Holidays are very useful for opening doors to share the gospel! Thanksgiving is one of the best holidays because it turns our attention to God—the Giver of all good things—and it gives us opportunity to share about God’s eternal provision. This year my dad came up with a little sequence of questions to direct people’s attention to the Lord, and we have been excited to see the Lord bless and use it. We want to share this idea with you, so that you can do the same with people you meet this week. You can use it after Thanksgiving too, as you ask people how their holiday was.
“Would you be willing to answer some questions about Thanksgiving?” my dad and I asked a young couple at a shopping mall last week.
“Sure,” they said.
“Great. The first question is, ‘Do you have Thanksgiving traditions in your family?”
“Yes,” they responded.
“Whom do you give thanks to?” we asked.
“Well, to God, of course,” they said, looking at us like, “Who else would we thank?”
“What do you thank Him for?” was our next question.
“For food and health and family…” they replied.
“Great. Have you ever thanked Him for eternal life?”
They looked at each other with sort of a surprised look and then the guy said, “Well, you can’t thank God for eternal life until you have eternal life—and you can’t have that until you die.”
We took some time to explain from the Bible how and why we can know before we die and, in fact, how we must know before we die. They were very interested and brought up a number of questions. They were not argumentative, just very interested. This was all new to them.
Then we asked, “Have you ever asked God for eternal life?”
Again they gave each other that look of surprise and both said, “No.”
After another 45 minutes of talking, answering questions, and covering the basics of how Jesus Christ paid for our sins on the cross, they both said, “God brought you to us today.”
“Well, if the Lord is bringing this to your attention, then you want to take care of it right away and not put it off,” we told them. “You said you have never asked God for eternal life. Is that something you’d like to do now?” we asked. We could tell their hearts were open. We offered to pray with them and began looking for a corner we could go to in order to get out of the busy flow of people walking by.
“We can pray right here!” the guy said.
First we prayed for them, and then the girl said she wanted to pray. Right there, she confessed her sin and asked the Lord for eternal life. Later that evening she texted me expressing thankfulness.
The Holiday season is just beginning–let’s not forget about the abundant opportunities it provides to talk with people! Just a simple sequence of questions is able to open many doors.
We’ll try to post some Christmas ideas before too long. 🙂
Wow Grace!! Thats amazing! Praise the Lord! 🙂
WOW!!!!!!!!! We serve a wonderful God!!!! Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!!1
Wow praise The Lord for His Awesome works in lives around us! Thanks for sharing this exciting story
The Lord is so good! Thank you so much for sharing, Grace!
I’m looking forward to hearing the Christmas ideas, too!
Joyfully in Jesus,
Elizabeth
Awesome! Thanks for the encouragement 😉
Hello Grace!
Praise the Lord !!
I just wanted to write on here and say THANK YOU for yor book! It has helped me in a lot of ways. Of course I’m not perfect, but your book has helped my relationship with my 3 brothers and 1 sister (and one on the way 🙂 ) Do you think I could email you and ask you and your sister Sarah some questions? I have a few that I would like to ask you 🙂
anyway, Thank you so much for everything!
Love,
Rachel Crosswhite ~ 13
This was a very helpful idea, Grace. Thank you for sharing it. May God be glorified through your evangelism ministry. Please continue to share your ideas with us.
Thanks for sharing this, Grace!! I always enjoy reading about your witnessing endeavors. 😉 This may seem like a strange question, but when you talked with these people asking questions, did you do it in a “survey” format with a clipboard or anything? The only problem I’ve had with witnessing in the mall is that it’s seen as ‘soliciting’, which of course isn’t allowed. It is a little more difficult to have witnessing conversations when it’s -10 degrees outside or something, though! Ideas?
I’m sorry for not responding sooner to this comment, Emily! Yes–I understand your concern about “soliciting” in the mall. We don’t use clipboards or pass out tracts in the mall (though we may leave someone with a tract after we talk to them). Normally we just start talking to people…. Sometimes I’ll start by saying something like “I’m talking to people today about what they believe about God, life after death, etc. would you be willing to tell me what you believe?” Or “I’m asking a couple Christmas questions…would you be willing to answer a few questions about the meaning of Christmas?” etc. Or, of course, if a conversation can simply be started in a natural way first, that’s great too.
A new idea my dad told me today was to simply ask “Have you read the Christmas story from the Bible yet this Christmas?” You can have some printed out to give them if they’d like it.
Obviously, I don’t have all the answers in this area…and it varies per situation….please, if you have advice or ideas, let me know!