1 Peter 3:15 - Sharing Your Story
The Shark in the Water
The summer after I graduated from Fresno State, my wife, Chris, and I moved down to the Los Angeles area so I could study at Talbot Seminary. To help make ends meet, I took a job as a substitute teacher. One day, I got a call to work at Norwalk High School. To give you an idea of the context, the homes around the high school all had bars on the windows; the community lived in fear. It was a pretty rough place.
When I walked into the school office, they told me, “Mr. Hawley, today you’re working with special education.” I thought, Great! In high school, I’d coached kids with Down syndrome and autism, and I was looking forward to it. But they just smirked at me and said, “That’s not the kind of special education you’re doing today. You’re going to be working with the worst kids in the school.”
I walked into the classroom and tried to stand there looking intimidating before the bell rang. It didn’t work. The students walked in, and it was like sharks smelling blood in the water. They shouted, “It’s a sub!” Some of them literally started dancing and yelling, “Raise the roof, it’s a sub!” I realized quickly that things were not looking good.
A few minutes into their assignment, one of the students noticed my wedding ring and asked, “Hey, are you married?” I thought, Okay, a little personal connection. This is great. I told them I was. Then the follow-up question caught me completely by surprise: “Are you cheating on your wife?”
Usually, people ask how you met or how long you’ve been married. That was not the follow-up I expected. I said, “No, I’m not.” They immediately started chanting, “Yeah, you are, you know you are!” Then they asked, “What about your wife? She cheating on you? Where does she work?” I told them she worked at Biola University. They yelled back, “You know she’s cheating on you at that university!”
The whole class was starting to spiral out of control. I had recently seen the aftermath of a classroom where a sub had lost it—desks were overturned and things were ripped off the walls. I was sitting there thinking, This is about to happen to me. Finally, I just said, “Okay, listen. I do not cheat on my wife, and she does not cheat on me. Do you want to know why?”
They stopped and said, “Yeah, tell us.” I took a breath and a little prayer. Just then, the door swung open and a Hispanic lady in her fifties, about five feet tall, walked in. She was the teacher’s aide. She saw the chaos and asked what was going on. I told her I was about to explain why I don’t cheat on my wife, and I asked if it was okay if I talked about my faith. She just said, “Go ahead.”
I was almost hoping she would say no and take over for the newbie! But she didn’t. So I told them, “You guys, my wife and I love Jesus. We follow Jesus, and we want to love each other like Christ loves the church. That’s why we don’t cheat on each other.”
The room, which had been on the verge of a riot, fell completely silent. Then, two students looked up at me with a mixture of pain and anger. One asked, “If God is so good, why did my cousin die from an overdose?” Another asked, “If God is so loving, why did my brother get shot?”
I was speechless. But that five-foot-tall teacher’s aide stood up and said, “Mija, because when you pray, you gotta pray and you gotta mean it just like he said!” I don’t even think I said that, but it sounded really good! For the rest of the class, that aide took those two students aside and spiritually counseled them. They were crying and praying together. It was like she had just been waiting for that breakthrough moment.
1 Peter 3:15 (NASB)
but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always [being] ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;
In that situation, I was kind of ready, but that teacher’s aide? She was definitely ready. God was gracious to allow her to walk in and speak up at just the right moment.
Why We Share Our Story
As we continue our “Foundations” series, we are looking at key practices of the Christian life. We’ve talked about embracing the gospel at a point in time—when we first come to faith—and then embracing the gospel over time—the process of becoming like Jesus. Today, we’re talking about how we share that through our story.
For many of us, sharing our faith can feel intimidating. Practices like reading the Bible or fellowship become more natural over time, but sharing our faith often feels less natural. We worry about tough questions, rejection, or feeling like a hypocrite. But I want to offer a different frame of reference: think less about “evangelizing” and more about simply sharing your story.
We live in a culture of stories. We share them over dinner, at cafes, or while out fishing. Jesus himself used parables—stories—to teach deep truths. When Peter says to be ready to give a defense, I believe the strongest defense we have is our own story. If you are in Christ, you have a story of how God rescued, forgave, and healed you—and how He continues to do so today.
Never think your story is too boring. We sometimes watch dramatic testimonies of people escaping gangs or addiction and think, Dang it, God, why couldn’t I have been addicted to crack so I’d have a better story? Don’t think that way. It’s not your story anyway; it’s God’s story of His work in your life.
Peter, the author of this letter, knew what it was like to struggle with this. He was the man who denied Jesus three times in front of a servant girl. Yet, filled with the Holy Spirit, he later preached the gospel and 3,000 people came to faith. He eventually died for his faith, asking to be crucified upside down because he didn’t feel worthy to die like Jesus. He writes to us as someone who understands our fears, speaking courage into our lives.
