The righteous are bold as a lion.

You are the righteous. That's not a compliment, it's your legal standing before God, bought with the blood of Jesus. Boldness isn't something you work up. It's what comes out of somebody who knows what they've been made.

Telling people

It's a testimony, not a pitch

You're not selling anything and you don't have to win a debate. You're a person telling another person what happened to you, and nobody can argue you out of your own story.

• Keep it to about a minute. What your life was like, what happened, what's different now. Practice it out loud once so you don't ramble.
• Ask before you preach. “Can I tell you something that happened to me?” costs nothing and changes everything about how it lands.
• Don't hide the hard part. The specific thing you were actually delivered from is usually the part that reaches somebody.
• Then invite them. Don't just inform people, invite them! Ask if they'd like to trade their dirty rags for His righteousness today. People say yes far more often than you'd think, and nobody ever asked them.
• Leave room for no. If someone isn't interested, be kind and let it go. You're responsible for the offer, not the outcome.
• Love them either way. If your kindness disappears the second they say no, it wasn't kindness.

“You don't know what I've done”

Tell them about Saul.

This is the objection you'll hear most, and it's the easiest one to answer.

Before he was Paul, he was Saul, and he made his life's mission to hunt down and kill Christians because he thought he was doing God a favor. Not a mistake. A campaign. He held the coats while they stoned Stephen to death.

And God knocked him off his horse, forgave him, restored him, and then empowered him to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ across the known world and write most of the New Testament.

If Saul can be forgiven, restored, and empowered, then anyone can! Including whoever is standing in front of you, and including you.

Praying for people

Short, kind, and out loud

Offering to pray for a stranger feels enormous the first time and almost normal by the tenth. Most people say yes, and a lot of them are quietly moved that anybody asked.

1. Ask permission

   “Can I pray for you real quick?” If they say no, say “no problem at all” and mean it.

2. Ask what's going on

   Pray for the thing they actually said, not the thing you assumed. Listen first.

3. Keep it short and plain

   Twenty seconds. Normal words, eyes open, a hand on the shoulder only if they're comfortable. Don't perform, don't preach at them through the prayer, and don't announce their business to the room.

4. Then ask how they feel

   Not to prove anything, just check in. Sometimes something has shifted and sometimes nothing has. Both are fine to say out loud.

Healing

He still does this

Jesus healed people constantly, and then He told His followers to go do the same. That instruction was never withdrawn. You are allowed to pray for a sick person and expect God to move!

Be honest about how it actually goes. Sometimes you'll pray and something changes right in front of you and it will wreck you in the best way. Sometimes you'll pray and nothing visible happens. Both will occur, and neither one is a scorecard on your faith.

• Never blame the sick person. Telling somebody their pain remains because they didn't believe hard enough is cruel and it isn't in the Bible. Don't do it, and don't stand there quietly while somebody else does.
• Never tell anyone to stop their medication or skip a doctor. That isn't faith, it's danger, and God is not asking you to gamble with someone's body.
• Keep praying anyway. The people who see the most breakthrough are simply the ones who kept asking after it didn't work the first several times.
• Stay with the person. If nothing happens, don't disappear. Sitting with somebody in unresolved suffering is its own ministry and it's the one most people skip.

His voice

Learning to recognize Him

God speaks! Usually not in a booming voice. More often it's a thought that's kinder and clearer than your own, a verse that won't leave you alone, a nudge toward a particular person, a picture in your mind, something a friend says that lands far heavier than they meant it to.

How to tell it's Him. It will never contradict the Bible, it will draw you toward Him rather than away, and it will produce peace even when it's asking something hard. Condemnation, panic, and vagueness are not His accent.

When you think He's said something about another person, hold it humbly. Say “I think God might be saying”, not “thus says the Lord.” Encourage, build up, comfort. Never use it to direct somebody's marriage, money, or medical decisions. That's not what it's for, and people have been badly hurt that way.