If you have ever shared the love of God
with anyone you know the awkwardness of determining if the
person is open or not. This may help you to grow in this
area.

As I was sitting comfortably in front of a Starbucks
recently, I looked down and saw a yellow spider crawling on my knee.
Immediately I heard the Holy Sprit say, “You are about to have an
encounter with someone in the New Age.” Symbolically, spiders often
represent occult spirits.

About 30 minutes later I was knee deep in a God-orchestrated encounter with a woman and her friend. She
seemed very open as I told her the meaning of the dream she had
shared with me. I noticed that she did not have any walls or
barriers up so I took the conversation to the next level. I asked
the Holy Spirit about her and her friend and I repeated to her what
I had heard. “You do something with your hands and it brings healing
to people.” It turned out that she was a New Age massage therapist.

I then looked to her friend and told her what I had heard as well. “There is something important about the color pink.” They both
burst into laughter because she had just painted her bedroom pink
and she hated pink. Going back to the first woman, I heard the Holy
Spirit say, “Ask her about her spirit guides.” She leaned in and
said in a low voice, “I am so glad you asked. I think one of them
might be bad for me.”

The encounter went on for several minutes and by this time any walls they had had up were somewhere in China. I told them that I
was a Christian and not a psychic, but I was not like any Christian
that they had ever met. “I’ll say!” they replied. I went on to tell
them about new light that was coming into their lives. One of them
said, “I have been asking for new light.”

I briefly told the first woman that her traditional religious upbringing would soon make more sense. It was then that I sensed a
hesitation in her. I took it as far as I could without damaging what
God had already done. Both she and her friend were amazed that a
Christian could tell them about their lives so accurately. It was
now up to the Holy Spirit to send someone to follow up and bring
them closer to Him. I got their first names and have been praying
for them on a regular basis.

Being a Christian is so much fun! If I had ever known that I could hear the voice of God for other people, I might never have
gone away from God and into the occult early in my life. We are
regularly seeing encounters like the one I described and these
encounters seem to be increasing as we go places and make ourselves
available to God.

One of the biggest issues in using our spiritual gifts to help influence people for Jesus seems to lie in the area of knowing when
it is appropriate to talk about God and when it is not. It takes
practice in listening to God and discerning where people are in
their process of coming to Him. It also takes making some mistakes
and watching people be open one minute and walking away the next.

We are seeing that people are very open to talking more about God when we get outside of our traditional evangelistic methods. We use
dream interpretation and spiritual reading (prophetic words, not
psychic) as a way to engage in conversations with people and then
wait for God to open the doors to go deeper.

Here are a few simple steps for you to consider as you learn to communicate with people outside the church:

First, avoid one way communication. As Christians we need to realize that the world is not obligated to listen to us. People are
complex and need to process information. Traditional evangelistic
methods tend to have us do all the talking. Nowadays people like it
when someone listens to them. If you listen to them they will listen
to you.

Second, find common ground. The Apostle Paul talks about finding a common ground with people in 1 Cor. 9:20-23. We are finding that
dreams and prophetic words from God communicated in common language
are an excellent common ground. If someone is not open to hearing
you, then don’t be pushy.

Third, be encouraging. As we do our prophetic outreaches we share words from God in an encouraging way. We tell them how God sees them
or the unique characteristics that they posses in their life. People
have often been beaten down by life and just a little bit of
encouragement will go a long way. Encouragement is listed as a gift
in Romans 12.

Fourth, understand the spiritual decision process. I was trained that our goal of evangelism is to get someone to receive Jesus (pray
the sinner’s prayer). This is called “decision based evangelism”. It
helps to realize that a decision for Christ is not the end result.
It is actually the beginning of the process of becoming a disciple.
The majority of the people making decisions to pray the sinner’s
prayer as a result of an encounter on the street never end up in a
church. We will be much more successful if we choose instead to make
it our goal to nudge people one step closer in their process of
finding Christ. This means that we might not get to talk about God
in every conversation.

Fifth, learn to speak “non-religious”. I wrote an earlier article on this subject and will devote an entire chapter to it in my
forthcoming book. Christianese does not cut it outside the church. 1
Cor 14:9 …Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how
will anyone know what you are saying?

One of the best studies on the subject of determining when to talk about God and when not to, is in the newly released version of
Power Evangelism by John Wimber. A study guide that uses the James
Engle Scale is included in the newer edition. This book is available
at:

www.doin-the-stuff.com

The bottom line is that it takes practice to know when to talk about God and when not to. We are seeing that when we are around
people outside the church we are a positive influence on them by
simply bringing the presence of the Holy Spirit near them. People
tell us all the time that they feel better when we are around or
that there is the presence of peace around us.

My advice is to unload our “Gospel Guns” and not be so ready to pounce on people with the message of Jesus. Trust that God will
indeed water the seeds we plant and that we also are watering seeds
that others have planted. When you do find someone who is ready, by
all means lead them to Jesus!!!!