Ministering From the Message
Lately I have been thinking about what I do with this message of grace that I carry around inside me. I mean, here is a thing that shapes my theology and it is part and parcel of my everyday faith journey. But not everyone knows about it. I mean people that I am friends with, close friends, may not even know that role that grace and trust play in my life. I think they all know that I am a Christian (so are most of them). But I have come to the realization that it is likely that I haven’t talked much about these aspects of my faith. I wonder why that is?
I know that I want people to know about it because I think it will be transformative in some of their lives. I think some of my friends are ready to hear about it and other may not be–grace isn’t appealing to everyone (which is hard for me to believe). But I’m not sure how to bring it up. I mean, if I am hanging out with my friends or talking on the phone and just normal life stuff is going on I am not likely to say soemthing like, “So, what are your views of grace?” Or, “Are you striving to please God or are you simply trusting him?” I am positive that if something big was going on I would be right there to share these things that have been so helpful to me, but in the normal course of life I’m not sure how to do it.
And it bugs me that I would have to wait for a crisis to get to talk about this stuff. I hope I am living it out in my life, that as I relate and parent and that sort of thing that it is clear that I am coming at things from a little bit different place. But I want to be able to put everyday language to it.
I am thinking about this because in a week John and Dave and Bruce are coming here to Denver to do a TrueFaced Worldview evening. We are getting together about 20 friends and family to hear a talk about how what it means to live a TrueFaced life. A lot of the people that will be there are my friends, my family. And I am nervous that they’ll hear this talk an be like, “Why haven’t you ever said anything?” I have to figure out a good answer for that. “It just never came up” doesn’t seem like a very good one.
So that’s my task of the next couple of weeks: to think of how to work grace into the natural rythms and patterns and conversations of my everyday life with those I love. If I can’t do that with them, what are the chances that I can share with soemone I hardly know? After all, the message of God’s grace is the message of the gospel and I definitely want to share that. So if you have any ideas or great stories of how you have shared the message of grace with others, I’d love to hear about it.
Toben,
A good place to start is first of all prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to provide opportunities to have those conversations. In this world today, it seems most don’t want to talk about those serious things and why? Maybe they need to. I try to focus on the other person and just ask questions. Everyone likes to talk about themself whether we want to admit or not. Questions allow freedom if we don’t judge. If they have wrong ideas, point them to scripture. Have you ever been exposed to William Fay’s material on How to Share Jesus without fear? It is a great resource. I learned so much from it and it has a handy tear out in the back of the book to carry with you to refer to for your scriptures and right approach. Hope this helps!
Cynthia
Hi John;
You don’t know me. I listened to your truefaced message (quite awhile ago) and loved it. I bought multiple CD’s and passed them out to my kids, family and friends. I have been trying to find your CD to listen again. Tried to get one back from people I gave them to. The problem lies in staying in the room of grace (how do you make the R roll when typing?) I grew up in performance based living. I’m tired of the mask and striving, but how does that change?? I find people are much more comfortable if you leave the mask on. Continue on, status quo. I haven’t found too many grace based Christians. My acceptance by my dad was always based on performance and at 51 I try very hard not to transfer that to God my Father. But I find when I don’t do what I “should do”, I let God down. At least thats how I feel. It gets old. I know this is not the comment you were looking for on this blog, but I have been trying to figure out where to bring this subject up with you and this seemed as good as any. Thanks