, set aside a few moments to think back to how you became a Christian or owned your own faith.  Spend some time journaling your story so that you can get very familiar with it.

The goal is not to tell every aspect of your story every time.  Rather the goal is to get familiar with it so that you can share the appropriate details at the right time.

Action 2: Ask permission of a non-Christian friend to have a listen to your story.  Ask them what they didn’t understand so that you know where you need to clarify.  They may point out some wholes that you need to fill in.

Read more:

• 8 Steps to Use Your Personal Testimony
• The power of personal testimony
• Personal Evangelism Testimony Questionnaire
• Evangelism as Storytelling
• The power of testimony

Note: Over the last few days and into next week, I’ll be sharing some thoughts on postmodernism and evangelism.  To keep the articles readable and short, they are spread out over a few days.  Grab the RSS feed to get new articles automatically.

Faith Like Potatoes

The story is based on the book of the same name about a real-life South African farmer named Angus Buchan.  Buchan accepted Jesus at a moment of crisis and began experiencing miracles, ranging from sudden rain putting out a wildfire to reviving a woman struck by lightning.

(Note: There is a death scene of a child that might be too graphic for some people.)

The Conversion Story

His character is developed from the beginning as the self-made man, broken by anger, rage, failure, and fear.

In one scene, he’s drowning his sorrows in alcohol that he vomits on an acquaintance.  In another, he assaults and punches a driver who cuts him off.

A friend invites his wife to breakfast at a church.

He doesn’t want to go and is angered over the issue of wearing a tie, but he goes at her insistence.

He goes to the breakfast, where a stranger invites him to church on Sunday.

For reasons not explained in the film, he attends church the next day, hears the testimony of someone’s life change by following Jesus, and the pastor gives a simple invitation to surrender one’s life to Jesus.

During that testimony and invitation, flashbacks from Buchan’s childhood are shown, where a missionary is telling the young Buchan about the Lord.

Those seeds of faith from his childhood, the present circumstances in his life, and the working of the Holy Spirit come together in a moment where Buchan responds to the invitation and offers his life to the Lord.

Here is a trailer:

Feed Readers, see the video trailer: Trailer from Faith Like Potatoes

Conversion in the film Flywheel

I saw a similar film last year, Flywheel (see my review) where the central character undergoes a conversion experience that was deeply powerful as well.

The story line reveals the struggles of the main character and all the circumstances that the Holy Spirit uses to bring this man to the place of surrendering his life to Jesus Christ.

The main character is a liar, a cheat, and morally bankrupt.  His marriage is falling apart, bills are stacking up, bank threatening to foreclose, and his own son doesn’t want to be like him.

One night, flipping through the TV channels, he hears a preacher who says the right words that speak deep to his heart.

“You are in this mess because of the decisions you made.”

On top of all other circumstances, this one line hits the man deep in the heart.  He turns off the TV, kneels on the floor, and invites Christ into his life with his own prayer.

The uniqueness of the mystery of Christian Conversion

Different seeds, different circumstances, different personalities, different portrayals of the experience of Christian conversion.

I think of my own conversion experience.

Different seeds planted early in life, different circumstances, situation, and so on.

The Holy Spirit, as the author of the story of my life, wove together the different elements to bring me to a place where I decided to follow Jesus.

In my case, I wanted to know God.

In my search and discovery, I learned that to know God, I needed to start following Jesus.

My conversion experience was driven by a thirst to know who God is.

I started following Jesus so that I could start to know God.

Different story, different need, different life situation.

Neither character, nor myself prayed a “repeat after me” prayer formula.

Their conversion was real, though the action of their responses was entirely different.

• One character stood up and walked forward.
• One character kneels and prays on his own, in his own words.
• I remember saying, “I’m going to follow Jesus.”  I don’t remember praying, because I didn’t know what that was.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique in each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  The act of praying can make an X marks the spot type of surrender, but the prayer itself is not a formula.  (See my thoughts at The Mystery of Christian Conversion).

God is the one who works conversion in the human heart.

As evangelists, preachers, and individuals who call people to start following Jesus, we can offer to pray with them, we can help them pray, but we are to help them respond to what God is doing in their heart.

Praying is one form of response to God’s awakening.

In the coming posts next week, I’ll tie this into:

• Postmodern Evangelism: Find Your Story
• Postmodern Evangelism: Discover Their story.
• Postmodern Evangelism: Connect to God’s story.
  

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