The “Last Week’s Sermon” Game or Are You Ready to Talk About Jesus?

The “Last Week’s Sermon” Game or Are You Ready to Talk About Jesus?

I’d like to invite you to play a game I made up. We are all familiar with the scripture: "...preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching." But, are you really ready?
Here’s my game: Imagine that someone asks you to tell them about Jesus and what he means to you and why he is important, and your response has to come from Last Week’s Sermon.

To play the game, you pretend to have a conversation where someone asks you a leading question about your faith or about Jesus and you respond by using last week’s message along with your own personal references and knowledge to tell the person about Jesus Christ.
It’s a game, but the rules are loose. You are certainly allowed to use other scripture references and certainly you should use some of your own personal stories and knowledge, but the main part of your response should come from the content of the week’s message.
Here’s a sample. “It’s Christmas and everyone is talking about Christ and I know that you go to church. What do you say about the meaning of Christmas and Jesus and religion and all that stuff?”

Like Nehemiah (Neh 2:4), shoot a quick prayer of thanks toward heaven and say: “I’m glad you asked. Just last week at church we heard a story about Jesus that came from a book in the Old Testament by a prophet that lived 800 years before Jesus even came to earth! BTW, a prophet is a messenger that brings God’s message to people, and this prophet, Isaiah, predicted that Jesus would be born and he would bring light and be a light for his people who were in the middle of a terribly dark period of their history. Isaiah was writing to a people that were have super hard times and they were cursing the government and life in general. Isaiah told them that a light would come in the form of a child and that light would be the Wonderful Counselor, the Might God, The Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.
“And if you think about each name, you’ll get why the coming of Jesus means so much to me and to everyone: Jesus is God come to earth. He lived with us and walked with us for a season and then returned to God the Father to plead our case before his throne. We can call God our Everlasting Father because of restored relationship.

“My own connection with my real father has been tenuous at best. I met him only a couple of times in my whole life, and although he said that he prayed for me, it’s been hard to relate to him as a father and now he’s passed away. So thinking of God as my Everlasting Father is really meaningful for me.”

You get the idea. Use Last Weeks Sermon as a reference and as a springboard to talk about your relationship with Jesus. Use the game to mentally practice what you might say so you’ll be ready when God sends you someone with a question.