The Difficulty that Comes After Sharing Our Faith

Written by Rev. Philip Stonhouse

I hope that you are feeling motivated to share one-to-one your faith in Jesus Christ and that you will persevere in it no matter what comes. Something that I have not heard many people talk about is the personal struggles that come after sharing. In some way they are all important and good as they challenge us to dig deeper and grow in our trust in Jesus Christ.

The first experience is a humbling. It is natural to experience a certain level of humbling as we come to perceive the grandeur of a God who comes close, even as we try to work for him. Humbling is not an easy thing to deal with, because it is forcing us to recognize something true about ourselves that we have ignored most of our lives. Prayer is very important in such experiences as we grow into the new understanding that we are both less but becoming way more than we ever perceived possible because of an infinitely holy and loving God.

The second is a kind of spiritual stamina. I remember when I was first starting seminary and I had a similar urge to share, experiencing something akin to a physical wall and having to push past it/work through a heaviness. I have noticed a bit of the same thing happening as we reopen after Covid lockdown; there is social stamina, but there is also a need to rework my spiritual stamina as well. This is much different than stamina with prayer, but I have found again that prayer is a good recharge after hitting this wall.

The third is the deceiver. He will often use my tiredness to shackle me or make me impatient - testing my willingness to keep bearing Christ. He will also often try to dishearten as well, painting such an image of purposelessness or weakness that it becomes a struggle to move forward. Again, prayer is so important to confront the tempter and witness to Christ's continual presence, even if just for ourselves in those moments.

Of course, there are other physical mitigating factors as well, but I have found more and more that the spiritual and physical are tied together in ways that I never perceived. I am still in a process of understanding all of this.

That is a bit of the struggle, but I will tell you that I have never experienced something more fulfilling than when Christ becomes more present in a relationship with a friend or a stranger.