Livora Gracely

Before We Speak

Sharing the gospel is often imagined as knowing what to say. Yet a meaningful conversation begins with something just as important: knowing how to listen.

The person before us is not an audience waiting for our message. They come with a story, questions, experiences, doubts, and sometimes wounds we know nothing about. If we enter the conversation only prepared to speak, we may deliver the right words while missing the person entirely.

This article explores another way of coming close—prepared to share the good news of Jesus, but equally prepared to hear the person receiving it. The conversation can move in both directions: speaking and listening, explaining and understanding.

The gospel does not become weaker when we listen.

Sometimes listening is what allows someone to hear.

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The Space Between

He had been thinking about the conversation the entire way there.

He knew how he wanted to begin.

He had the verse in mind. He had even imagined some of the questions that might come up and how he might answer them.

The person sitting across from him was not a stranger. They had met several times before. Coffee arrived, the conversation settled in, and eventually the opening he had been waiting for appeared.

He began talking about Jesus.

There was no strong objection.

No argument.

The person across the table listened politely, nodded now and then, and then said something that had never appeared in any of his preparation.

“My father used to talk about God a lot too.”

Then silence.

A few seconds later, another story began to emerge.

About home.

About church.

About a father who was one person on Sundays and someone else during the rest of the week.

The conversation that had been carefully prepared to explain the gospel suddenly became a place where someone was opening an old wound.

The verse was still true.

The gospel had not changed.

But now there was a human being standing between the message and the response.

And human beings never arrive as blank pages.

The Distance

When Jesus said that the gospel must first be preached to all nations, He said it in a difficult passage.

There was rejection.

There was persecution.

There was betrayal.

There were people who would be brought before rulers simply because they followed Him.

And in the middle of that landscape comes Mark 13:10:

“And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.”

What is striking is that Jesus did not wait for the world to become more welcoming.

The good news would move through a world filled with resistance.

That keeps us from romanticizing what it means to share the gospel. People will not always be interested. A good explanation will not always lead to agreement. Even a warm relationship does not guarantee that someone will believe.

But none of this makes the task hopeless.

Jesus knew the terrain before His disciples ever entered it.

He was not sending them into an ideal world.

He was sending them into the real one.

And that is where distance becomes interesting.

Nicodemus came at night. He already knew a great deal about religion, yet he still carried questions.

The Samaritan woman met Jesus beside a well. Her history was different, her place in society was different, and so was the conversation Jesus had with her.

Then there was Nathanael, who carried a prejudice before he had even met Jesus:

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip did not try to win the argument.

His answer was wonderfully simple:

“Come and see.”

Distance is not always overcome by a longer argument.

Sometimes a person simply needs to come close enough to see for themselves.

The Other Chair

There is something easy to forget when we talk about sharing the gospel.

We usually see the conversation from the chair of the person bringing the message.

Do I understand enough?

Can I explain it clearly?

Which verse do I use?

What if they ask something I cannot answer?

Those concerns are understandable.

But there is another chair at the table.

And the person sitting there carries a life we cannot fully see.

They may have known Christians who were deeply kind.

They may also have known Christians who made them want nothing to do with Christianity.

Perhaps they are not rejecting Jesus at all. Perhaps they simply cannot yet separate Jesus from someone who once hurt them.

Some carry intellectual questions.

Others carry moral ones.

Some have no questions at all. Life seems to be going well, and they do not feel as though they are searching for anything.

Others may want to listen but fear what believing could mean for their family, friendships, work, or sense of identity.

Two people can therefore hear exactly the same words and receive them very differently.

The gospel is the same.

The hearer is not.

This is where a one-to-one conversation can become valuable.

Not because private conversation is some superior evangelistic technique, but because proximity allows us to see the person we had previously only imagined.

We can stop talking.

We can listen.

And we may discover that the question we prepared to answer is not the question they are actually carrying.

The Wrong Door

Even people who walked closely with Jesus sometimes misread the moment.

One day, people brought children to Him.

The disciples saw what was happening and intervened.

They stopped them.

Perhaps they thought they were protecting Jesus’ time. Perhaps they believed more important matters deserved His attention. Mark does not tell us everything that was going through their minds.

But the result is clear.

The very people who might have helped others come closer to Jesus were standing in the way.

Jesus was not pleased.

“Let the little children come to me.”

There is a quiet warning here for anyone carrying good news.

It is possible to stand very close to Jesus and still become an obstacle to someone who is trying to approach Him.

Not always because our message is wrong.

Sometimes because of the way we carry it.

The desire to see “results” can turn a conversation into pressure.

The desire to provide answers can make us stop listening.

And confidence that we know the truth can slowly become confidence that we already understand the person sitting in front of us.

We may not.

So perhaps “effective” needs to mean something larger than securing a decision.

Some conversations end with belief.

Some end with another question.

Some appear to lead nowhere.

And some bear fruit years later, when a person suddenly remembers a sentence, an act of kindness, or someone who once treated them with dignity.

