It can be really tricky can’t it. The desire exists there but how will you do it?? You know how liberating this news has been for you and you believe that reality could be true for them also. But why is it that when you talk about this life giving news, it feels like you are talking about some new tax system! The reaction of your family hardly shows signs of revival breaking out. If you dare to persist then it can get down right ugly. So why is sharing the gospel with your family so hard??
You’d think that you love Jesus and you love your family, it should be a match made in heaven. So why does it feel like a complete war zone. Over the years it’s hard not to just concede, call for a ceasefire, wave the white flag and surrender. I know when Jesus talks about loving him and loving family it was going to be tough, but I’m not sure I knew how tough.
If I thought I had it tough then in the book ‘bringing the gospel home’ you hear how nightmarish it is for others. The pain and hardship some Christians have felt as they have sought to share Christ with their close family. This though in a sense ‘discouraging’ has been ‘encouraging’, for then I know my experience is not unusual. You also hear of the boldness of other Christian brother and sisters who in the midst of this hardship have continued to pray and share their faith with family. Yet at the same time the book reminds us that ultimately this is Gods work, that no gospel tract or course or presented speech is the solution (though of course we might want to try all of them). We must never stop praying that the God of grace might open our families eyes to see the truth of gospel.
You might be interested to check out the book:
And of course get along to our first ‘equip night’ tomorrow night 7:30pm at Park Ave to get more clues on how we can share the life giving news of the gospel.
I’ve really enjoyed reading Acts and looking for how the gospel has been preached in each chapter. I’ve never really noticed just how often the gospel is preached in Acts before, and how the Apostles seem to change the context of the gospel message depending on whether they are preaching to Jews or Gentiles – If they are preaching to Jews they tell the gospel in the context of Jesus being the Son of David, who was killed by Jews, but is the risen Christ. If they are preaching to Gentiles, they tell the gospel in the context of God being the one who created all things.
I’ve had a few interesting chats at work with people re Christianity – some are more comments by others trying to put Christianity down. It’s made me very keen to check out what’s happening in the news and thinking of a way to turn any conversation that comes up into an opportunity to tell the gospel and refute some of the arguments and negative stereotypes of Christianity!
Agreed David… the last couple of weeks in Acts have been really terrific in thinking about how to engage with culture and work out how to cross that bridge to aid the gospel to get a hearing.
As well as thinking about what my story is… How has the gospel transformed my life and being very open and joyful about it, as i talk about whats happening in the general chit chat of life