Gospel Fluency - Week 8

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- And so we are coming to the end of this journey.

- This series, called Gospel Fluency, designed to immerse us and help us grow towards true fluency in the Good News message of Jesus.

- And, if you’ve been around (even a little bit) over the last two months, hopefully we feel like we’ve learned something.

- Hopefully we are more confident and comfortable with the Gospel story, and simply knowing what the true Gospel story is (whether we believe it or not, I hope we at least understand what it is).

- For those of us who do believe in the Gospel and want to be fluent in it, hopefully we feel a little more prepared to speak the Gospel.

- Hopefully we understand a bit more about how we even speak/think the Gospel to ourselves.

- Hopefully we’ve grown in our ability to listen to the stories of others, and are becoming more sensitive to how the Gospel might specifically be Good News to what they are currently going through.

- However, this morning as we bring this series to a close, we need to remember something that we have repeated throughout this journey.

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- Gospel fluency is not just about speaking the Truth of Jesus into everyday life.

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- It’s about speaking the Truth of Jesus, in the Love of Jesus, into everyday life.

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- Ephesians 4:15

o we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.

- Speaking the Gospel without love will undermine the very message we are trying to communicate.

- The Gospel is the Good News about God’s love for us, and if we don’t have love in the way that we talk about the Gospel, then we are actually communicating a very different story because of the tone of our words, the tone of our body language, the tone of our hearts.

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- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

o If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.

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o If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

- And so, we need to ask, do we love the people God has placed around us?

- Our neighbours, our coworkers, our classmates?

- Our church family?

- Those who are trying along with us to live Gospel fluent lives, those who have rejected Jesus, those who have never heard the true Gospel story before?

- We need to consider this question: Do I want to share the Gospel because I truly love the people around me? Or do I want to share the Gospel because of some other reason?

- Some people share the Gospel, but the reason they are doing it is because they think it’s what “they” are supposed to do.

- It’s what is best for “them” so that someday they can stand before God and say “I did my part.”

- Some people are more interested in justifying themselves, rather than loving those who need Jesus.

- Where are our hearts at?

- Are we attempting to do the right things, with the wrong heart, and only being a noisy gong that gains nothing?

- Now, if we’ve spent more than 20 seconds with people before, we may have an automatic, instinctive reaction.

- “But you don’t know how difficult this person is to love!”

- “I’m trying to be loving, but they make it so hard!”

- Don’t point fingers at who you’re thinking about, but we all understand this feeling.

- There are people, probably around each and every one of us, who are difficult to love.

- But we need to remember that God has given us a Helper for this entire journey.

- The Holy Spirit can change our hearts.

- The Holy Spirit can give us the heart of Jesus.

- The Holy Spirit can help us see others the way that He sees them.

- The Holy Spirit can help us grow in awareness to the incredible love that God has for us, and then that love can overflow from our hearts and into our relationships with others.

- If Jesus is able to love me, in spite of how absolutely unlovable and undeserving of love I can be, then His Spirit within me can empower me to do the same for others.

- The Holy Spirit can grow His fruit in our lives, the fruit that begins with… love.

- Life Centre should not be known as a Gospel fluent people who are noisy, clanging gongs.

- Life Centre should be known as a Gospel fluent people who truly love the community – and the individuals – God has placed all around us.

- Do we love people?

- Here’s something to consider:

- If someone heard us share the Gospel – if they heard and understood the Good News that we were speaking into the everyday stuff of their life – and they still decided not to believe in Jesus, not to put their trust in Jesus, would they still want to be around us because of the fruit of the Spirit (the fruit of the Gospel) that is overflowing through our lives?

- Do those who disagree with us, still want to be friends with us, because of how loving we are to them in spite of our disagreements and differences?

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- 1 Peter 3:13-17

o Now, who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.

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o Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than to suffer for doing wrong!

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- Peter is writing about our lives should require a Gospel explanation.

