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The last time I gave a talk in church
Posted by Derrick
on
13:13
Here is a copy of the last talk I gave in church
Thank you Jessica and Martin for your readings, I hope you all enjoyed hearing from the Message version of the Bible. It might sound a little strange to hear the Bible read like that but I think the Message is one of my favourite versions of the Bible.
Now, I am going to start today with some pictures. I would like you to tell me what the job of the person in the picture is. Also what sort of qualities should someone in that job have? Here is the first picture. And the Second. And the third. What about this one?
My talk today is all about how we can actually tell people that we are a Christian and how we share the Gospel with them. Some people say that we can ‘share the Gospel and use words if necessary’. This might work for them but I struggle to tell the gospel without using words. I have to say that my interpretive dance is quite frankly shocking.
If you are like me I am sure that you tremble at the thought of sharing the gospel. Imagine going into school or work tomorrow and someone says to you what did you do yesterday. How many would be scared about saying church! Let me share a story from when I was at University. I had just become a Christian and I was in the first flush of evangelistic fervour. Well after the church service one evening I joined the other students for tea and toast at the vicarage. We discovered that we had time to spare afterwards so we went to the pub. There had obviously been a pub quiz as the manager asked how we enjoyed the quiz. The conversation went as follows:
Student: we weren’t at the quiz.
Manager: why not?
Student: we were somewhere else.
Manager: oh where?
Me: (sheepishly and very very quietly) we were at church
Manager: wow, why were you at church? Why do you go there?
Third student: (after a very long and embarrassing pause) because Jesus rocks!
I am still ashamed to this day!
Now the Bible is very clear on the point that we have to be able to give an account of ourselves and our faith. 1 Peter 3:15 says ‘Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have’ and in the passage from Luke that we heard we saw the consequences of failing to stand up for Jesus!
We often find people asking us questions about our faith or we are often faced with challenges to our faith and we have to give an account. There are so many different questions: Don’t all religions lead to God? How can we trust the Bible? Why is there suffering in the world? These are really difficult questions to hear and to answer.
I don’t intend to answer every one of the questions but I would like to share some of the ways that we can start to answer them.
Its a good traditional talk: three points each beginning with the same letter! Each begins with the letter P. Can you guess what the first one is? Prayer: We have to remember that we are in a battle. In Ephesians Paul tells us that we need to put on the armour of God because our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers authorities and powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil. Before we can talk to anybody about the gospel we need to talk to God. Through prayer we can ask for His protection and for his help in opening eyes and turning people from the power of Satan to God.
Our friends and colleagues should always be in our prayers. Often those who are asking the questions that we find so difficult are in terrible circumstances. I have often found that those people who ask me why God allows suffering only ask because they have experienced suffering. We should be praying for healing and for God’s presence with them.
We also need to pray for ourselves, so that we might have the correct understanding and have the correct words. We are told that we shouldn’t worry because we will be given the words but it’s still important to pray that we know the right things to say. God will answer our prayers and He will be with us.
The second P is preparation: if we prepare then we will be much better at answering the questions. Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance! The passage from the Bible that we heard not long ago is one of my favourite passages. It says that God will give us the words that we need for our talking but I don’t think this is an excuse to say nothing. We do need to prepare before we talk to non-Christians. We need to get to know the basics so that we can answer the questions we are often asked. Its hard to define what I mean by basics, but I don’t think we can go wrong with the basics such as these: John 3:16, ‘for God so loved the world that he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life’. So that is the basics of our faith. God loves us and he sent his only Son to dies for us, to die in our place and now we can have assurance of eternal life with God.
Now if you don’t know this and are listening today then please take this opportunity to speak to someone about it after the service and they will happily explain it to you.
There are other basics that we could learn but I can’t talk about them all here. What I can suggest is that if you do want to know more then you could make use of some of the excellent resources that are available. There are great books and websites available or if you don’t know an answer you can always ask your housegroup like I do. Remember that this is an ongoing process, we will never know the answer to every question but we can at least know some.
Now the third P is, in my opinion, the most important. It’s proximity. Without getting close to the people who are searching we cannot possibly understand them. A large number of people who become Christians do so because a Christian took the time to develop a personal friendship with them. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians are important. In the NIV he says that ‘to the Jews I became like a Jew. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law ... to the weak I became weak ... I have become all things to all men’. This isn’t a flippant message from Paul, its advice. He doesn’t change who he is but he makes his listeners know that he understands where they are. Paul wasn’t afraid to go and meet the people where they were. He went to the market places and the river banks where he thought people would be. Unless we get out of our Christian bubble (you know, where we go to Christian events, we listen to Christian music, go on Christian holidays, we read Christian books etc) and meet the people searching we will get nowhere.
