Prepared For Anything That Comes Your Way

Prepared for Anything That Comes Your Way

If someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way. . . . Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. 1 Peter 3:15-16

We have all heard the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” which has been part of the movement since its founding in 1907 by Robert Baden-Powell.

“Be prepared for what?” someone once asked Baden-Powell.

“Why, for any old thing,” he said.

Think about that for a minute. “For any old thing”—that’s a pretty broad spectrum of knowledge to store up to be prepared for whatever might come our way. And even though I still think that “I don’t know” is a perfectly respectful and appropriate answer, I also know that the more we know about what we are doing, the more we can usually get people to listen.

I found that especially true in coaching. Players would listen because of the respect they needed to show initially to us as coaches. However, when it became apparent to a player that a coach didn’t really know what he was talking about, the player tuned him out.

Coach Noll, our head coach when I was with the Pittsburgh Steelers, always wanted his staff to be sure that we understood what we were teaching the players. We were teachers first, and our goal was to prepare our players for as many situations as possible—to be able to think and be prepared for whatever might happen.

The same is true when God tells us to go out and speak about Him. He wants us to be ready when someone asks us why we believe what we believe. Why we accepted Jesus Christ into our lives. Why we follow Christ and try to live—hopefully it shows—as He wants us to live.

“Be prepared.” Any moment could be a time when He works through you to change a life for all eternity.

Uncommon Key > You don’t need to be a Bible scholar to tell someone how Jesus Christ has changed your life. Look for an opportunity to talk to someone today.