Third, WAIT for Jesus’ initiative and leading before you witness verbally. The Psalmist wrote, "Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord." (Ps 27:14). Jesus said, "It is the Spirit who creates-life, the flesh profits nothing." (John 6:63). Do you want to know why Jesus was so effective in ministering to others? He tells us in John 5:19, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner." Only Jesus knows the heart and the mind of man and when a person is ready to hear what we have to say about Jesus. Be patient and wait for Jesus’ leading through the Holy Spirit. He loves the individual better than you ever could and is so concerned with his salvation, He gave up his life to prove it. Trust in Jesus’ love, wisdom and timing.

Fourth, in the meantime, while waiting for Jesus’ timing and initiative, witness to your fellow employees and employers by living out the Gospel before them by LOVING them and through reaching out to their needs (2 Cor 5:14, Rom 2:4, 1 John 3:17-18). A missionary tells how he first reached a man and his family with the Gospel. This man and his family lived in a home made out of grass. It caught on fire and all that they had was destroyed. As this man was standing with his family watching his hut burn, all he could say or think was, "What am I going to do? I have no place to take my family until I can make other provisions!" The missionary standing off to the side thought to himself, "Ah! An opportunity to preach the Gospel." He walked up to the man and his family and said, "Jesus has a mansion for you in heaven." His method of bringing these men and woman to Christ that he knew on a daily basis was to give them a tract and tell them to repent and turn to Jesus.

This man still distracted by his needs just kept saying, "What am I going to do with my family?" All of the sudden the missionary heard himself say out of his mouth, "You and your family can come and stay with me until you can make other arrangements." It was too late, it had been said. He had no other choice. He had to take them in. Proverbs 16:1 states, "The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord."

Fifth, when Jesus does open that door through a question from them, or through leading you directly aggressively, the end result will be that what you SHARE will be ministered in love and received in love and bring the person to Jesus through love, or leave the best possible seed needed that will best aid in the process of bringing that person to the eventual place of receiving Jesus as his Savior and Lord.

A week after this missionary let this man and his family into his home, the man found a new home for his family. As he and his family were getting ready to leave the missionary’s home, the man turned to the missionary and said, "When our home was burning down you were trying to say something to me, but I was so distracted by my families immediate needs I could not listen to what you were saying. Would you please share with me what it was you were trying to say?"

The missionary did just that and led this man and his family to Jesus. John wrote,

"But whoever has the biological means of life, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in DEED and TRUTH." (1 John 3:17-18).

This missionary learned after ten years of preaching the Gospel that there is more to preaching the Gospel than just preaching the Gospel. He learned that his target people had to see Jesus first. They had to see Jesus through him in the way he loved and treated them. Once they saw Jesus through the way he loved them and ministered to their needs, he could not keep them away from the Gospel. They wanted whatever it was he had that made him the loving compassionate person toward their needs he had become.

What I would Like to do now is share with you from my own life experiences from two different job situations of my past. One involved working in a bank in a clerical setting, the other involved working in a production plant.

Several years ago I got a job in a bank as a file clerk. My responsibilities included managing the trust fund file room and keeping the accounting updated.

When I first started this job, as I always do with any job, I prayed:

Jesus, I am working for You, not men. I want to do a good job for You. I pray for Your anointing, power, grace and Holy Spirit to do my job heartily as for you, not for men.

I did not at first concern myself with witnessing to my fellow employees. I focused on learning my job and becoming good at it. I made sure I got to work at least ten minutes before starting time. I did more than I was asked. I was working for Jesus, not for men. Jesus said in Luke 17:10, "So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’" If men do not see Jesus in the way we work and handle our jobs, our words of the gospel will fall on deft ears. It will be a stumbling block to them. They will not be able to hear us. This is what Peter was talking about in 1 Peter 3:16:

"Keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame."

If our fellow employees and employers do not see Jesus in the way we work, they will not hear Jesus when we talk to them about him. They will be thinking to themselves,

But if we do our work diligently and heartily, following our bosses orders, then when we talk to them about Jesus, they will be hearing Jesus. There will not be anything else blocking them from hearing what you have to say.

As I began doing my job and got acquainted with all the employees I made a prayer list and began praying daily for each of them in the following way:

Jesus, I pray for Your anointing, power, grace and Holy Spirit upon me and the following employees (whom I would mention by name). I ask You to tear down the strongholds of Satan over them and over me.

Jesus, I pray for Your anointing, power, grace and Holy Spirit over myself that You would free me from my own ideas, thoughts and strife about these individual employees and that You would fill me full of Your Holy Spirit, ideas, thoughts and strife about how to relate to them. I make myself available to You to use me in their lives to bring them to your self and pray that You would bind me and keep me from doing anything that is not of You and loose me to do only that which is of You in a spirit of love and Your presence. I pray and ask You to do this by faith in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I then would get it off my mind and focus on being a good employee and doing my job well.

As time went on I began to get acquainted with the individual employees. One of the first employees I met was what I believe was a born again Christian, but who was involved in a Christian faith that encouraged self-religious strife. Before I came she had been going around the office to the twenty or more employees telling them about events going on in her church and trying to get them to attend. Their lack of response caused her much frustration. As a result, she was very happy when I came onto the office team for now she felt she had someone to fellowship with and also someone she could share her frustrations with. Because this was true she kept trying to get together with me. I was not closed to it, but (I can now say this in retrospect) the Holy Spirit kept circumventing us from doing so.

The next employee that I met was the receptionist. She was a religious person but very deeply involved in astrology. She would go around the shop sharing with each individual their astrology for the day and any new information that she had on astrology.

Another lady I met was an administrator who had really bad allergies, so bad she appeared as if always crying. Another lady I met was the vice-president’s secretary. She was a very beautiful woman who had a very bad mouth: a four letter word vocabulary.

As time went on I would daily pray for each of these woman’s needs as I became aware of them,

Jesus, please free my sister of her religious self strife and bring her to rest. Please heal the lady of her allergies. Please open the receptionist’s eyes to see that You and You only are the answer to people’s needs, not astrology or any other system that does not point to You as the answer to their needs. Jesus, please open the vice-president’s secretary’s eyes to see her need of you and free her from her inward misery.

I had an hour lunch break each day. The bank was located on an outdoor mall in a downtown area, so daily I would take a half hour of my lunch time and go out on the mall and aggressively share my faith with anyone I could find willing to hear what I had to say. My approach was to use an Evangelism Tract. I would walk up to a total stranger and say,