A few years ago, our family was living in the South. Every day, I pushed my double jogging stroller up and down the drive that connected a few homes in our little area and got some exercise while meeting the handful of neighbors that we had.

One neighbor was an elderly gentleman named Arlie who lived with his wife, daughter and her two children. We chatted about our gardens and my chickens for years until one day something strange happened. He showed up at our church.

We were, of course, pleasantly surprised to see him week after week. Soon he had accepted Jesus as his Savior and his wife, daughter and grandchildren began attending church too. We were thrilled! We finally asked him, “Arlie, what made you start coming to church here?”

He said, “Someone asked me. No one has ever asked me to church before.”

Here this man lived, two minutes from our church, with me, a dedicated Christian, busy doing a ton of ministry, talking to him regularly, and the only thing keeping him from coming to Jesus was that nobody asked him to? I was horrified that it hadn’t even occurred to me to invite my own neighbor to a place where he could meet Jesus.

Paul addressed this very thing in Romans 10:14, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

Guess what? People hear about Jesus from us. If we aren’t talking about Him to our own friends, family and neighbors, how will they ever hear?

And here is the truly wonderful news- they want to hear it! We have the very words of life. Why would we not share it? They won’t always be open to what we have to say (statistically, it takes 8 encounters before someone makes a commitment to Christ) but we never know what impact our obedience to gently tell our neighbors about Jesus will have.

We are so glad to have you in Bible study with us! If you miss a devotion, you can find them archived at https://comethirstyministry.com/blog/

Reading Plan–Week Twenty-Six

Day One–Romans 9
Day Two–Romans 10
Day Three–Romans 11
Day Four–Romans 12
Day Five–Romans 13