10 Questions to Ask Someone to Get Them to Talk About Eternity

Are there times in your life when you wished you had shared the gospel with someone but you didn’t? You regretted it later, right?

Many times God puts people in our lives so that we can influence them for Christ. Unfortunately, sometimes we pass up opportunities to plant seeds in people who have yet to believe in Jesus.

A Missed Opportunity

After I received my bachelor’s degree, I worked as a network administrator for a college.

It was one of my favorite jobs because there were so many great students as well as staff.

One of the people that I worked with often was the Director of Admissions. I’ll call him Jeff.

Jeff was a retired Master Chief Petty Officer from the U.S. Navy. He recruited men and women into the navy from college campuses and he was really good at it.

That was the main reason he was promoted so many times during his career and made it to the top. He was a master salesman.

Jeff was also a man’s man: in a group setting, people would look to him to take the lead. In the locker room, he would be the jock. On a football team, he would be the quarterback.

He was charming and he knew how to get his way.

Unfortunately, along with that charm came a slew of bad habits. Jeff had the mouth of a sailor, exaggerated the truth often, and he liked women just a little too much, even though he was married.

As I was leaving my job at the college, there was a rumor that was alleging that he was having an affair with one of his employees.  Unfortunately, the evidence didn’t look like it was in Jeff’s favor.

Of the 2 years that I worked at the college, I never initiated a conversation with Jeff about God or eternity. I regret it now because I wish I had planted some seeds. I used to hang out with him almost everyday but never once did I steer one of our conversations towards eternity.

I’ve lost touch with Jeff but I hope that someone else can come along who will be more faithful than I was, and share the love of God with Jeff.

10 Questions to Ask Anyone So They Can Start Talking About Eternity

In last week’s blog post, I shared with you Jesus’s example of how He struck up a conversation with the Samaritan woman to talk about eternity.

Jesus started out by initiating a conversation about what was in front of them (water), and then transitioned from talking about water to talking about “living water”.

So step 1 from last week’s blog post was to strike up a conversation about whatever is in front of you.

Step 2 is to ask a question to transition from talking about the everyday things to talking about eternity.

You can do this by asking a combination of the following questions:

1. When you are ready to make the transition ask, “Can I ask you an interesting question?” Wait for the other person to say, “sure” or “yes”. When you say that you want to ask an interesting question, it sparks the other person’s curiosity and it’s a smooth indicator that you are about to change subjects.

Use this question in combination with one of the other questions below to steer the conversation towards eternity.

2. “I’m working on a project in which I’m asking people what they think happens after they pass away. May I please ask you what you think will happen to you after you pass away?”

This is my favorite question to ask. It’s very easy-going and you’ll find that almost everyone has given some thought to the question of what happens after a person dies.

I got this idea from Mark Cahill’s excellent book which I found to be quite effective.

3. “Where are you on your spiritual journey?”

4. “What is happening spiritually in your life?”

5. “If you died tonight, are you 100% sure that you would go to heaven?”

6. “When you die, what do you think is on the other side?”

7. “What do you think is out there when you walk out of here?” -Credit to Mark Cahill

8. “What is the one thing that matters to you the most while you are alive in this world? Why?”

9. “If you die and you go to heaven, what question would you ask God?”

10. “If you died and went to heaven, and the angel at the gate asked you, ‘Why should I let you in?’ What would your answer be?”

This last question has special significance because it will build on next week’s blog post in which you’ll find out the one missing ingredient that is left out the most when witnessing to someone.

This missing ingredient will take your witnessing to the next level.  You’ll plant more seeds of faith than you’ve ever planted before.  You’ll witness the conviction of the Holy Spirit right before your eyes.

And if you use this missing ingredient regularly, you will see people come to Christ and become disciples.

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[image credit to Hunter McGee and Flickr]