In John 3:16 we read that God SENT his only son. Jesus didn’t save us from on high. As Paul points out later in his writing: ‘taking the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and found in appearance as a man’ Jesus is the very model of friendship. Every time Jesus has an encounter with people in the Gospel he is aware of their needs. He knew what Zacchaeus needed. He knew about the woman at the well and her difficult life. He knew what the man who was lowered through the roof needed, he fed thousands and thousands of people and he met the needs of the wedding guests at Canna. This is what should be happening when we share the Gospel.
Likewise, its not about lecturing people either. God didn’t lecture us from on high. He listened to people. One of the wonderful things about humans is the relationship between ears and mouth. We have twice as many ears as mouths, do we listen twice as much? When someone comes to us and asks us why God allows good people to suffer and bad people to prosper its easy to sometimes launch into a prepared answer. Perhaps the first thing we should say is ‘whats up? How have you been hurt? What can I do to help you?’. We need to remember that at the end of 1 Peter 3:15 the Bible says that we need to give an account of our hope ‘But do this with gentleness and respect’. We do need to defend our faith and there will be time for that but first you need to get to know the people you are talking to. Its hard sometimes when they are doing things we don’t like but‘we need to remember that we can dislike the action if we wish but we have to love the person doing it. This means that when someone is smoking and wants to talk to me I don’t ask them to put their cigarette out first, I stand with them, put up with a bit of discomfort and develop my friendship with them. It means that when someone is demanding my time to help them answer their questions and deal with their problems I don’t sigh and show my discomfort, I say yes and go and help them (at least thats what I try to do!). Hopefully by taking the time to get to know people and by not jumping down their throats or raising walls in defence we can not only defend our faith but share it and help people to come closer to Jesus.
Now I said this was a good old fashioned Anglican talk. It has the three points beginning with a letter and here is the surprise fourth one! Purpose. Its important not to lose sight of what we are doing. The Bible is clear that God doesn’t need defending but we should still be ready to give an account of our faith. One reason for giving an account of our faith is to bring people to Jesus. In Matthew 28 Jesus commands us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is clear. We should go out and tell people about Jesus.
The word translated as nations doesn’t mean countries but it mean groups of people.The means talking to our colleagues about our faith in Jesus, to our friends and to our families. It means talking to the rest of our brownie or guide pack. It means talking to our school mates and our teachers. It means talking to the Asylum seeker and the bar staff at the pub. It means talking to the youth on the street corner looking menacing and it means talking to the old people stuck in their houses on their own wondering why nobody ever visits. It means the sick and the poor, the rich and the healthy. It means the lonely and the dodgy. It means defending and sharing our faith with all these ‘nations’. It is scary but if we pray, and if we prepare and if we get close to these people then just as He promised God will give us the right words!
Thank you Jessica and Martin for your readings, I hope you all enjoyed hearing from the Message version of the Bible. It might sound a little strange to hear the Bible read like that but I think the Message is one of my favourite versions of the Bible.
Now, I am going to start today with some pictures. I would like you to tell me what the job of the person in the picture is. Also what sort of qualities should someone in that job have? Here is the first picture. And the Second. And the third. What about this one?
My talk today is all about how we can actually tell people that we are a Christian and how we share the Gospel with them. Some people say that we can ‘share the Gospel and use words if necessary’. This might work for them but I struggle to tell the gospel without using words. I have to say that my interpretive dance is quite frankly shocking.
If you are like me I am sure that you tremble at the thought of sharing the gospel. Imagine going into school or work tomorrow and someone says to you what did you do yesterday. How many would be scared about saying church! Let me share a story from when I was at University. I had just become a Christian and I was in the first flush of evangelistic fervour. Well after the church service one evening I joined the other students for tea and toast at the vicarage. We discovered that we had time to spare afterwards so we went to the pub. There had obviously been a pub quiz as the manager asked how we enjoyed the quiz. The conversation went as follows:
Student: we weren’t at the quiz.
Manager: why not?
Student: we were somewhere else.
Manager: oh where?
Me: (sheepishly and very very quietly) we were at church
Manager: wow, why were you at church? Why do you go there?
Third student: (after a very long and embarrassing pause) because Jesus rocks!
I am still ashamed to this day!
Now the Bible is very clear on the point that we have to be able to give an account of ourselves and our faith. 1 Peter 3:15 says ‘Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have’ and in the passage from Luke that we heard we saw the consequences of failing to stand up for Jesus!
We often find people asking us questions about our faith or we are often faced with challenges to our faith and we have to give an account. There are so many different questions: Don’t all religions lead to God? How can we trust the Bible? Why is there suffering in the world? These are really difficult questions to hear and to answer.
I don’t intend to answer every one of the questions but I would like to share some of the ways that we can start to answer them.
Its a good traditional talk: three points each beginning with the same letter! Each begins with the letter P. Can you guess what the first one is? Prayer: We have to remember that we are in a battle. In Ephesians Paul tells us that we need to put on the armour of God because our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers authorities and powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil. Before we can talk to anybody about the gospel we need to talk to God. Through prayer we can ask for His protection and for his help in opening eyes and turning people from the power of Satan to God.
