“How do you train your people to share the gospel?”

1. Confidence in the gospel is primary. If your people haven’t understood the gospel and its power personally, specifically and currently, they cannot have confidence to share it. Look for places where the gospel has not come to bear in your peoples’ lives.

a. Past Tense Gospel: Justification. Do your people struggle with guilt and shame? Do they truly understand their justification?

b. Present Tense Gospel: Sanctification. Do your people struggle with living victoriously on a daily basis? Do they understand the power of the gospel for today?

c. Future Tense Gospel: Glorification. Are your people living in many fears and afraid of the future or ‘unknown’? Do they understand God’s promise and security of a glorious end?

2. Develop your people in a biblical theology – to know the story of the Bible and how it all points to Jesus.

a. If your people can learn to tell the story of the Bible orally, they’ll be able to share it with others.

b. Teach your people how to identify Jesus as the main point of each of the smaller stories in the Bible, they will learn how to contextualize the gospel in their current situations and stories.

c. Teach your people the basic gospel story-line: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Help them to understand their own smaller story in this vein – to identify their own false gospels and see how the true gospel of Jesus is the real answer.

3. Teach others to declare the gospel through the sacrament of Communion.

a. Every Sunday, your members should be reminding each other of the gospel at Communion.

b. Practice with one another as believers, and grow in competence to share the gospel with those who don’t understand or believe in Jesus at all.

Jeff Vanderstelt: “Your people have to have confidence in the gospel. Otherwise, they won’t share it. If they don’t believe it’s the power of God to save because they haven’t experienced it changing them, they’re not going to talk about that.”

1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

“Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”  Ephesians 5:33

God made Adam first and put him in the Garden with a job to do, a mission to fulfill.  In the heart of every fallen man is the self-doubt that wonders, “Am I man enough to climb this mountain God has called me to?  Can I fulfill my destiny?”  A wise wife will understand that question at the center of her husband’s heart.  And she will spend her life answering it, communicating to him in various ways, “Honey, I believe in your call.  I know you can do this, by God’s power.  Go for it.”  In this way, she will breathe life into her man.

God made Eve from Adam, for Adam, to help him follow the call.  In the heart of every fallen woman is the self-doubt that wonders, “Do I please you?  Am I what you wanted?”  A wise husband will understand that question at the center of his wife’s heart.  And he will spend his life answering it, communicating to her in various ways, “Darling, you are the one I need.  I cherish you.  Let me hold you close.”  In this way, he will breathe life into his wife.

Recently several people have asked me ‘how do you deal with harsh criticism?’ In each case, the inquirer had felt stung by what they felt were unfair attacks on him or her. In this internet age, anyone can have their views censured unfairly by people they don’t know. So what do you do when that happens? Here’s is the gist of the counsel I give people when they ask me about this. For years I’ve been guided by a letter by John Newton that is usually entitled “On Controversy.”

The biggest danger of receiving criticism is not to your reputation, but to your heart. You feel the injustice of it and feel sorry for yourself, and it tempts you to despise not only the critic, but the entire group of people from which they come. “Those people…” you mutter under your breath. All this can make you prouder over time. Newton writes: “Whatever…makes us trust in ourselves that we are comparatively wise or good, so as to treat those with contempt who do not subscribe to our doctrines, or follow our party, is a proof and fruit of a self-righteous spirit.” He argues that whenever contempt and superiority accompany our thoughts, it is a sign that “the doctrines of grace” are operating in our life “as mere notions and speculations” with “no salutary influence upon [our] conduct.”

So how can you avoid this temptation? First, you should look to see if there is a kernel of truth in even the most exaggerated and unfair broadsides. There is usually such a kernel when the criticism comes from friends, and there is often such truth when the disapproval comes from people who actually know you. So even if the censure is partly or even largely mistaken, look for what you may indeed have done wrong. Perhaps you simply acted or spoke in a way that was not circumspect. Maybe the critic is partly right for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, identify your own short-comings, repent in your own heart before the Lord for what you can, and let that humble you. It will then be possible to learn from the criticism and stay gracious to the critic even if you have to disagree with what he or she has said.

