40 Days of Sharing: Preparing Our Hearts to Share

During this season of Lent, we are focusing on 40 Days of Sharing—learning how to engage in spiritual conversations and share our faith with others. As we prepare our hearts for this journey, we begin with The Art of Noticing and The Art of Praying.

The Art of Noticing

During these 40 Days of Sharing, we will be exploring the 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations from the book by that name by Schaller and Crilly. These 9 Arts are based on the way that Jesus interacted and ministered to others. Before we plunge out into our neighborhood to do the work of sharing our faith with others, we want to start this mission by getting ready and preparing our hearts to serve.

This first begins with the Art of Noticing. We don’t think of noticing others as a big deal, but in this distracted society where most people notice nothing but their cell phones, it takes a great deal of effort to begin noticing those around us.

First we must deal with the barriers that stop us from noticing others:

• Pace of Life: Are we too rushed and preoccupied to see others?
• Self-Focus: Are we too focused on ourselves and our problems to see those of others?
• Christian Bubble: Are we so involved with our church and our Christian friends that we are no longer around those who still need Jesus?
• Attitude: Are we being judgmental of others that we don’t know?

Matthew 9:36-38 “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”

Jesus noticed the people and had compassion for them. And that moved Him to action.

“Noticing people can move us to compassion and action as it humanizes the nameless faces around us. People become real to us, with real lives and real problems in need of a real Savior.” – 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations pg. 45

“If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors.” – Frederick Buechner

We don’t just stop at noticing others though. Noticing others opens the door to relationships and the Gospel message.

We can practice the Art of Noticing by beginning with these 3 practices:

• Pay attention: Choose to focus on someone long enough to wonder about them.
• Secret prayer: Send up a silent prayer for the person and what you have noticed about their life.
• Genuine listening: Look the person in the eye, ask them “How are you?”, and then listen to them.

People become surprisingly open when they sense that you care and that you are really listening to them. Genuine listening opens the possibility of entering into an authentic conversation in which we allow God to control the outcome.

The Art of Praying

We begin the Art of Praying by taking inventory of who is in our circles of influence. Start with your family. How many people in your family do not know Jesus? Write them down. Then your friends. From distant friends and acquaintances to close friends. How many of them don’t know Jesus? Write their names down. Then your work, how many people there do you know by name? Then your neighborhood. How many people live in your neighborhood? Do you know about their faith?

Many times we can begin to believe that we have no one around us who hasn’t heard the Good News of Jesus. But this simple inventory will show us that indeed, there are many people around us who fit into these categories: spiritually curious, spiritually poor, spiritually blind, spiritually bound, spiritually helpless or hopeless.

Once you have a list of names in all of these categories, now you have a daily prayer list. The Art of Praying does more to change our hearts than it does for them. It increases our trust in God and our love for those who do not have God’s help and hope in their life.

We see this in Jesus in John 17:20-21:

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

“Before we can talk to people about God, we need to talk to God about people.” – Rick Richardson

What do we pray for? We can start with these three questions:

• God, where are you already at work?
• God, what does this person need right now?
• God, how can I invite this person to experience Jesus in a fresh way?

God is already present and working in the lives of the people around you. We just need to be brought into what He has been doing so that we can join Him in His work. And pray for others to join you in this work as well! (Luke 10:2)

We can remember the Art of Praying by making our prayers for others:

• Personal
• Purposeful
• A Priority

Take your prayer list that you’ve made and place it somewhere where you’ll remember to pray for them daily. Remember, when we pray for others, we must remember that these are real people, not a project. During these 40 days, these people we share with are not items to cross off of a list, but souls that God’s heart is longing for. Let your prayers for them change you and them today!

I am praying for you as you begin the Art of Noticing and the Art of Praying today! Share with someone how it goes!

— Pastor Zoe