Christian Communication

You can actually become a better friend by studying other friendships, which may be why Paul included some of his at the end of Colossians. Dr. David Jeremiah considers the lessons learned from each of Paul’s friendships found in the closing verses of his epistle.

“SiriusXM. This time it is a full-time, every-day, 24-hours-per-day, permanent agreement. You can now hear Dr. Graham’s messages on channel 460 around the clock. And I have been listening.”
― David Jeremiah, Where Do We Go from Here?: How Tomorrow’s Prophecies Foreshadow Today’s Problems

Don’t try to have one ft in the world and one ft in the church be Christians, be Christians.
And then your witness will have meaning.
But if you witness and your life is a mess, you ought to just keep your mouth shut until you get it straightened out because you’re doing more damage than you’re doing.
Good. Richard Halverson, the late chaplain of the United States Senate once said you’ve got the right to say anything you like, but others don’t have to listen.
They’re under no obligation to tune you in.
And when they do, they can also tune you out anytime they want to.
Your right to speak is guaranteed, but you must earn the right to be listened to.
That depends on your integrity. Your integrity is the prerequisite to acceptance.
If you expect to be paid attention to back it up with your life.
There are many voices in today’s world. Current time. 805 traffic is light.
Welcome to this week’s episode. I hope everyone is voicing their opinion.
It’s so frustrating, but I feel like she’s out of place to act like about everything.
I think whatever works out for you. That, that’s what you should be doing.
And Jesus is no exception to that.
A lot of people talking about, people disagree on what he did.
He was kind of a charitable, people disagree on what he stood for.
On the other hand, he could have just been a really nice guy just about following the rules.
So how do we hear the voice of Christ above all?
What if there was a clear voice, the son of the image of the invisible God telling you exactly who Jesus is for in Him.

All things were created things in heaven and on earth, how he lived.
He forgave us all our sins and what he means for your life, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.
And this description of Christ places him above all.
Coming up on turning point.
If you live for Jesus Christ, somebody’s gonna walk up to you and say something like this.
Why are you the way you are?
Because you’re so different than everyone else, you’re to be ready to respond.
I am the way I am because Jesus Christ has changed my life in the Bible.
We have one of history’s most famous letters, the book of Colossians as relevant today as when it was first written, its words form a picture of Christ above all others.
The truth of Christ that endures for eternity.
In Dr Jeremiah’s new book Christ above all, you’ll encounter a Jesus who is alive interactive Victorious and Supreme through a profound study of Colossians.
Dr Jeremiah brings Jesus into perfect focus, providing solid teaching about Christ on which you can build a solid relationship with him.
Request Christ above all, when you give a gift of any amount in support of this program, and if you give $60 or more, Dr Jeremiah will send you the Christ above all set, which contains his new book, his entire teaching series on your Choice of CD or DVD and a correlating study guide request.
Christ above all book or set from turning point today. Thank you for watching. Turning point.
Now here is Dr Jeremiah with his message, Christian communication.
When Karen Mueller, filmmaker and author was in the Peace Corps from 1987 to 1989.
She dug wells and built schools in a village in the Philippines.
And one night, 17 members of the New People’s Army, the Armed Wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines came to her hut to interrogate her.
Earlier that day, villages had warned her that this was gonna happen.
So she collected two precious commodities, sugar, and coffee.
And when the NP arrives, she exclaimed, thank God you’re here. I’ve been waiting all day.
Please have some coffee, leave your guns at the door. Her reaction baffled the leader of this group.
He took off his gun, sat down for a cup of coffee.
She avoided an interrogation or something worse because according to Mueller you can’t interrogate someone.
You’re having coffee with Mueller transformed the situation from intimidation to conversation to communication.
She delighted the leader of the group with her unexpected hospitality, changed his heart, his mind and his intentions.
In short, she enchanted him.
Enchantment can occur in villages and stores and dealerships, offices, boardrooms and in churches.
And it transforms the situation and the relationship and it converts hostility into civility and it changes skeptics and cynics into believers.
Christ love for us is infectious. Can I get a witness? He loves us. He died for us.
He gave us the gift of eternal life.
And once we’ve tasted the joy of that in our lives, we want everybody else to know about it as well.
And especially early on after we become Christians, we don’t care about criticism.
We carry our Bibles with us, who cares if we get criticized?
