Sitting in this small room, it was hard to escape the load of questions that were coming at me. I could not answer them fast enough, and when a simple “I don’t know” was all I could say, it fell upon deaf ears, and was quickly replaced by the next question. As I sat in my chair, trying to answer deep questions about faith, religion, and the reason for all the bad in the world (all in a language I have yet to become very comfortable with) I began to pray for wisdom and for a word from the Holy Spirit.

As I was listening to this persons philosophy about life and eternity (one he claimed to be a mixture of Buddhism and Christianity), I sensed that the Holy Spirit was beginning to speak to my heart. I realized that the heart of this man’s questions was not about how many years had passed between Christ’s time on earth and the first Gospel; the question was not about why bad things happen to good people. As he was speaking, the question that came to my head was, “but who do you say that I am?” (Mathew 16:15)

When it was my turn to fill the void of silence between us, I asked him, “and who do you think Jesus is?” It was this question that turned our “spiritual conversation” into an encounter with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I did not need to have a deep, smart sounding idea about his perspective on life, or a neat little one liner to make my faith sound catchy or cute ( my German is not that good). I gave him the Gospel. I was able to explain to him what the Bible says about Jesus, and who he said he was. In the end, that is all I have. I left him with the assignment to read the Bible for himself.

In this great scene in Matthew, Peter answers the question with, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Is this not what our hearts sang when we turned to Christ, and is it not the answer we want to hear from those with whom we share? However, it is Jesus response to this answer that rang in my ears as I was driving home, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” No matter how many hard questions I can answer, or how many debates I can come out of, I will never convert someone outside the work of the Holy Spirit. I am responsible to share with people who the Jesus of the Bible is, but it is God who reveals it to their hearts.