We rarely know exactly where we are standing in another person’s journey.

The Long Road

Philip once met an Ethiopian official on a road.

For anyone hoping to share the gospel, the situation almost seems too perfect.

The man was already reading Isaiah.

Philip approached and listened to what he was reading.

But he did not immediately take over the conversation.

“Do you understand what you are reading?”

The question gave the man room to respond.

“How can I, unless someone explains it to me?”

Only then did the conversation open.

Acts 8 moves quickly from there. Philip explained the good news about Jesus, and the journey eventually led to baptism.

But not every biblical story moves at that speed.

In Athens, Paul spoke to people whose intellectual world was very different from his own.

Some mocked him.

Some wanted to hear more.

Some believed.

One message.

Several responses.

Not everything fits neatly into two boxes marked success and failure.

Paul himself later offered a much quieter picture:

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”

That sentence frees the person sharing the gospel from two opposite burdens.

We do not need to lose heart as though everything depended on our ability.

But neither do we have reason to become overconfident, as though speaking well, knowing Scripture, building a good relationship, or mastering communication could manufacture faith.

We plant.

Someone else may water.

Sometimes we never even see the tree.

The Companion

There is another part of Mark 13 that can easily disappear when our attention is drawn to the difficulties Jesus describes.

Jesus did not only tell His disciples what they would face.

He also told them what would happen when they found themselves in the middle of it.

When they were arrested and called upon to speak, they were not to live anxiously rehearsing every word beforehand.

“For it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.”
(Mark 13:11)

That changes the atmosphere of the whole passage.

Jesus did not say the road would be easy.

He did not promise that His disciples would always have the perfect answer.

He gave them something else:

presence.

The God who sends also provides the Helper for those He sends.

Later, before the church began moving outward from Jerusalem, Jesus told His followers that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and that they would become His witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

The order is beautiful.

Not:

Go as far as you can and find out whether you are strong enough.

But:

You will receive power.

You will be My witnesses.

Then the journey moves outward.

The presence of the Holy Spirit does not make human preparation unnecessary. Philip still needed to know the Scriptures. Paul still had to think. The apostles still learned how to speak with people from very different backgrounds.

But they were never asked to carry the weight of another person’s salvation on their shoulders.

Someone else was already at work in the room.

Three Things

Perhaps these are the things worth carrying when we sit across from someone.

First: do not be discouraged by the distance.

The person in front of us may carry objections, wounds, prejudices, or a long and complicated history.

That does not mean the door is closed.

Nathanael began with a dismissive remark about Nazareth.

A few steps later, he was standing before Jesus.

We rarely know how far someone truly is from a door.

Second: do not become too confident in yourself.

We can explain.

We can answer.

We can live in such a way that our words and our lives do not contradict one another.

But a human being is not a problem that can be solved by a better presentation.

Faith is not a trophy won by the most persuasive speaker.

We carry the good news.

We are not the Savior.

Third: do not walk as though you have arrived alone.

This may be the easiest thing to forget.

Before the disciples faced the world, Jesus already knew what that world was like.

Before they opened their mouths, He had already promised the Holy Spirit.

Before Philip met the Ethiopian official, the Spirit was already directing him toward that road.

Before the church began moving toward the ends of the earth, power to become witnesses had already been promised.

Christian courage, then, has a rather unusual shape.

It does not say,

“I know I can do this.”

Neither does it say,

“There is no way I can do this.”

It walks closer.

It listens.

It speaks when the moment comes.

And then it releases what was never ours to control.

Somewhere at a table, two cups of coffee may already be growing cold.

Someone is still talking about his father.

The verse that had been carefully prepared has not even been opened.

The conversation has wandered far from the original plan.

But perhaps it has not failed at all.

Perhaps, for that day, the distance that needed to be crossed was not the distance between a person and an answer.

Only the distance between two human beings.

And when that distance becomes smaller, we may never know who had already been at work on the other side.

One Step

So begin smaller than we might imagine.

Think of one person, not everyone.

Not someone to turn into a project, but someone we genuinely want to know.

Pray for them.

Spend time with them when the opportunity comes.

Listen a little longer than usual.

Discover the questions they are actually carrying, rather than the questions we came prepared to answer.

If the door to conversation opens, speak simply about why Jesus matters to us and what is good about the good news He brings.

And if a question comes that we cannot answer, there is no shame in saying, “I don’t know yet. I’d like to learn more about that.”

If all they want to do that day is tell their story, listen.

If they want to know more, walk a little farther with them.

If they say no, respect them.

And when the conversation is over, resist the urge to measure the result too quickly.

Pray for them again.

Continue treating them with the same kindness.

Because perhaps we are planting.

Perhaps we are watering something another person planted long before us.

Or perhaps, without realizing it, we have just stepped into a conversation God had already begun preparing.

We do not need to carry someone through the entire journey in a single encounter.

Sometimes our part is simply one step closer.

Then we entrust the next step to the Spirit who was already there before we arrived.