So, why do we share? The first part of the verse tells us: “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” We share because Jesus is Lord. If He is our Savior, we take seriously His command to go and make disciples and to be His witnesses. But it’s also about gratitude.
1 Peter 2:9-10 (NASB)
But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR [God’s] OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY.
God has called you by name. He knows everything about you and calls you His own possession. When we reflect on being called out of darkness and into His light, gratitude wells up. We realize the world is not the enemy; the world is full of people who need Jesus just like we do.
How to Share Our Story
There are three practical “how-tos” in Peter’s instructions. First, be ready. This means doing the literal work—praying, thinking, and even writing your story down. You should have a one-to-three-minute version ready for a quick conversation, and a longer version for when things go deeper. Being ready also means having an ongoing relationship with Jesus. If I tell you about my marriage but only talk about how I met my wife in 1993 and stop at 1996, you’d ask, “What’s happened in the last twenty years?” It’s the same with Christ. People don’t just want to hear how you met Him; they want to know what He’s doing in your life this week.
Second, remember that Jesus is the hero. Peter says to give a reason for the hope that you have. I am not the hope; I will fail and let people down. Jesus is the hope. We don’t boast about how smart we were to follow Him or how moral we are. We point to the One who died for sins and rose from the dead.
Third, share with Christ-like attitudes. Peter says to do this with “gentleness and reverence.” We remember that we were once not the people of God, which allows us to be gentle even with those who are hostile. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. We are simply rescued people talking to other people who need rescue. We trust the Holy Spirit to do the work of changing hearts; we are just the tools.
A Story of Grace: At a Point in Time
To illustrate this, I’ll share a bit of my own story. I was raised in a Christian home and had a Christian worldview, but I didn’t have a heart truly transformed by Christ. I struggled deeply with insecurity and a fear of rejection. To find belonging, I turned to the party lifestyle in high school. My last name is Hawley, and my nickname back then was “Alcoholie.” I was the guy who would bring an empty gallon container to a keg party, drink the whole thing, and black out.
But God began to get my attention through a gnawing sense of emptiness. The world’s pleasures were like a mirage in the desert. I was dying of thirst, and every time I ran to a “spring,” I ended up with a mouth full of sand. I felt more dehydrated and dead inside than before.
I remember going to the wedding of a classmate who walked with Christ. Seeing the integrity and love in her relationship was powerful. Then, a young junior high pastor named Oscar Diego died tragically at age 29. At his funeral, I saw hundreds of people talking about the eternal impact he had made. I was 19, and I realized that if I died in ten years, no one would have anything of substance to say at my funeral. I was sick of who I was.
For the first time, the gospel became alive to me. I recognized the weight of my sin—how I had hurt people and offended God. I went home, got on my knees, and cried out to Jesus for forgiveness. When I stood up, I felt a massive weight lifted off my shoulders. I jumped into a college ministry, met Chris, and eventually sensed a call to pastoral ministry.
A Story of Grace: Over Time
That’s the “point in time” story, but there is also a story of embracing the gospel “over time.” Even as a pastor, I had a shadow side. I found that I could use “being an awesome Christian” to feed my insecurity and need for accolades. When stress and anxiety hit, old patterns tried to slither back in.
I began to misuse alcohol again, telling my wife I was just having a glass of wine to unwind, but legalistically filling huge glasses and drinking them fast. I also turned to food for comfort. At one point, I was seventy pounds over my college weight, feeling awful physically, mentally, and spiritually.
When we started the Regen ministry here at The Well, I had to decide: am I going to be honest, or give safe answers? I remembered that God calls us into His marvelous light. I chose to share that, even as a pastor, I had struggled with alcohol. I didn’t get fired; I felt embraced and loved. As God set me free from using food as my go-to comfort, He gave me a passion for holistic health—spiritual, physical, and emotional. He helped me realize that my belonging doesn’t come from my performance, but from Him.
The Challenge
I want to leave you with three challenges this week.
First, craft your story. We have a PDF resource available on our website to help you. Take the time to actually write it out.
Second, share that story with a fellow believer. It’s often easier to start there, and your story will encourage them and help them open up about their own walk.
Third, share your story with someone who doesn’t know Jesus. Don’t force it or knock doors down, but pray that God would open a door for a natural opportunity.
Heavenly Father, thank you for the story You have given us. You have written the greatest story of rescue through Your Son. Help us to embrace the gospel not just at a point in time, but every single day. Give us the courage to share Your excellencies with those around us. In Jesus’ name, amen.