I recently saw a video that was taken in Colorado of a deer that went ‘shopping.’ On a fateful sunny afternoon, a deer walks up to a store just like a regular customer. It casually walks in as if on a mission to pick groceries for dinner. First, it was distracted by the sunglasses at the entrance. After a few minutes of admiring them, the deer was back again on the mission, and the next stop was where the crisps were. I’m sure it clicked to him that this was food. After checking out the store, the deer left without messing up anything. Thirty minutes later, the same deer showed up with the family. He walked in first, went straight to the counter looked at the attendant and turned back to look at the other deer who were still at the entrance as if to tell them, “It’s okay, you can come in.” This was a rare scene which does not frequently happen in that part of the world. I will not even mention how these poor animals would have been shooed if this happened in Kenya.
This video reminded me of the story of Philip and Nathanael in John chapter 1:43 onwards. The story begins with Jesus finding Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Notice Jesus finds Philip; just like He finds you and I. Two verses later, we see Philip finding his BFF Nathanael. Excited about following Jesus, Philip tells Nathanael about this cool guy they met from Nazareth. According to Nathanael, there is no way there can be a cool guy from Nazareth. Just the same way it was impossible to think of a cool guy from Kayole until Papa Jones appeared! Since Philip never liked to argue, just like me, he simply said, “Come and see.” (John 1:46) Do you know how powerful these three words are? Understand, we don’t have to convince anyone about who Jesus is; He’s never needed a marketing manager or a campaign strategy. We don’t have to be eloquent or impressive like the hawkers on City Hoppa selling Swahili booklets for kids and have memorized some 200 Swahili translations of common English words. Actually, what are chips in Swahili? Chipo?
Come and see. That’s all we need to know when it comes to telling our friends about Jesus. We just give our testimony and ask them to come to check Him out for themselves. The Lord will prove Himself to anyone, just as He did to Nathanael. But first of all, Jesus cannot minister to your friends unless you introduce them to Him. Remember our deer who experienced the grocery store and wanted the family to have the experience as well? If we are excited about Christ, we ought to also get excited about introducing our friends to Him. When Nathanael came to Jesus, he discovered that the Lord already knew all about him (John 1:48)! Nathanael came to check Jesus out, but before he could ask any questions, Jesus ministered to him first. Jesus knows us inside out, He knows our friends and family inside out, and when we introduce them to Him, the Holy Spirit will do the rest.
As the story was ending Jesus told Nathanael, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” Jesus was basically saying, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” When Jesus steps in nothing ever remains the same, it is one glory to another. So, when your friends start getting excited about Christ, tell them, “you ain’t seen nothing yet” (By the way, that’s bad English!)
