She was a beautifully honest person, very direct and sincere. Thus I was nonplussed when she said to me one day: Let me ask you just one question: Is God really real for you?” After hesitating a long moment, I said, “Yes. I’m sure he is. But I don’t know how I can prove it to you.” Her answer surprised and humbled me. “No, that’s not necessary,” she said. “As long as I know that he is real to you, that is reason enough for me to continue searching.”

-Thomas Green Darkness in the Marketplace

I was struck by how this passage speaks to the call to be witnesses at our places of work. Do we think we are called to convince people that God is real? There are a number of reasons why that is a daunting task. First, it is easily experienced as contentious. We are telling people what they should believe. That is rarely welcomed by people, especially in the workplace.

Second, even though Romans 1:20 states that God’s “invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made,” experiences in this fallen world can make it very difficult to convince someone that God is real. Even as people of faith, we struggle to believe that God is real when we encounter the trials of life. So we naturally lack confidence that we can provide convincing reasons that will overcome whatever obstacles exist for a not yet believer. Honestly, if I am tasked with convincing people that God is real, I want to complain to God that he makes that awfully difficult sometimes. I have heard people share their lives and walked away thinking, “How is that person ever going to believe in you, God, when they have had that terrible experience?”

It is comforting to remember that it is the Holy Spirit, not us, who is at work in people’s lives to bring them to faith in Christ. And though I would like for every not yet believer to have a Damascus road encounter like Saul/Paul, that is very rare. Instead it is a journey for most people, a mysterious combination of the Holy Spirit interacting with searching hearts. When we live amongst people in a way that shows them that God is real for us, we are awakening that longing/searching heart within them that was made for relationship with God. They then have a choice of how they will respond to that prompt.

The most significant part of my own journey to faith was when, at age 19, I ended up working amongst Christians at Lost Valley Ranch. It was the realization of how real God was to these Christians that caused me to search out whether Christianity was true. I had been around Christians before in my life, but I thought that their belief in God was just part of their church life that I did not share (nor was I interested in). It was at the ranch that I encountered people who based their entire lives on their faith in Christ, He was that real to them. And seeing how real He was to them challenged me to determine if He was real or not. I am sure that I had been around a lot of Christians before in my life, but I had never really seen how real Jesus was for them.

So what if instead of trying to convince people that Jesus is real, we focus on living, and working, amongst them in ways that they can see how real He is for us? Does that change how you think about being a witness for Christ in your workplace? Can you appreciate how your work colleagues might receive that kind of witness?

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.