Our friends and colleagues should always be in our prayers. Often those who are asking the questions that we find so difficult are in terrible circumstances. I have often found that those people who ask me why God allows suffering only ask because they have experienced suffering. We should be praying for healing and for God’s presence with them.
We also need to pray for ourselves, so that we might have the correct understanding and have the correct words. We are told that we shouldn’t worry because we will be given the words but it’s still important to pray that we know the right things to say. God will answer our prayers and He will be with us.
The second P is preparation: if we prepare then we will be much better at answering the questions. Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance! The passage from the Bible that we heard not long ago is one of my favourite passages. It says that God will give us the words that we need for our talking but I don’t think this is an excuse to say nothing. We do need to prepare before we talk to non-Christians. We need to get to know the basics so that we can answer the questions we are often asked. Its hard to define what I mean by basics, but I don’t think we can go wrong with the basics such as these: John 3:16, ‘for God so loved the world that he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life’. So that is the basics of our faith. God loves us and he sent his only Son to dies for us, to die in our place and now we can have assurance of eternal life with God.
Now if you don’t know this and are listening today then please take this opportunity to speak to someone about it after the service and they will happily explain it to you.
There are other basics that we could learn but I can’t talk about them all here. What I can suggest is that if you do want to know more then you could make use of some of the excellent resources that are available. There are great books and websites available or if you don’t know an answer you can always ask your housegroup like I do. Remember that this is an ongoing process, we will never know the answer to every question but we can at least know some.
Now the third P is, in my opinion, the most important. It’s proximity. Without getting close to the people who are searching we cannot possibly understand them. A large number of people who become Christians do so because a Christian took the time to develop a personal friendship with them. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians are important. In the NIV he says that ‘to the Jews I became like a Jew. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law ... to the weak I became weak ... I have become all things to all men’. This isn’t a flippant message from Paul, its advice. He doesn’t change who he is but he makes his listeners know that he understands where they are. Paul wasn’t afraid to go and meet the people where they were. He went to the market places and the river banks where he thought people would be. Unless we get out of our Christian bubble (you know, where we go to Christian events, we listen to Christian music, go on Christian holidays, we read Christian books etc) and meet the people searching we will get nowhere.
In John 3:16 we read that God SENT his only son. Jesus didn’t save us from on high. As Paul points out later in his writing: ‘taking the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and found in appearance as a man’ Jesus is the very model of friendship. Every time Jesus has an encounter with people in the Gospel he is aware of their needs. He knew what Zacchaeus needed. He knew about the woman at the well and her difficult life. He knew what the man who was lowered through the roof needed, he fed thousands and thousands of people and he met the needs of the wedding guests at Canna. This is what should be happening when we share the Gospel.
Likewise, its not about lecturing people either. God didn’t lecture us from on high. He listened to people. One of the wonderful things about humans is the relationship between ears and mouth. We have twice as many ears as mouths, do we listen twice as much? When someone comes to us and asks us why God allows good people to suffer and bad people to prosper its easy to sometimes launch into a prepared answer. Perhaps the first thing we should say is ‘whats up? How have you been hurt? What can I do to help you?’. We need to remember that at the end of 1 Peter 3:15 the Bible says that we need to give an account of our hope ‘But do this with gentleness and respect’. We do need to defend our faith and there will be time for that but first you need to get to know the people you are talking to. Its hard sometimes when they are doing things we don’t like but‘we need to remember that we can dislike the action if we wish but we have to love the person doing it. This means that when someone is smoking and wants to talk to me I don’t ask them to put their cigarette out first, I stand with them, put up with a bit of discomfort and develop my friendship with them. It means that when someone is demanding my time to help them answer their questions and deal with their problems I don’t sigh and show my discomfort, I say yes and go and help them (at least thats what I try to do!). Hopefully by taking the time to get to know people and by not jumping down their throats or raising walls in defence we can not only defend our faith but share it and help people to come closer to Jesus.
Now I said this was a good old fashioned Anglican talk. It has the three points beginning with a letter and here is the surprise fourth one! Purpose. Its important not to lose sight of what we are doing. The Bible is clear that God doesn’t need defending but we should still be ready to give an account of our faith. One reason for giving an account of our faith is to bring people to Jesus. In Matthew 28 Jesus commands us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is clear. We should go out and tell people about Jesus.
The word translated as nations doesn’t mean countries but it mean groups of people.The means talking to our colleagues about our faith in Jesus, to our friends and to our families. It means talking to the rest of our brownie or guide pack. It means talking to our school mates and our teachers. It means talking to the Asylum seeker and the bar staff at the pub. It means talking to the youth on the street corner looking menacing and it means talking to the old people stuck in their houses on their own wondering why nobody ever visits. It means the sick and the poor, the rich and the healthy. It means the lonely and the dodgy. It means defending and sharing our faith with all these ‘nations’. It is scary but if we pray, and if we prepare and if we get close to these people then just as He promised God will give us the right words!
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