Because what Jesus has done for us, it’s so exciting to us. We want him to do that for others.
And that’s what Paul wanted to.
He experienced the joy of salvation and he wanted to show the world how wonderful, how attractive and how captivating Jesus Christ is.
That’s the reason he wrote the book of Colossians. He wanted to enchant the colosseum believers.
He wanted them to be so excited about Jesus.
They didn’t have any time for all those crazy people who were bothering them in the simplest of terms.
The first half of our passage tells us how to talk to God about our unsafe friends.
And the second part tells us a little bit how to talk to our unsafe friends about God.
So how to pray for outsiders versus two through four.
Listen to these words continue earnestly in prayer, be vigilant in it with Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the word to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak.
Paul begins by describing how we can pray personally for people that we care about pray personally, for them continual, earnestly in prayer being vigilant in it with Thanksgiving.
That’s a really interesting sentence. When Paul tells the Colossians to continue earnestly in prayer, he’s not talking about praying with intensity.
Have you ever been in a church service where somebody praise and you discover they have a prayer voice.
I mean, they pray, they talk in a regular voice but when they pray, they goes up a couple octaves, it’s a little bit louder.
It’s a different voices, not them, it’s their prayer voice.
I’m not criticizing anybody and in there praying, but pray, praying is very personal.
So if you talk to your wife and you go into a new voice, every time you talk to her, it would be different, wouldn’t it?
Maybe some of you do that? That’s why you’re not laughing. But let me, just tell you something.
What Paul is talking about here is not more intensity in your prayer, but more intensity in your devotion.
In other words, continually and habitually, constantly praying for your friends who don’t know Jesus yet.
Maybe they’re in your family, maybe your Children or your parents or your brothers and sisters.
Paul wanted the Colossians to pray continually. He also wanted to pray vigilantly. What does that mean?
Well, pray, looking around that doesn’t mean you don’t close your eyes, but you keep your eyes open to what’s going on.
First of all, in the life of the person you’re praying for.
You know, if you have someone who’s not a believer, they’re living life to and they’re experiencing things like you are, but they’re, they’re experiencing it without Christ.
Keep your eyes on that be vigilant to what’s happening.
It will give you the opportunity to interact with them when the opportunity comes.
Let me tell you something that often escapes believers today.
The world in which the Bible was written, the time in which it was written to the people to whom it was written was way more messed up than our world is, it was way more hostile to the gospel.
The Romans ruled it was a cruel world. It cost something to be a Christian.
So when you read the scripture, you think, well, that’s not relevant.
No, it’s way more relevant than you think it’s helping us understand how to live our lives in a world that no longer respects us or even wants anything to do with us.
And then Paul instructs the Christians to pray with Thanksgiving.
Oh, I love that because in the Bible, just about every place you see prayer, you see Thanksgiving.
If there ever was a group of people that should be filled with Thanksgiving, it’s us.
We have more to be thankful for than any group of people in the whole world because we already know how it ends.
We know where we’re going. We know our sins are forgiven.
We know that even though we have some bumps in the road, we have someone to help us and guide us and stay with us.
And we’ve all had experiences where Christ has been there and helped us and he’s our counselor.
And you know, Christ is not just our savior and Lord, he’s our friend, he’s our guide. He’s our counselor.
I think Paul was the most thankful person you’ll ever read about in the Bible.
I think first of all, he was so thankful that he got rescued from a life.
He had lived before he had a pretty sad life before Christ came.
His whole life was built around persecuting Christians. He put him in jail.
We don’t know this for sure, but probably had some of them killed.
And he got rescued from that one day on the road to Damascus when God intersected his life and he was so filled with gratitude for his salvation.
Do you know if you read The New Testament?
One of the interesting things is Paul writes a lot about a lot of things, but he can’t write very much before he bursts out into gratitude for the fact that he’s a Christian.
It’s over and over. His testimony is in the scripture, I think five times.
So he’s a thankful person and he models for us that when we pray for others, we should also be thankful for the privilege we have of knowing Jesus Christ and of bearing witness for him to the people we intercede for.
So he said, pray personally and then he says, pray on purpose.
And now he talks about these people praying for him.
And this is a very interesting passage, especially for people who do what I do. Here’s what he said.
Meanwhile, verse three, praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the word to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am also in chains that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak as the Colossians were praying for their unbelieving friends.