- The lives we live should not make sense apart from the difference that Jesus has made in our lives.

- If someone asked us “why do you act the way that you act?” can we answer that with any reasons apart from Jesus?

- Can our lives be explained away by anything else because we are living so similarly to everyone else?

- Or is the Good News message of Jesus required to understand why we live the way we live, why we talk the way we talk, why we spend our money the way we spend our money, why we treat others the way we do, and so on and so forth?

- When we are intentional about living this way, it will lead to conversations about why we are living this way.

- Rearranging our schedules to make time to serve others.

- Adjusting our budgets to give to those who have less than us.

- Words spoken with forgiveness designed to build people up rather than tear them down (in spite of what they’ve done).

- These things don’t make sense, apart from the Gospel.

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- However, part of living a life that requires a Gospel explanation, is actually taking the time to explain the Gospel to them.

- There’s a story told of a man who became a Christian, and he told a co-worker about it.

- The co-worker was ecstatic!

- “That’s great! I am a Christian and I’ve been praying for you for years!”

- But the new Christian was a little bothered by this.

- “Then why didn’t you ever tell me you were a Christian?”

- The co-worker said “I have done my very best to live a good Christian life around you!”

- And the new Christian said “That’s exactly the problem! You lived such a good and upstanding life, without ever telling me that it was Jesus who made the difference for you. So as I watched you, I was convinced that if I tried hard enough, I would be able to live a good and happy life without Jesus as well.”

- If our “good, moral, Christian” lives are disconnected from any explanation of Jesus, then are we convincing people that they don’t need Jesus?

- So we need to live lives that demand a Gospel explanation, and then we need to explain the Gospel to those watching our lives!

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- But, even with all of that being true, Peter writes that our Gospel fluent lives need to be lived in a gentle and respectful way.

- He’s talking about not just speaking the Truth of Jesus, but also doing it in the Love of Jesus.

- So let’s think about what it might look like to be “gentle” in our Gospel fluency.

- We might want to consider things like this:

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- Am I concerned with how people are treated? Or just with how I am treated?

- Am I considerate when it comes to how others are being marginalized, discriminated, excluded, or mistreated? Or do I only care about any of that when it comes to myself (and people who look like me, act like me, and believe like me)?

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- As we talked about last week, am I seeking to truly understand and listen where a person is coming from, in order that I might accurately and effectively speak the Gospel to them?

- Am I looking to be gentle in how I explain the reason for the hope I have?

- Then we can also consider what it means to be respectful.

- Think about this, in this very passage, Peter is writing that people may want to harm followers of Jesus, that some may wish to cause followers of Jesus to suffer.

- And Peter still says to share the hope we have in a respectful way.

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- This assumes that there is something respectable about them.

- This assumes that they are worthy of our respect.

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- This assumes that they are made in the image of God.

- This assumes that they are worthy of dignity, honour, and respect, no matter what we disagree with them about.

- This assumes that the Gospel story that we’ve come back to time and time again, that begins with God creating us in His image, is true even for the people who are against us.

- Again, we all know people who are hard to love.

- We all know broken and sinful people.

- Because we all know ourselves (and we have times of brokenness, sin, and being hard to love).

- But all of us, absolutely all of us, are image-bearers of God, worthy of respect.

- Let’s look at something Paul wrote to a group of Jesus followers in the city of Colossae, and see what it adds to this discussion.

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- Colossians 4:5-6

o Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.

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- So here, Paul challenges Jesus followers to be gracious.

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- To be full of grace.

- Grace is unmerited favour.

- Our words are meant to bring life.

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- An undeserved gift.

- Our words are a gift (a present that someone should feel lucky to receive from us).

- Do we think of the words we speak as this?

- Do we understand that God has called us to speak words of life that people do not deserve (just like people have been gracious to us in ways that we didn’t deserve)?