If the criticism comes from someone who doesn’t know you at all (and often this is the case on the internet) it is possible that the criticism is completely unwarranted and profoundly mistaken. I am often pilloried not only for views I do have, but also even more often for views (and motives) that I do not hold at all. When that happens it is even easier to fall into a smugness and perhaps be tempted to laugh at how mistaken your critics are. “Pathetic…” you may be tempted to say. Don’t do it. Even if there is not the slightest kernel of truth in what the critic says, you should not mock them in your thoughts. First, remind yourself of examples of your own mistakes, foolishness, and cluelessness in the past, times in which you really got something wrong. Second, pray for the critic, that he or she grows in grace. Newton talks about it like this:

“If you account [your opponent] a believer, though greatly mistaken in the subject of debate between you, the words of David to Joab concerning Absalom are very applicable: ‘Deal gently with him for my sake.’  The Lord loves him and bears with him; therefore you must not despise him, or treat him harshly.  The Lord bears with you likewise, and expects that you should show tenderness to others, from a sense of the much forgiveness you need yourself.  In a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now.  Anticipate that period in your thoughts; and though you may find it necessary to oppose his errors, view him personally as a kindred soul, with whom you are to be happy in Christ forever.”

So whatever you do, do anything you can to avoid feeling smug and superior to the critic. Even if you say to yourself that you are just ’shrugging it off’ and that you are not going to respond to the criticism, you can nonetheless conduct a full defense and refutation in the courtroom of your mind, in which you triumphantly prove how awful and despicable your opponents are. But that is a spiritual trap. Newton’s remarks about this are very convicting:

“A man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature, and the riches of free grace.  Yea, I would add, the best of men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments.  Controversies, for the most part, are so managed as to indulge rather than to repress his wrong disposition; and therefore, generally speaking, they are productive of little good.  They provoke those whom they should convince, and puff up those whom they should edify.  I hope your performance will savor of a spirit of true humility, and be a means of promoting it in others.”

The triune God is our Savior!  Before the new things came to pass God announced them to us (48:5) - and then in time He did it.  The Lord God sent His only begotten Son to redeem us and His Holy Spirit to regenerate us that we might behold such a Savior and cast ourselves upon Him in repentant faith.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

Murray

Biblical Parenting Conference

Advice to first year college students: “You need to realize you’re arrogant. Not because you’re a first year student but because you’re a human being who’s fallen. Even if you’re redeemed you’re still fallen. Ok? You’re not glorified yet. Got that straight? That’s important. Now, you need to realize that that means you need people and that doesn’t mean just your friends here. Right? Even the Gentile Pagans have friends. No, you need to be in a local church that’s healthy and it preaches the Word. The church is far more important than any school you will ever go to. So you need to get in a local church, join it, officially be a member, put yourself under the authority of the elders in that church. They will watch over your soul as men who must give an account to God, Hebrews chapter 13.”

Advice to last year college students: “You are arrogant… Not because you’re in your final year but because you’re a fallen child of Adam. Even if you are redeemed, you’re still fallen. Alright? You know you’re not in glory yet. You’re not glorified. So you need to be in a local church. You need to be in a healthy local church. You are making life decisions that you are not competent, you are not made by yourself to make. You’re meant to be in a community of faith where your character is known, your gifts are understood, where they can give you good counsel and direction so get in a local healthy church. Spend this final year in school in a healthy local church as an official member of there.”

Dick Kaufman on being missional:

1. The Church exists to BRING GLORY TO GOD in all things and in all ways (see Ephesians)
2. God is glorified when the Church is MAKING DISCIPLES who Love and Worship God in all of life (Consider Jesus’ commands and Paul’s instructions to equip the Church to grow up into maturity)
3. This does not nor will not happen if the Church isn’t sending her people to make disciples of All Nations All the Time - in order to fill the whole earth with God’s glory through His people in all places.
4. In order for this to happen the Church needs to see all that she does as disciple-making - Not just the gatherings but the everyday life of her people all week long - people are being formed and informed in all of life and showing others what it means to follow Jesus in everything.
5. Discipleship happens largely through informal means: you don’t make disciples in a class room but in ministry and on mission. Formal training is more supplemental: filling in the gaps; processing through experiences; preparing for real ministry; etc.

If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society, if Christians are to occupy the “high ground” which they vacated in the noontime of “modernity,” it will not be by forming a Christian political party, or by aggressive propaganda campaigns. Once again it has to be said that there can be no going back to the “Constantinian” era. It will only be by movements that begin with the local congreation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced, and from which men an women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel. But that will only happen as and when local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument, and foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.

(Thanks to Keith Watson for the quote!)