Paul asked them to whom he was writing this letter. People he had never seen.
Would you all pray for me? And here’s what I don’t want you to pray for my health.
Isn’t it interesting? Paul had a lot of health issues. Uh hardly ever mentioned them.
His prayers were never requested for his health, for his well being for his success.
He prayed for the gospel. He said, pray for me. And here’s what I want you to pray for.
I want you to pray for connections. An open door is the word that he uses.
And that’s a phrase in the new testament that could be translated opportunity. An open door is an opportunity.
Acts 14, Now, when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done for them and that he had opened the door of faith to the gentiles.
In other words, he’s given the gentiles an opportunity to believe it was an opportunity.
What Paul is praying is this?
Pray for me, that I will have many opportunities to preach the gospel so that I can reach many people pray for open doors and he asks them to do that.
You know, here’s the one thing you gotta realize if God opens the door, he means for you to walk through it.
There’s a lot of people get open doors and they stand. Isn’t that a nice open door?
No, it’s not for you to admire. It’s for you to walk through. One day.
We were talking about how turning point had now found almost all of the Christian television stations that would broadcast our, our television program.
And, and we sort of said, you know, maybe we ought to quit just preaching to the choir just finding Christian people who want to hear the gospel, who want to hear the word of God.
That’s wonderful. I’m glad we do that.
But we ask God to open some doors for us so that we could take the gospel to people who would never go to church, who would never hear the word of God who would never seek out faith.
And all of a sudden we started getting opportunities and lo and behold, one day, we found out God’s opened all these doors for us to take the gospel into the world that doesn’t embrace the gospel.
And not only are they listening, they’re responding and we’re hearing stories like you would not believe of how the gospel is changing lives.
Now, those doors were open, I’ll tell you what if it’s television, you better swallow hard before you walk through that door because it costs a bunch of money.
But God has supplied the resources in a way that’s just overwhelming to me.
I just give you that little word of testimony as to the open doors that God has given and not just here in this country.
Did you know that I preach in four different languages? And they actually hear the words and see them come.
Did you know that I preach in two Indian languages? I preach in telecom and Hindi.
And if you see it, you watch really closely, you’ll know those words don’t match the way my mouth is working, but it looks like I’m preaching in those languages.
It’s the most unbelievable thing you’ve ever seen. I preach in Spanish. I don’t know anything but Adios.
That’s all I know in Spanish, but I preach the word of God in Spanish.
You know what that is? Friends. That’s God opening the doors. I could never make that happen.
God opens the doors and I would tell you as a church, we need to continue to pray for open doors for the Gospel, that the Gospel might go to the places where people need it.
And boy do they need it now more than ever before. He said, pray for the connections.
And then he said, pray for clarity.
He wanted the people to pray, not only that he would have opportunity, but he wanted them to pray that when he got the opportunity, he’d be able to clearly present the gospel.
He talks about the mystery of Christ, that’s Christ in you, the hope of glory.
He said, pray that I will get these opportunities and that when I get them, I will be able to manifest the power of God and preach the gospel.
So people will understand and believe Back in 1949, George Roy and Elizabeth would, an American missionary couple were serving in the Northwest China and Tibet.
They were forced to leave the area. A local leader named Pastor Monk took over the church of 200 people.
The Woods returned to America and by 1985, both of them had passed away without ever knowing what happened to the church that they started.
In 1988. The Woods son George returned to China and met with pastor and his wife who were now in their 80s.
For 28 years, the communist government had done their best to extinguish the church pastor Moon wasn’t allowed to preach and he spent time in prison, I think for nine years, he was in prison.
It was illegal to baptize. It was illegal to indoctrinate anyone under 18.
When the government finally allowed pastor to reopen the church in 1983, there were only 30 people left assuming that the church was on its last leg.
George would ask pastor, how many believers do you have?
Now, Pastor Moses’s wife brought them a cardboard roll held together by yarn.
The first page was filled with writing five columns, name, age, gender address, occupation.
There were around 20 names on that page.
George would continue turning over page after page with the names of the baptized.
And finally, he asked the monks, how many believers do you have?
And they said 1500 baptized believers in disbelief. George would ask, how did that happen?
Pastor smiled as he shared his secret for church growth. It wasn’t a technique, it wasn’t a program.
He simply said, oh, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever and we pray a lot.
That’s a pretty good way to reach people for Jesus Christ.
