How do you share your faith with someone? I pose this question because it's something I'm trying to figure out myself right now.
I know a large part of sharing faith is witnessing, a Christian buzzword best defined by St. Francis Assisi: Preach the Gospel all the time; if necessary, use words.
A person's witness is basically what other people see in them, what other's perceive the person's beliefs are and how they act in certain situations. In other words, I'm sharing my faith--what I believe and what my morals are--just by being around other people. Every word I say, every action, is part of my witness to them.
How else can I share my faith? I enjoy writing (as I think this web site adequately shows), so I could write something demonstrating my faith. Said writing could be something directly stating my beliefs or a description of how I would handle a situation where my beliefs come into play (erm, though that's basically any situation...).
Talking. Just having a conversation with someone is another way that I can share my faith. To a certain extent, this falls under witness, but if I'm having a conversation directly talking about what I believe, that's a bit different. Like writing, I can talk about my faith directly by stating what I believe or indirectly by talking about how I would handle / have handled a situation or something like that.
Beyond that, I'm not really sure how I can share my faith. My predicament is this: a friend would like me to share my faith with her, but hasn't really offered any suggestions as to how I can do this. I tried sharing something I wrote for another purpose, but she found that to be inappropriately indirect,
somewhat like an intrusion into my mind. Others have said similar things about this web site, so I can understand her point. It's basically reading my journal (though I have a much more private one which isn't--and hopefully never will be--public, sorry folks).
In a way, I can understand that reading someone's journal could be deemed inappropriately indirect
because while you're getting a very personal picture of a person, you don't really get to know them. In fact, you'd probably think they were totally different if you knew them from not reading their journal. The subjects people choose to write about aren't necessarily representative of who they are. Not only that, but sometimes we think / privately write things that just shouldn't be public knowledge. But I digress.
The person in question wouldn't feel comfortable unless I wrote something directly to her, though she doesn't seem too thrilled about this either. So, I have that option, or I could talk to her, though I don't foresee any opportunity to do that. We do hang out occasionally, and while I witness to her when we're together, I hardly see that as getting to know my faith. Maybe that's enough for now, but I just don't know.
Anyway, that's my predicament. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Of course, I'm probably just being anxious and I should just trust God to provide an opportunity for faith sharing....