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- Now, here we also read that our conversation should be gracious and “attractive”, but the Greek that Paul originally wrote in actually said that our conversations should be “seasoned with salt”.

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- Salt is an image of preserving and make it flavourful.

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- Seasoning our words with salt means that we are making the conversation better than it was before.

- Is that how our friends would describe how we speak?

- Our families?

- Our co-workers?

- Our classmates?

- Those who believe what we believe, and those who don’t?

- Do our words make things better than before we started speaking?

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- So, for those of us keeping track, if we want to be Gospel fluent, we need to speak the Truth of Jesus in the Love of Jesus.

- With gentleness, respect, grace, and salt.

- No pressure!

- That’s a big list!

- That’s an intimidating task!

- And, maybe even now, it just seems like a little bit too much for us.

- Maybe some of us are getting to the end of this series, and we are thinking “I really want this (I want to share my faith more, I want to be Gospel fluent, I want to be able to listen and know the right thing about Jesus to share in that moment that will cause the lightbulb to go on for the person I’m talking with)”

- But maybe, at the exact same time, we are also thinking “But I just don’t know how to”

- “I’ve tried, and I keep saying the wrong things.”

- “I keep not knowing what to say.”

- “I keep messing this whole thing up.”

- If that’s where we are at, then let’s not beat ourselves up.

- Let’s instead realize that there is one more thing that we need for this journey.

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- Wisdom.

- We need wisdom to speak this way.

- We can know the right things.

- We can do the right things.

- But without wisdom, we can say and do the right things in the wrong way.

- Wisdom is knowledge applied in the right way, with the right heart, at the right time.

- We need wisdom to speak the Truth of Jesus in the Love of Jesus in a way that makes a lasting difference.

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- James 1:2-6

o Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

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o If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone.

- So we see all that we are called to do.

- We know how far we still have left to go.

- We wonder “is this even possible?”

- Here’s what we can do then:

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- Ask God for wisdom.

- Ask the Helper to help you!

- God wants to answer this prayer!

- He wants to be generous with wisdom.

- God wants to give us wisdom!

- God wants to help us be the people He’s called us to be!

- Followers of Jesus, sometimes I think we look beyond simple little prayers, maybe because we don’t actually think they will make any difference.

- “I mean, why would I set an alarm each morning to pray to be filled with the Spirit and grow the fruit of the Spirit?”

- “Why would I take time each day at lunch to ask God for wisdom?”

- “Why would I bother God by asking Him for help with this?”

- And, if we had the time, we could go back through the Fruit to Root and Root to Fruit exercise, to see what those attitudes reveal about our beliefs.

- But I’ll tell you what, they definitely don’t show fluency in the Gospel.

- Think about it this way, for those of us who have had babies, or for anyone who ever was a baby (did I leave anyone out?)

- How does a baby learn to talk?

- By listening.

- By practicing.

- By sounding out – not even words, but syllables and sounds.

- By making noises that are impossible to understand.

- Until it starts to sound almost like a word.

- And so, some of us maybe are a little too quick to beat ourselves up over this.

- “I don’t have it all together”

- “I keep saying the wrong things”

- “I keep not knowing what to say and I just sit silently”

- “I can’t do this”

- But we need to remember, we’re talking about fluency here.

- Fluency takes consistency, immersion, practice, and repetition.

- It takes messing up and trying again.

- Noone looks at a baby making baby sounds, and says “You just don’t get it! Why even bother trying anymore!”

- Worse yet, maybe sometimes in the church world we do what some well-meaning people do around babies.

- And we make “baby talk”

- “Goo goo ga ga”

- “Oh who’s a wittle cutey wooty”

- There’s nothing wrong with this every once in a while, but we all understand that if everyone spoke “baby talk” around a baby, then that baby would never learn how to actually talk.

- That baby needs exposure and immersion into the real language, with words being pronounced clearly and properly, in order to become fluent themselves.

- But are we a Gospel community, willing to speak the Gospel as clearly and as often as we can?

