"...so that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made know to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." St. Paul in Ephesians 3:10
Who as the last person with whom you talked about your faith? I don't mean the last person you saw at church with whom you talked about the things going on there. I mean the last person with whom you discussed why you believe in Jesus and what He has done for you. Chances are, if you are like so many Christians in our nation, you may not actually be able to remember when that last conversation took place.
I don't say this to make you feel bad (though there is a place for us to feel righteous guilt at failing to do the things God would have us do). Rather, I want to look at this from another standpoint. If God wants to communicate the message of Good News to the world, how is He going to go about doing that? He could show signs and wonders in the skies, but we have a way of explaning those thing away. He could speak individually to every person on the planet, but it seems that He does that kind of thing fairly rarely.
Instead, God has chosen to spread His message through those who belong to Him. That's what Paul wrote about to the Ephesian Christians in the verse above, a verse which still speaks to our role in the spread of the message of Good News. God spreads His Good News through the Church. That's you and I. It's not merely those who are called and gifted to be evangelists, or pastors, or missionaries, or the like. It's all of us.
I would argue that the reason so many of us are uncomfortable with that thought is simply because we haven't regularly done it. Really, all I say we need is to practice at it. True, it's going to the Spirit who guides the response on the part of the other person, but our sharing of the Good News is something that becomes less frightening when we actually do it. We may never get over the butterflies in the stomach, but it gets less daunting when we've actually done it a few times. Sure, we'll find that the conversations will go in vastly different ways, but only doing it, only practicing it, will get us used to doing what God created the Church to do.
Who as the last person with whom you talked about your faith? I don't mean the last person you saw at church with whom you talked about the things going on there. I mean the last person with whom you discussed why you believe in Jesus and what He has done for you. Chances are, if you are like so many Christians in our nation, you may not actually be able to remember when that last conversation took place.
I don't say this to make you feel bad (though there is a place for us to feel righteous guilt at failing to do the things God would have us do). Rather, I want to look at this from another standpoint. If God wants to communicate the message of Good News to the world, how is He going to go about doing that? He could show signs and wonders in the skies, but we have a way of explaning those thing away. He could speak individually to every person on the planet, but it seems that He does that kind of thing fairly rarely.
Instead, God has chosen to spread His message through those who belong to Him. That's what Paul wrote about to the Ephesian Christians in the verse above, a verse which still speaks to our role in the spread of the message of Good News. God spreads His Good News through the Church. That's you and I. It's not merely those who are called and gifted to be evangelists, or pastors, or missionaries, or the like. It's all of us.
I would argue that the reason so many of us are uncomfortable with that thought is simply because we haven't regularly done it. Really, all I say we need is to practice at it. True, it's going to the Spirit who guides the response on the part of the other person, but our sharing of the Good News is something that becomes less frightening when we actually do it. We may never get over the butterflies in the stomach, but it gets less daunting when we've actually done it a few times. Sure, we'll find that the conversations will go in vastly different ways, but only doing it, only practicing it, will get us used to doing what God created the Church to do.
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