Be excited about who he is, begin to pray for the people.
You know that you care about that you love and some of you, it’s coming right to the top of your mind right now.
You know who these people are.
Don’t just mourn the fact that they’re not Christians start praying that they’ll become Christians pray that God will give you a door of opportunity to speak the gospel to them in a conversational way that won’t be offensive necessarily, but will be winsome.
By the way. You know, there’s a lot of craziness that goes about witnessing and, and if you start to talk about witnessing to others, people just shrivel up and try to get away from you because they’re so intimidated by it.
Somebody has told them they got to go to a class and learn a method. You know what witnessing is?
All it is, is telling people what Jesus has done for you. That’s all it is.
Anybody can do that. Hey, did you know that the Lord then for me, do you know how he saved?
Anybody can witness? You don’t have to go to school. You don’t have to take a class.
You don’t have to be mentored. Although those things may be helpful.
A witness is somebody who tells another person what Jesus Christ has done for you.
Tell them and see what happens, okay, how to pray for outsiders.
Now, how to live with outsiders.
After Paul asked the Colossians to pray for him and to pray for their unsafe friends.
He turns his attention to the Colossians own efforts in verse five, he says, walk in wisdom toward those who are outside redeeming the time.
Now, he’s gonna say it’s important that you witness, but it’s also important that you live what you believe.
That’s one of the ways Paul described those who didn’t know Jesus Christ outside of the family of God.
And though Paul and Jesus considered believers to be insiders, this was never intended to give us a superiority complex.
We should never get the idea that we’re in the church. We know Jesus good for us.
No, it should humble us and motivate us and cause us to walk in such a way that we wouldn’t do anything, by the way we live that would destroy our verbal testimony.
And that’s a really important thing and it’s meant to convict us a little bit.
If you want to know the truth, the best thing you can do to win your friends to Christ is deliver Jesus Christ every day.
You know, nobody’s going to be perfect. But you know what I’m talking about.
Don’t try to have one ft in the world and one ft in the church be Christians, be Christians and then your witness will have meaning.
But if you witness and your life is a mess, you ought to just keep your mouth shut until you get it straightened out because you’re doing more damage than you’re doing good.
Richard Halverson, the late chaplain of the United States Senate once said you’ve got the right to say anything you like, but others don’t have to listen.
They’re under no obligation to tune you in.
And when they do, they can also tune you out anytime they want to.
Your right to speak is guaranteed, but you must earn the right to be listened to.
That depends on your integrity, your integrity is the prerequisite to acceptance.
If you expect to be paid attention to back it up with your life, let your walk correspond to your talk.
Peter once wrote these words, he said, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul.
Having your conduct honorable among the gentiles that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation.
Paul told the collections to redeem their time.
That’s a business word that you would go to a place and you would make an offer on something and you would buy it and you’d redeem it.
He said, make sure that you buy up the time that you have.
That’s a very serious thing, especially now we’re living in days when you know, it seems to me like you can almost hear the trumpet out there practicing for the return of Christ, because the things on this earth are so in such an upheaval, every moment counts, every day counts, every opportunity counts.
Paul said, redeem, it don’t let it pass by, take advantage of the opportunities that God gives you redeem.
The time the psalmist said, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
So he teaches us how to pray for outsiders, how to live in front of outsiders.
And then he gives us a little course on how to speak to them. I love this verse.
This would do so much good for all of us. If nothing else to put in practice every day.
Verse six says, let your speech always be with grace, season with salt that you may know how you ought to answer each one.
So Paul goes from praying to living, to speaking and he says, here’s some things about speaking.
He said, let your message, your conversation always be gracious. Do you know what I mean?
When I say she’s a gracious person, he said, you know, he talked to me about Jesus Christ, but he was so gracious about it.
There was such a compassion in his voice about this situation.
He didn’t just come and beat me over the head with the Bible and tell me I was lost and going to hell.
And if I didn’t get saved and you need to do it right now, I mean, listen, folks those days are over.
You can’t do that when you talk to somebody who’s lost, when you talk to somebody you love who needs Jesus Christ.
Here’s the testimony. Do it with grace. And then he says, throw a little salt in it.
The salt is an interesting thing in the New Testament.
It was the use of salt that helped something not decay, but it was also used to create thirst.
There’s a reason why they sell all that popcorn at these, these games.