- Even if we mispronounce a word here or there?

- Even if we get a figure of speech wrong every once in a while?

- Are we immersing one another into Gospel Fluency, or are we dumbing everything down to baby talk?

- Because when we refuse to pray simple prayers that God has promised to answer, we are saying that we are capable of doing this ourselves.

- We don’t need Jesus.

- We don’t need His help.

- We’ve got this.

- And maybe you do.

- But I don’t.

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- So I don’t know about you, but I’m going to pray for the opportunities to speak the Truth of Jesus in the Love of Jesus.

- I’m going to pray that when God gives me the chance to share the reason for the hope that is within me, that I would remember to do it in a gentle and respectful way.

- I’m going to pray that God would allow the conversations I have to be gracious and attractive, seasoned with salt, so that after I’ve listened and take time to speak, that I make things better because God is speaking through me.

- And, because I am absolutely going to say and do the wrong things repeatedly in spite of all this, I’m also going to pray for wisdom.

- More and more wisdom, each and every day.

- Because if I’m going to be Gospel fluent, if I’m going to continue to grow closer and closer to true fluency in the Good News of Jesus, then I’m going to need God’s help.

- Because I can’t do it without Him.

- So now, as we prepare to wrap up, where do we go from here?

- I told you at the beginning that if this all ends when the series ends, it will not last.

- Fluency that isn’t practiced, is forgotten.

- And so there you have it.

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- Practice it.

- Keep practicing it.

- If you haven’t started yet, then start with yourself.

- Gospel fluency won’t happen through us, if it hasn’t already happened to us.

- Start by taking your thoughts captive (you can go back to week 3 of the series to hear more about that).

- Practice repeating and rehearsing the Gospel story to yourself, and then to some fellow followers of Jesus who you trust (go back to week 2 to hear more about that).

- Practice by asking good questions and listening to answers (go back to last week to hear more about that).

- Practice going from fruit to root, and from root to fruit (go back to week 4 for more on that).

- Practice going through all of the ways that Jesus is better (week 5)

- Practice reading the Bible, always looking for Jesus no matter what you are reading (week 6)

- Practice, practice, practice.

- The more we practice, the better we will become at this.

- The better we become at this, the more people will come to us looking for a reason for the hope that is within us

- The more people come to us, the more we get to practice Gospel fluency.

- The more we practice, the better we will become at this.

- And so on and so forth!

- And then, above all, we need to remember this:

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- The key to staying Gospel fluent is to stay close to Jesus.

- We need to keep being led by the Holy Spirit, as He leads us away from unbelief and towards true trust and faith and transformation.

- We need to fall more in love with Jesus, which will make us want to talk about Him more, and the more we talk about Him the more we will love Him and the more we will talk about Him and the more we will love Him and the more we will talk about Him and….

- If we forget about this, and go back to listening to all other sorts of good advice that doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus, then eventually we’ll forget how the Good News of Jesus actually matters in the everyday stuff of real life (and maybe it’s just more of a Sunday thing).

- We need to let the Gospel “work” in our lives, and then we’ll be able to help someone else see how it might “work” for them in whatever they’re going through.

- And, as we prepare to wrap up our time together this morning, and as we prepare to wrap up this entire series, I want to invite us to take communion together.

- If you are a follower of Jesus (whether that is a new decision or one you’ve made long ago), let us practice Gospel fluency by remembering the broken body and shed blood of Jesus together.

- Let us take this moment to reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus gave (His own life) so that we might be forgiven of all of our sins.

- And let’s take this moment to remember the victory of Jesus (His historical resurrection) that we might be free from the power of sin and death forever.

- For anyone here in person, or watching online, and you want to be fluent in the Gospel of Jesus, you want to be close to Him and follow Him and be transformed by Him and allow Him to use you to transform others around you.

- If that is a decision you may want to make for the first time today (or the first time in a long time), consider this act of communion as a way of saying “Jesus, I believe”.

