Nathan_L
Puritan Board Freshman
Earlier this evening I was sat with my MIL who is not a believer. The news came on and the evening headlines were particularly shocking. This led MIL to bewail the familiar "whats wrong with the world" type thing, then at one point she literally seemed to ask why things seem to only be getting worse.
My ears perked up at the evangelistic oppurtunity and my mind flooded with several competing answers, but for the life of me I could not decisively choose which one, then suddenly the moment had passed. Literally, my MIL was heading off home.
The moment was brief, this wasn't a sitting down for the evening type thing but a stray few minutes of the news caught before she was going out the door. Nevertheless, I was kicking myself a bit. No doubt we've all had similarly disappointing missed chances, and I won't dwell on it to the point of despair, but it does have me thinking that I don't want that to happen again.
The answer to the "what's wrong with the world" question for a Christian is not complicated - essentially we've rejected God - but it is multi-faceted and the way my mind sort of froze between different ways of answering, all of which seemed too long-winded and laborious for the moment.
This is certainly a weakness of mine, I do better with the longer format type conversations on Christianity, but i struggle to come up with segues in the moment that lead into them naturally.
While I recognise that surely it is better just to speak the truth, albeit some what clumsily, than saying nothing at all. I am still pondering over what would have been good segue type answers to have in my back pocket for the next similar type scenario...
So, brothers and sisters, gifted evangelists and those more like myself, any practical advice?
My ears perked up at the evangelistic oppurtunity and my mind flooded with several competing answers, but for the life of me I could not decisively choose which one, then suddenly the moment had passed. Literally, my MIL was heading off home.
The moment was brief, this wasn't a sitting down for the evening type thing but a stray few minutes of the news caught before she was going out the door. Nevertheless, I was kicking myself a bit. No doubt we've all had similarly disappointing missed chances, and I won't dwell on it to the point of despair, but it does have me thinking that I don't want that to happen again.
The answer to the "what's wrong with the world" question for a Christian is not complicated - essentially we've rejected God - but it is multi-faceted and the way my mind sort of froze between different ways of answering, all of which seemed too long-winded and laborious for the moment.
This is certainly a weakness of mine, I do better with the longer format type conversations on Christianity, but i struggle to come up with segues in the moment that lead into them naturally.
While I recognise that surely it is better just to speak the truth, albeit some what clumsily, than saying nothing at all. I am still pondering over what would have been good segue type answers to have in my back pocket for the next similar type scenario...
So, brothers and sisters, gifted evangelists and those more like myself, any practical advice?
