Let me introduce you to my favourite 5 year old. His name is Eli and he is my youngest son. He likes to tell me I’m beautiful and he likes to jump off stuff. He likes to wrestle and hum loudly. But most of all he likes to eat. He is always hungry. So when he was tiny I used to wait until he left the kitchen, hide in the fridge and eat my chocolate in peace. It was the only way I wouldn’t have to share it with him. Yes I know; I’m a terrible mother.
This worked well until he learnt to talk. I will never forget the day I walked into the living room after I had been in the fridge for my daily nibble. As I sat down on the couch beside him, now a pudgy 3 year old, he sniffed the air, looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’ve been eating chocolate.” BUSTED!
He hadn’t seen me eat the chocolate, he wasn’t with me when I ate the chocolate, he hadn’t shared in the chocolate-eating experience but he knew where I had been and what I had been doing because the fragrance of it was all over me. I carried it with me into the room.
The memory of that day makes me chuckle, but it also taught me a valuable lesson. We all carry something into the room. Spiritually speaking we carry something of where we have been, what we have been doing. We carry the atmosphere of our hearts and attitudes of our minds. And though we think no one really notices, the truth is, the world around us are much more perceptive about these things than we realise.
I love that part in scripture where it says these words of Peter and John, “And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13
Why? They carried something different into the room, something more than who they were naturally, a boldness, a wisdom. And the men around them recognised the scent. They had seen this before… it was Jesus.
Don’t you wonder how different your community would look if Jesus showed up and walked into the room? What conversations would happen in your staff room or at the school gates if Jesus were there? And yet, just like Peter and John, we get the privilege of carrying him into every single one of those situations.
You know the world doesn’t need you to have a complicated evangelism strategy. It doesn’t even need you to be an educated theologian or an eloquent and persuasive speaker. No the world simply needs ordinary men and women who are so saturated with their Saviour that when they enter the room the atmosphere is changed by his tangible presence on their lives.
What do you carry into the room?
