I love it when someone asks me a question about how I came to faith in Christ, that is, my journey to faith.
That kind of curiosity is an interest to hear my faith story.
Asking me to tell you my faith journey is your desire to understand who I am, and what makes me so committed to following Jesus.
A few days ago, I sat outside a meeting hall to enjoy a cool evening. I had taken my son to a meeting he needed to attend.
To pass the time, I stood outside and had a conversation with another father who sat in his luxury SUV. We talked with me through the open window. The crisp evening air and light breeze made for a wonderful conversational setting.
As we talked, the conversation took a personal shift.
Tell me your story
My friend asked me to tell my story of how I decided to become a preacher of the gospel versus an architect or some other profession.
His invitation to me was a chance to tell the story of how I discovered God’s grace and how I came to faith.
It was the chance to talk about how I discovered God’s leading and how that got refined over the past twenty years.
I had been praying for a chance to share my faith with my friend, and this gave me a chance to tell one of my formative stories.
Standing there next to his car, I began to tell my Christian story.
4 Elements I Included in My Story
I faced a choice.
- How would I tell the story?
- How would I tell the story in a way that showed the activity and initiative of God?
- How would I tell the story that showed how a follower of Christ lives out that commitment when making decisions?
I quickly asked the Holy Spirit to help me, and then told my story.
1. I mentioned that I BECAME a follower of Jesus.
I made a point to tell my friend that I was once not a follower of Jesus.
When I was a teenager, I became a follower of Jesus.
I had a journey of faith awakening and experienced a conversion.
I was clear that I had not always been a follower of Christ.
2. I mentioned that I had a devotional life centered around Bible reading and Prayer.
I talked about the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading and prayer, and how I would experience hearing God’s voice.
I was allowing the word of God to shape me and cultivating the ability to recognize God’s activity in my life.
I shared a few sentences about my desire to please the Lord with a life of obedience to His purpose.
3. I shared two or three formative experiences to the story of my ministry calling.
Having set up the foundation of my relationship with Christ, I then told my story of answering the call to ministry.
I told of the life-changing question my friend asked me.
I told of the dream that the Sunday school teacher had.
I told of the struggle in my young soul as I wrestled with a sense of calling while I was a young teen.
At each part of the story, I kept the focus on God’s activity and my response.
4. I shared how I’ve seen that calling get played out and refined over the last 25 years.
I shared a few observations on how that sense of calling developed during key transitions in my life.
At each stage, I got to share a little of what God was doing to clarify my sense of life purpose and direction.
Tell About God’s Action in Your Story.
When you are asked to share a story, you need God’s action moments: Moments where God intervened.
I could have told the story without all the details of what God did and was doing.
I could have told the story in a purely irreligious way and left out dreams, signs, and spiritual guidance.
However, I chose to tell the story in a way that normalized my walk with God and told of his works.
I was ready.
Each of us should know our own story of how we came to faith and be able to tell it at a moment’s notice. (Read more at 8 Tips to Effective Personal Testimonies).
We should also know current stories of God’s activity in our life.
But we should also be able to tell of God’s activity in transformational stories – stories where being a follower of Jesus made a difference in our life.
What is God working in your life right now that makes the gospel Good News?
Transformational stories occur all the time during our walk with the Lord. These stories go beyond your conversion moment and into today.
Transformational stories show that God is relevant to us today and still at work.
I loved the opportunity to tell my friend the story of how I became minister of the gospel.
Do you want help in Personal Evangelism?
Start here with this MP3 Download on Evangelism Training from the store to help you see where you need to grow.
In this 70-minute MP3 AUDIO recording on personal evangelism you will learn:
- How church invitations are part of evangelism
- How to discover and share your own journey to faith
- What you can say about the gospel message.
- How to personally lead someone to faith in Christ.
It’s a 70-minute audio file that takes just a few minutes to download, but it may help you answer the question:
What can you do in the next 90 days to grow in your evangelism skills?
Is it ever too soon to share the gospel?
The author speaks of his “journey of faith”. I’ve often heard of this being ones own personal testimony. I agree that this can be a powerful tool in our gospel message. I believe that this is the apostle Paul’s point in I Corinthians 9:19-23. I too have written about this under the sub-chapter, “Common Ground and Our Testimony,” which is an excerpt from a book that I have written entitled, “Evangelistic Training and Christian Apologetics: A Scriptural Guide to Sharing the Gospel.”
I’m offering this book for free on my son’s website called David Aaron Beaty, click on Dad’s Page.