Speak Up!
Simply Radiant Magazine
By Brittany Wallace
I’d like to think that I’ve always been an outgoing girl; I make friends pretty easily and I don’t mind sharing my opinions on conversation topics. But when my relationship with Christ first began to grow, I noticed that it was easier for me to talk about pop culture or celebrity gossip than it was for me to share my faith with others. Whenever the “what religion are you?” question came around, my heart would start beating and my palms would start sweating because I wasn’t sure if it was okay to say that I was a Christian. I would usually wait until someone else spoke up and said they were a Christian before I would agree and say that I was too. Why did I need someone else to say it first? Why couldn’t I just be bold and say that I loved Jesus? The truth is that I didn’t want to say anything that would hurt someone else’s feelings, or worse (at least in my mind at the time) be deserted by my friends because I talked about Jesus.
“So I did what I always did—I talked to God about it.”
Those questions kept going back and forth in my mind and I started to feel pretty convicted about them. So I did what I always did- I talked to God about it. I told Him how sorry I was for avoiding the topic of faith in conversation with others for fear of offending them, and I asked Him to give me boldness to speak up.
Eventually, I learned that because I am in Christ and He is a part of me, my conversation will naturally gravitate to Him. It just happens. It’s the same way with a best friend or a boyfriend; when you spend a lot of time with someone, their name or something about them will come up in conversation at some point. But it’s so much more than that. So many people in this world haven’t had the opportunity to get to know Jesus, and we as Christians in America have the privilege and the mission to tell everyone about Him. Romans 1:16 says “For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes-"(NLT). There are probably people at your school or at your job who have never gone to church, or grew up without going to VBS or having youth group. God placed you where you are not so that you can quietly mind your business, but so that you can share the Good News of Christ with them and show them what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
“For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes.”