May 19, 2013

How To Give Jesus To Others In The Work Place

Steve Harmon shares some stories of sharing Jesus in work place. 

I wanted to give practical tips and tools on how to affect your work environment. The last job I had I was working at a flooring shop, and was an assistant manager. There were 3 other employees there and one was a Christian. The guy who was a Christian, I got to pray with him often. Sometimes the spirit would fall during prayer and we’d get pretty toasted. Obviously we would pray in private. One of the other employees was really resistant against anything about God. So I would be careful not to talk about God around him in the way that sounds preachy. The only way I would do it is when he would ask about me and how my weekend went, or something like that. I would tell him the truth and just simply share testimonies of healings or miracles that God did.. He liked those. But I knew not to over-do it or it would sound like I’m pushing it on him.

One day I saw him walking in the warehouse and the Lord spoke to me and said, “Hey Steve, I really love that guy.” Later, he and I were casually talking about sports and then I felt it was safe to tell him what God told me. He looked at me and said, “Are you serious?” I said, “Yeah.” His eyes started to water up and he said, “You don’t understand how much that means to me.” He was really moved by that word, which was so simple. When we were leaving he came over to my car to shake my hand and to thank me for the word. When he shook my hand, he stopped and paused. The next day he came over to me in private. He looks around to see if we were alone and tells me, “Dude, when I shook your hand I felt this tingling all over my body. What was that?” I just told him, “That was Jesus loving on you my friend. He just wanted you to know He was real.” The guy was blown away.

There were times when we had customers come in and they would have injuries and I would pray for them and Jesus would heal them. Then I would help load their tile into their car. I’d get to pray with customers and prophesy over them when I felt it was right. You have to learn by wisdom and discernment whether or not you should be doing that. Some people will get really offended, but the only way to learn is that you have to take risks and try it out.

Another job I had was when I worked at Bank of America and I was a teller. Nobody there was a Christian. One lady was a catholic. The lady who was catholic, we became good friends. We would go to lunch and I would share testimonies. One thing I love about Catholics is that they usually don’t get weirded out or freaked over miracles. I would talk to her about Jesus in a way I knew she wasn’t familiar with. I talked about His kindness and His joy and gave her examples of what that looked like in my life. Because she had a certain image of God that was distant and cold, I knew what message she needed to hear. Every person has a view of God and by understanding what that looks like will determine how you’ll minister and what you’ll say.

Other employees would again ask me about my week or weekend and I would tell them about how God would touch people from the ministry we would do. Now, I wouldn’t say stuff like that every time, but I would do it every so often. You don’t want to over saturate with the same stuff over and over, because then again, you’ll start to sound preachy and pushy. You have to learn to gage how much is enough God talk. For everyone, the level is different. Not everything you talk about should be about God. Talk about movies, sports, or whatever. The thing is, when you use testimonies to witness, you are not directly preaching at them. It’s more indirect and doesn’t have the pushy element, but it can if it’s over done. When you come at them and tell them that “Jesus is the way,” then you are making a statement that’s definitive. That won’t go over so well in every case. When you testify of the works of God, they speak for them self and cause the person to do their own thinking. When you talk about miracles, it’s hard for a person to rationalize away something being merely coincidence. When you give so many stories, it’s even harder to rationalize.

Now, besides just talking about testimonies of God’s love, showing love to your fellow employees is where it’s all at. If you just have stories, but you leave a bad taste in their mouth because of your conduct, it takes the effect away from power of your testimonies. You have to be the one at your job that doesn’t complain like the rest. You have to be the one who will serve others. Don’t let them serve you. Go out of your way to bless them. Many times an employee would want to trade with me a work day so they could have off. If I didn’t have prior plans I was definitely going to trade with them. Sometimes I would buy them lunch or bring them gifts. I would compliment them on their clothes or something they did well on. I would speak to their strengths and let them know that I notice what they’re good at. I would get things for them so they wouldn’t have to. I wanted to help them out as much as I could. It’s all about serving them, making them feel more important than you. That’s just showing Jesus in the raw.

There were times when I would get to pray for them for healing. Sometimes one would have complained about a headache or neck pain and I would say, “Let me pray for that really quick.” I wouldn’t ask them if I could pray for it, I would simply do it so they couldn’t say no. If they didn’t get healed, they would be blessed that I would care to pray for them and show concern. If they did get healed, they were stunned and excited.

When you use all of these elements; serving others, testimonies of God’s love, praying for them, giving prophetic words, all of these give you the best chance of causing drastic change in someone. They’re all very important. The thing about reaching people in the work place comes down to building relationship. It can be a slow process, so you don’t want to rush it. Rushing things and ministering out of impulse will cause people to back away from you. You have got to be gentle and casual. That’s how God is with us. Yes, God wants to change us, for obvious reasons, but it is a process. And the best way to yield the greatest results in touching others is to utilize patience from rest.

You are an ark carrying His glory, so open up your ark and release Jesus to people.. It’s about love. It’s about them. It’s about Jesus :D

2 comments:

  1. Oh This was really good. I have felt for a long time that our jobs are His divine placements for our lives to shine the light of Christ to others daily. I used to get almost depressed about going to work...after all it was a part of the curse, right? Well as followers of Christ we have the privileged to re-present Him to our co-workers. This is our mission field or at least part of it as long as we continue working there. I have come to enjoy my job and see it as an adventure and begin to really pray for the staff I work with. This was a great word of encouragement and everyone that puts in a 40+- work week should read this ...Thanks Steve and PM!

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