OUR WITNESS
This world is crying out to know God and many of us would love to go out and bear witness to Jesus. We want to proclaim the living God to all the people who are unaware of Him and His love. We have a burning desire to tell other people about Christ but we lack the courage and the opportunity to do so. It was Jesus’ commandment that we should go out and make disciples from every nation (Matthew 28:19). It’s His wish that we acknowledge Him before others so that He may acknowledge us before His Heavenly Father (Matthew 10:32). We can proclaim the Good News in many ways, one of them being through the witness of our lives. St Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words!” Living like Christ and putting on His nature, daily, is the best way to proclaim the message to those who don’t know Him.
FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT
How do we actually witness to Jesus through our lives? In Galatians 5:22 St Paul describes the fruits of the Holy Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is when we show these fruits in our lives that we are witnessing to Jesus. All that Jesus did was through love and if we want to be Christlike then we should show the fruit of His love in our actions. It is easy to show love to those we like but even when someone is mean to us or if we are told off for things we didn’t do then we can show the fruits of the Spirit in our lives by having gentleness and self-control. One of the best ways to remember to show the powerful fruit of love in our lives is to read 1 Corinthians 13 every day.
SPIRITUAL JOY
Mother Teresa said “Joy is a net of love in which we catch souls!” When people see the joy of the Holy Spirit within us they might ask us why we are so joyful and then we will have the opportunity of speaking about Jesus and how He gave us this spiritual joy, which neither the world nor sin could give us. The other fruits include peace, patience and self-control. Whenever we face a situation where we feel like shouting or lashing out, especially to people in our family, we should call upon the Holy Spirit to give us the grace to keep quiet!
CHILDREN OF GOD
To effectively witness to God through our lives we need to have a personal relationship with Him. Being a Christian does not mean following a set of rules or regulations, it is knowing that we are children of God and loving our Heavenly Father. Many times we have heard the words, “Jesus Died for us” but have we really sat down and thought about what that really means? Have we really thought about the pain that he went through? He died for us and all he that he wants in exchange is our love. Let us pray that we may be able to love our God with all our hearts, our strength and our souls.
Written by Nimmy Biju