A story came out this week from the set of The Chosen, and the part that stuck with me had nothing to do with the cameras. Elijah Alexander, one of the actors on the show, has been talking openly about how he came to the production not as a believer — and how his journey toward Jesus started not in a scene, not in a script, but in the conversations he had with Jonathan Roumie between takes. Off-camera. Waiting around. The unglamorous hours that never make the final cut.
Nobody wrote those lines. There was no lighting rig, no director calling for another pass. Just one man talking honestly about what he believes while the crew reset, and another man listening more carefully than anyone realized.
The gospel travels on ordinary sentences
We tend to imagine that faith gets passed along in big moments — a crusade, a powerful sermon, a crisis that drives someone to their knees. God does use those. But if you trace back how most people you know came to Christ, you will usually find something much smaller at the start. A coworker who said something true at the right moment. A neighbor who prayed out loud in a kitchen. An aunt who never made a speech about it but never hid it either.
Paul gave the church instructions for exactly this: “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Colossians 4:5-6). Notice what he does not say. He does not say, prepare a presentation. He does not say, wait until you have training. He says let your speech — your normal, everyday talking — carry grace and a little salt in it. Salt makes people thirsty. That is the whole idea. You are not trying to end the conversation. You are trying to make somebody want a drink.
You cannot script it, and you are not meant to
I talk with plenty of people who feel frozen about this. They want to say something about Jesus to a brother-in-law, a crew foreman, a girl in their dorm — and they are waiting until they can say it perfectly. So they say nothing for years.
Here is the freedom in it: the Holy Spirit is not asking you to write the script. Jesus told His disciples the Spirit would teach them what to say in the hour they needed it, and I watch Him keep doing it. Somebody in our church will tell me about a conversation and say, I don't even know where that came from. I do. That is the Spirit putting a sentence in your mouth that you did not prepare and could not have planned. Our job is to be available and honest. His job is the timing and the words. He is very good at both.
And He is not limited to the times we feel spiritual. Roumie was doing his job on a set. Most of the openings God gives you will come while you are doing yours — in the truck, on a job site, at a kitchen table after the plates are cleared.
When nothing seems to come of it
Some of you have spoken. You have prayed, you have said the true thing kindly, and as far as you can tell it landed on concrete. That hurts more than people admit, especially when the person is your own child.
Paul wrote about that too: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). You do not get to see the increase on your schedule, and God has never accepted your discouragement as evidence. Roumie almost certainly had no idea what those between-takes conversations were doing. He was simply being the same man off-camera that he was on it. That is the assignment. The harvest belongs to Someone else.
So keep the salt in your speech. Not the lecture — the salt. Answer the question when it comes. Say “I was praying about that” out loud instead of keeping it private. Let people see that Jesus is not your hobby but your life.
If there is one person you have been carrying, bring their name to prayer with us Tuesday at 11 in the morning. We will ask God together for openings and for words — not clever words, just true ones. I have seen Him answer that prayer in ways nobody scripted.
And remember who is actually doing the drawing. Long before you ever opened your mouth about Him, Christ was already at work on that person — patient, unhurried, unwilling to let go. Your ordinary sentences get to be part of what He was doing anyway. That is a good place to stand today.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.