How Did Jesus Use Questions?

In last week's message, we explored how evangelism might change for us if we used more question marks than exclamation points. What if our immediate goal was not to get people to agree with us, but to get them to wonder about God and to ask great questions? What if we didn't pressure ourselves to be the "Bible Answer Man" and focused on raising questions that invite wonder?

We spent a little bit of time (too little) looking at how Jesus used questions. Here is the ultimate Bible Answer Man! There was no Bible question He couldn't answer, and so He never had the angst we have of "what if they ask a question I don't know the answer to?" Even with all that, He still chose to use questions continually! Apparently, Jesus wanted people to wonder about truth more than to have it spoon-fed to them. If it is a technique that Jesus favored, would we be wise to ignore it? (Do you see what I did there?)

I took a little bit of time to look at a long list of questions that Jesus asked (over 100!), and I grouped them into categories. I then summarized similar questions and worded them in ways that we might ask the same questions to our friends and neighbors. Just click on this website to get that list: http://doiop.com/JesusQs.

At the bottom of this list are more resources - a great book on using questions for evangelism, and three websites that list many of the questions Jesus asked.

I recommend printing out the list, reading through it several times, and keeping a copy handy (in your notebook, in your Bible). Use this to keep you thinking in terms of asking wonder-ful questions more than trying to have all the answers. We don't know all the answers, but we believe we know where all the answers can be found.

Use more question marks than exclamation points.