Next step of faith

Christians often talk about the importance of spending time both with believers for fellowship and non-believers for outreach. Currently I spend lots of time with both believers and non-believers, but I have started to realize that my time with non-believers did not so much serve the purpose of outreach as simply having a good time together. I say so because in the past a few months, I have become good friends with two students, whom I often comfortably work out and eat with under the façade of outreach, without actually doing anything that challenges me and them. Although I do include a good amount of my Christian beliefs in our conversations, I have not challenged them enough to take the next step of faith.  Just when I came to understand my lack of initiation and students’ stagnant growth of faith, I also came across a prayer quote, saying “Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.” This quote immediately reminded me of Jesus saying “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother…” In Basic Christianity, we read about Jesus’s absolute self-centeredness of his teaching and Jesus’s absolute unself-centeredness of his behavior. As someone who believes that we should try to do what Jesus did, I am better at serving others than confronting them with the “dangerous” message from Jesus. Of course, we don’t want to challenge people beyond what their faith can take, or more than what they are willing to sacrifice for our relationship with them, but in my case, I should have long ago made my step of faith to encourage other to make their step of faith. I have been fearful, but God gives me courage and strength.