Tag: Sharing the Gospel

Morning Musing: Romans 10:14-17

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“How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.’ But not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our message?’ So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things that irks critics of Christianity more than many other things we do is our constantly trying to share our faith. Why are Christians so pushy with their beliefs? Why can’t they just leave other people to believe what they want rather than going around telling them they’re wrong all the time? What arrogance to think they know better than everybody else what’s right. What’s the big deal? What Paul says here has a lot to do with it. Let’s take a look at what he has to say.

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Beautiful Feet

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This was a standalone week between series. So, I took the opportunity to share with the congregation something I’ve been studying in my own devotional time. I’ve been working my way through Romans, and I’ve made it as far as chapter 10. Paul writes about salvation there in terms that are crucial for followers of Jesus today to understand. Let’s explore what he has to say.

Beautiful Feet

Have you ever washed a bottle with a small opening? I’ll admit: I hate doing that. You can use a bottle brush, and those are moderately effective, but I find the best approach is to squirt some soap down into them, fill them a bit, and then shake the mixture up really, really well. As long as the bottle isn’t just completely filthy on the inside, that usually does the trick. The only problem with this method is that you have to rinse it really thoroughly or else the next person who uses it gets a mouthful of soap. You can accomplish this in one of two ways. You can carefully run water down the side of the bottle, shake it up with the clean water, dump it out, and do it again. And again. And again. Until after about 100 repeats the bottle is ready to go. The second approach is a whole lot more wasteful, but also more effective. And faster. You just hold the bottle under the tap, turn it on full, and let the clean water run into the bottle until the water coming out of the bottle is clean. 

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Morning Musing: Romans 1:5-7

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“Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, including you who are also called by Jesus Christ. To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Let’s image you are walking through a field on a sunny day. And as you walk you stumble upon something you have never seen before. You genuinely don’t know what it is. Once you have determined that it is safe, you set about trying to figure out what it is. What is the first step in that process? There are perhaps many potential answers to that question. I submit that the most important answer is figuring out what it is for. Until you know what something is for—what its purpose is—you won’t know much about its identity. Purpose and identity are inextricably linked like that. As we finish off Paul’s opening statement in his letter to the believers in Rome, he offers a window into the purpose of our salvation. Let’s explore what he says here.

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Afternoon Musing: 1 Corinthians 2:12-14

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***I couldn’t call this a morning musing because it is so late in the day, but it’s not long enough to qualify as digging in deeper into anything. So, you get an afternoon musing today. Enjoy.

“Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I used to love looking at Magic Eye images. Do you remember those? It was a picture that upon an initial inspection just looked like an abstract artistic design on the page. It was just visual nonsense. Even looking closely didn’t change that initial impression. But if you looked at them in just the right way, all of a sudden, the page came to life. There was shape and depth to the image that had previously looked flat and lifeless. It wasn’t always easy to maintain an ability to see what was really there. That took some work and intentionality, but the more you looked at them, the easier seeing what was really there became. If you weren’t willing to take the time and do the work to learn how to see them, they were never anything more than gobbledygook on the page. I have reminded of late that something very much like this is true with life more generally. Let’s talk about it.

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Giving An Answer

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Imagine you’re in a conversation and somebody asks you why you are a follower of Jesus. What would you say? For most of us, the very prospect of that situation unfolding is enough to make us break out in a cold sweat. The last thing in the world we want to do is to be asked a question about our faith that we potentially can’t answer. And yet, we are called to be able to give a response. Let’s talk today about the apostle Peter’s counsel on giving an answer and some practical steps we can take to be able to do just that.

Giving An Answer

We are a people given to fear. We fear all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. Go look up a list of phobias sometime. You won’t be able to pronounce most of them, but the definitions will at least amuse you. Some of them seem like they have at least some sort of a rational justification for them like a fear of snakes (herpetophobia) or heights (acrophobia). Others seem just silly like a fear of the number 4 (tetraphobia) or the color yellow (xanthophobia). Then there are some that seem like someone just made them up entirely so they could create a long, impossible to pronounce word like hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia which, of course, is the fear of the number 666 (which, in case you were interested, my spell checker actually caught and flagged as being misspelled; not because it is a random jumble of letters, but because I swapped and “e” for an “a”). Most of those fears, though, are pretty niche. I don’t know of many people who suffer from arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth. But there are some fears that are common and which have plagued humanity from time immemorial like death. 

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