Everyday Ways to Share Your Faith
Small but effective ways to share your life
Adapted from an article By Paul Thigpen
I grew up in a tired but proud old Southern house with white columns and a wide porch, which my grandparents had owned for many years before we moved in. Evidently, they had loved to landscape. Pop and Grandma had cultivated many different fruits, flowers, and nuts. They planted peach and pecan trees, roses and gardenias, wisteria and dogwood, a grape arbor, and even a little lemon tree.
My favorite, though, was the majestic fig tree that spread its broad leaves outside the dining room window. The fig tree was a natural wonder I took for granted when I was small. But when I grew old enough to realize the effort my grandparents had invested in that grand old tree, I came to appreciate deeply their willingness to labor so that others might enjoy a harvest. Pop had planted. Grandma had watered. Mama had gathered. And I got to eat the fig preserves!
Figs grow throughout Israel. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the image the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Corinthians: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6, KJV). Both men had taken part in the ministry through which the Corinthians “came to believe” (1 Cor. 3:5). But “the Lord . . . assigned to each his task” (1 Cor. 3:5) so that neither man had performed the whole work of conversing the Gospel on his own. Like my grandfather when he planted that fig tree, Paul had begun the process of cultivation knowing that someone else would probably see the fruit.
Because we sometimes focus so much on the Billy Grahams of the world, we tend to assume that sharing the Gospel normally takes place on a grand scale. Or perhaps we believe that even when wor ...