Read Part one here.

Colossians 4:2-6 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the message, to speak the mystery of the Messiah, for which I am in prison, 4 so that I may reveal it as I am required to speak. 5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Your speech should always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.

Part one of this article covered verses verses 2-4 and some of five.

Col.4:5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time
I have already covered a note book to help you keep track of all your witnessing opportunities and prayer request. Acting wisely and making the most of your time is learning to recognize that some people are not willing to listen to the best defenses of Christianity. At some point during many witnessing opportunities it seems as if nothing you can say will even make that person more friendly toward Christianity, much less become a Christian. You don’t have to keep struggling with them. Matthew 7:6 says as much. “Matthew 7:6 (HCSB)
6 Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.” When you feel that they are making a real effort to turn everything you say into a club to use against you, you are free to graciously back out of the conversation. If you are so inclined you can also ask them that if you could convince them that Christianity is true, would they become a Christian, If they say no, then it isn’t a problem that reasoning with them can solve. It could be that they have a sin in their life that they are not willing to let go of, it could be an issue with a severe trauma that they have faced, or it could mean a misunderstanding about Church and God. If you can help them in the future with this issue you should, but if the conversation has gotten to that point both people might need to calm down a bit, so back out gracefully, pray for them, and try to find appropriate answers for whatever issues they have.

It is also a good idea to give them your e-mail address or Christian website URL in case they want to follow up on your conversation.

Salt isn’t just for seasoning food to make it taste better, before the advent of refrigeration salt was used as a preservative to keep meat from going bad. Your words to non-Christians should whenever possible have the same effect.
Without changing the Gospel itself make it taste as good as possible, in an effort to keep the person’s spiritual life from going bad.
While parts of the Gospel do sting, and we can not take all that sting away, we can minimize some of it’s sting. For example to just point blank telling a person that they are going to Hell, will sting a lot more than telling a person that all people have sinned, including yourself and deserve justice, but God loves us enough that he was willing to take the punishment for us, if we are willing to accept his free gift with gratitude. It is the same message with grace, wisdom, and seasoned in a way that the truth will be more palatable to non-Christians thrown in.

Colossians 4:2-6 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the message, to speak the mystery of the Messiah, for which I am in prison, 4 so that I may reveal it as I am required to speak. 5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Your speech should always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.

Col.4:2 Devote yourselves in prayer

You can not pray too much, while it is often impossible to close your eyes and bow your head, you can always say a word or two to God. This is especially important if you are about to talk to someone who is not a Christian. While ultimately it is up to God to save souls, he wants to work through us to accomplish this in the people who will ultimately be saved. We can’t do it alone, we need to talk to God about it so he can guide our speech, to keep us calm when the situation gets heated, and guide us to the right things to say when we have forgotten the proper response.  Being thankful to God is always important, not only does God enjoy and deserve praise, but it gets us in a mindset that we become more likeable people. If you act like you were weaned on a pickle people will be uninterested in following the lead of a bitter person, praising God helps prevent that.

Col. 4:3 3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the message, to speak the mystery of the Messiah, for which I am in prison,

While ultimately the “us” in this passage was written by Paul, but mostly about Silas and Timothy I believe that a principle can be applied that we should include in our prayers for ourselves, and our Christian leaders a request that God will give us opportunities  to speak about Christ, and if need be suffer for his words. Suffering for any cause now days is something that most think should be avoided but as exercise makes us grow as people physically, suffering gives us strength in other ways. It, of course, isn’t pleasant, but God can turn it for your good.

5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Your speech should always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.

Acting wisely begins even before you come across people who have questions about Christianity, or non-Christians.  If you don’t have answers for many of the questions that you know others have about Christianity, you won’t know how to answer each person, so studying the word of God, and the words of those write about Christian issues is a wise thing to do, but you should do this knowing that no one but Christ knows all the answers. Pick an area or two that you can absorb yourself in, and learn the names of resources that know the answers to things that you don’t specialize in.  That way when you come across questions that you can’t answer you can promise to get back to them with an answer.
It is also wise to keep a notebook on you (a phone app will suffice) You can write down questions that you need to research, contact info of the people who asked you those questions, and random things that you thought of during the day that might play an important part in your Christian walk, that you may need to remember later.
We often tell ourselves we will remember, but often we don’t WRITE IT DOWN!
Prayer request can be kept in your portable notebook as well.

Read more in part two