You know that don’t you, you just watch your popcorn.
You’ll be back for a large drink if you didn’t get one in the first time because popcorn is full of salt and salt makes you thirsty.
Here’s what Paul is saying. When you talk to your friends who don’t know the Lord Jesus be gracious and make them thirsty for what you have.
Feel your conversation, tell them the good things that God has done in your life.
Now I’m gonna walk on some dangerous territory here for just a moment because I think a lot of things that happened in church today may not be encouraging to those.
There’s a lady, I don’t know who she is and she sent a letter to one of our staff and they read it to me last week and here’s what she said.
She said, I’m very depressed, very discouraged.
She’s I go to my church every week and I come away more discouraged than when I went.
And then she described it. First of all, she said I walk in the door and it’s so dark.
I can’t see anybody. And then she said, before we get started, they start putting smoke everywhere.
So she said, I’m sitting in the dark and smoke is rolling off the platform and then they start to sing their songs and they’re so sad.
And she said, oftentimes I leave with my head down, I’m discouraged.
Now, I know that’s a stereotype and probably there aren’t many churches like that.
But let me tell you what, I know men and women. The gospel should never make you sad.
The gospel should make you glad if you study the book of Acts Gladness is painted over every page in that book.
They were full with joy and they rejoiced and they had gladness. Always be ready, have your answers.
Think through what you’re going to do what you’re gonna say and always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asked you to give the reason for the hope that you have and do it with gentleness and do it with respect someday.
If you live for Jesus Christ, somebody’s gonna walk up to you and say something like this.
Why are you the way you are? Because you’re so different than everyone else.
Why are you the way you are? And you know what the Bible says?
You can’t say, would you give me a couple of days to work on that and I’ll give you an answer.
No, you’re to be ready with the answer. You, to be ready to respond.
I am the way I am because Jesus Christ has changed my life.
If you don’t say anything other than, that’s a pretty good answer.
Fritz Kreisler was a world famous violinist in the 20th century.
He earned a fortune with his concerts and his compositions, but he generously gave most of it away.
So when he discovered an exquisite violin on one of his trips, he wasn’t able to buy it later.
Having raised enough money to meet the asking price, he returned to the seller hoping to purchase that beautiful instrument.
But to his great dismay, it had already been sold to a collector.
Chrysler made his way to the new owner’s home and offered to buy the violin.
The collector said you can’t buy this violin. It’s my prized possession and he would not sell it.
Keenly disappointed Chrysler was about to leave when he had an idea.
Could I play the instrument once more before it’s consigned to silence. Permission was granted.
And the great virtuoso filled the room with such heart moving music that the collectors emotion was totally destroyed.
I have no right to keep that to myself. He exclaimed, it’s yours.
Mr Chrysler, take it into the world and let people hear it.
Ladies and gentlemen, what Christ has done for us is so great.
We have no right to keep that to ourselves.
We need to take it into the world and let people hear it, let people see it and always be ready to explain that it’s not about us, it’s about him and what he has done for us, he will do for anyone who will put their trust in him.
Thank you for watching.
Turning point. Dr Jeremiah would like to offer you his new book Christ above all his study of the book of Colossians, which brings Jesus into perfect focus solid teaching about Christ on which you can build a solid relationship with him.
Yours for a gift of any amount in support of this program.
And if you give $60 or more, Dr Jeremiah will send you the Christ above all set, which contains his new book, his entire teaching series on your Choice of CD or DVD and a correlating study guide.
Let Dr Jeremiah lead you into Colossians where you’ll find glory in every verse Jesus in every line and blessing in each chapter.
Thank you for your support of this program. Request Christ above all book or set from turning point today.
If you have never taken the step to believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can do that today.
If you will allow us Dr Jeremiah would like to send you to resources that will help you.
The first is a book that called your greatest turning point, which will help you as you begin your relationship with Christ.
And the second is our monthly devotional magazine turning points to give you encouragement and inspiration throughout the year.
These resources are yours completely free when you contact turning point today.
Next time on turning point, we need some God honoring determination, some God honoring stubbornness that says, if God has called me to do this, I’m gonna do it.
I don’t know what’s going to get in my way.
But by the grace of God, I’m going to fulfill this ministry. Thank you for being with us today.
Join Dr Jeremiah. Next time for his message, Paul and his friends here on turning point.