You’ve Got to Tell Someone!

Living in this broken world, we Christians have been given an honorable opportunity. This privilege is telling people we know and love about Jesus. Telling them. That means actually using words.

It’s more than just showing kindness to people, which, of course, we must do. But many show kindness without sharing Jesus. It takes more than just being kind.

It’s more than hospitality. Though God’s Word commands us to “show hospitality” (Hebrews 13:2), it takes more than hospitality for our neighbors to receive Jesus.

It’s more than caring for the poor, visiting the sick, and feeding the hungry. Mind you, it’s not less than those ministries. We must do those things, because Jesus commanded them (see Matthew 25). But it’s more than that.

Kindness, hospitality, caring, visiting, and feeding are vital tasks that we Christians simply must do, in the name of Jesus.

Yet, in all of that, if we don’t actually tell people about Jesus, we fail them at the very core of their need. The wounded people who populate this world have a vast array of needs: they need soup, they need soap, and they need solace. But more than anything else, they need a Savior!

In God’s Word, there is a fascinating story of four lepers in ancient Jerusalem (see 2 Kings 7). Israel was at war, and Jerusalem was under siege. Food was scarce, and the lepers’ prospects for survival were grim. They decided their best option was to surrender to the enemy and beg for mercy, concluding that nothing worse would happen than a quick execution, which was better than the slow death by starvation that awaited them in the surrounded city.

As they approached the enemy camp, they found that the besieging army had suddenly fled in the night, leaving behind huge stores of food and supplies! The famished men began to gorge themselves, rejoicing in their good fortune.

Suddenly, one of them remembered their starving brothers and sisters in the city. He said, "What we're doing is not right. This is a day of good news, and we're not telling anyone about it” (2 Kings 7:9).

We who know Jesus as Lord and Savior are just like those four. We too were once needy lepers, spiritually speaking: unclean in our sin, and hopelessly starved within. We too, by no merit of our own, have found the miraculous provision of our need: a Savior to forgive our sin and restore our life.

And, if we are keeping it ourselves, we too are not doing right in this day of good news.

If God has given you new life, it’s sin to stay quiet about it.

If you have been blessed with joy and hope from the Lord, you must not keep it to yourself.

If you have been born again by trusting Jesus, you’ve got to share it.

Of course, you’ve got to be kind. But that’s not enough.

You’ve got to tell someone.