Sharing your life secrets!

This week we begin ‘Your Top 5 (plus 1) Tough Questions’ preaching series. Thanks for a marvelous array of thoughts, comments and questions. Within the diversity of the questions, the theme that often lay behind the initial question was simply, how do we connect and communicate the gospel to people who live in a post Christendom context? In other words it might be great to have all the answers but the cultural chasm needs to be bridged before the gospel can even be proclaimed. Here are one person’s thoughts that passed over our desk.“Take the average Aussie bloke- football, cars, mates and family. He says “Nah!! How can you believe in God? Here today, gone tomorrow. Live life to the full, look after your mates and family and when it’s all over you die and no more- nothing!! Just like before you were born.”This guy/girl has no background of family worship or belief in God and Jesus. Thinking about the sin in the world has no connection of Jesus’ sacrifice and that is probably a religious furphy too according to him.  What a great cultural observation. How do we reach people who no longer look to God or the church for answers to life’s ultimate questions and meaning? I cannot possibly fully address this issue within this musing but I will give some food for thought on how we are called to reach the average Aussie.Author, historian and Anglican minister John Dickson wrote a book called “The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission, Promoting the Gospel with more than our lips”.Here is a lynchpin/thesis of the book:“But perhaps the best kept secret of Christian mission is that the Bible lists a whole range of activities that promote Christ to the world and draw others toward him. These include prayer, godly behaviour, financial assistance, the public praise of God (in church) and, as already mentioned, answering people’s questions. All of these are explicitly connected in the Bible with advancing the gospel and winning people to Christ. They are all “mission” activities, and only a couple of them involve the lips at all.”Dickson consistently argues that verbal proclamation of the gospel is critical, but he seeks to avoid the trap of many who say “words alone”. He is not denying that the gospel is words – he simply says we promote the gospel with more than words, it is our whole lives! I agree with Dickson that ultimately it is the work of the Holy Spirit that converts but Jesus (Mtt 5:16), Paul (Rom. 10:17) and Peter (1 Pet. 3:1) illustrate that the verbal proclamation of the gospel is more complex than we realize and that holy, loving lives and acts are wrapped up in the process. I will let Dickson have the last word:“Good deeds must never be thought of as a missionary tactic, a means of getting people onside before hitting them with the gospel (“throwing cakes to children”, as Emperor Julian would say). They are the essential fruit of the gospel. Good works must be done for their own sake, in obedience to the Lord.God’s grace proclaimed in the gospel finds its essential outcome in the godly life of those who believe the gospel. Nevertheless, it is precisely because good deeds are an essential fruit of the gospel that they so powerfully promote the gospel. Although we must not find ourselves “doing good” simply as a gospel ploy, there can be no question that Jesus expected unbelievers to observe our acts of love (for the world and for one another) and through them to be convinced to worship the source of all love: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).”Amen to that.James