- And if that is you (whether you are in person or online, please let someone know. Talk to me, send us a message on Facebook, or talk to the person who invited you today).

- As we talked about a few weeks ago, we can take communion together (not just on a Sunday morning but anytime we are gathered with other followers of Jesus around a table), and it can help us stay close to Jesus.

- So let us stay close to Jesus, together.

- ***Take communion

- And so, to bring this all to a close.

- Jesus is Good News to every person in every situation.

- Including us.

- So let’s allow Jesus to love us.

- Let’s allow His Holy Spirit to fill us.

- Let’s allow Him to continue to transform us.

- And then, as that process is continuing to happen (each and every day, we never arrive at a finished destination), but we will be able to be more and more Gospel fluent in the lives of those around us.

- We will be able to slow down, listen, pray for help, and ask for wisdom.

- And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to speak the Truth of Jesus, in the Love of Jesus, into the everyday stuff of life that is happening all around us, each and every day, no matter where we go, no matter who we are with.

- Don’t be a noisy gong.

- Be loving.

- Be gentle.

- Be respectful.

- Be full of grace.

- Be seasoned with salt.

- Be wise.

- Be Good News.

- And, whatever you do, don’t keep this Good News to yourself.

- Because Gospel fluency here at Life Centre isn’t ending. It is only beginning.

- Close in prayer

- (*) Now What

- Benediction:

o Loving Father, thank You for Jesus – the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Thank You for the privilege to call upon His name. Thank You for the opportunities that You give us to share the Good News with everyone. We are grateful for those who were obedient to share the Truth with us. They helped us to receive eternal life in Christ. We cannot help but worship You, for Your love is so amazing. It reaches into the darkest depths of our human experience and reclaims our souls by grace. We adore You as our Father, Jesus as our Lord, and the Holy Spirit as our Advocate. Without Your grace, none of us would be here today. All of our praise belongs to You, Most Holy One!

Scripture:

- Ephesians 4:14-16

- 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

- 1 Peter 3:13-17

- Colossians 4:2-6

- James 1:2-8

Pray:

- Pray that God would grow His love within your heart. Pray that you would not be a “noisy gong” but would truly love those He has placed around you. Pray for eyes to see people as God sees them, and pray for a heart to love them as He loves them.

- Spend a few minutes praying for wisdom. You may want to pray for a specific situation you are facing (or a specific thing someone you love is facing and you want wisdom to help them), or you can simply pray for God to give you more of His wisdom in your day-to-day life. Pray that God would generously give you wisdom to understand how He wants you to respond to different things that come your way each and every day.

Discussion/Reflection:

- Some of the things that Gospel fluent people need are: truth, love, gentleness, respect, grace, salt, and wisdom. When you think about that list, is there anything in particular that is more of a struggle for you? Is there anything that comes a little more easily? What can you do to grow in these areas?

- Are you in the habit of asking God for help in becoming a Gospel-fluent person? Why or why not? How might you do a better job of relying on Him and His strength this week as you seek to live a more Gospel fluent life?

- Think back to the past 24 hours. Does your life require a “Gospel explanation”? Does the way you live only make sense because of Jesus? Why or why not?

- “Wisdom is knowledge applied in the right way, with the right heart, at the right time.” Can you think of an example when you (or someone else) had the right things to say, but lacked wisdom? Can you think of an example when you (or someone else) had all of these things come together in a way that showed Godly wisdom?

Now What Next Step:

- Get together with someone else who has been going through this Gospel fluency journey (family, friend, church family, etc).

- Spend some time looking at your calendar for the next few days, the different things coming up on your schedules, and brainstorm together how you could seek to be more Gospel fluent with your life. Try to be as specific and practical as you can be.

- After a few days, get together again and talk about how things went. For better and worse, help each other practice Gospel fluency by sharing successes, failures, what you wished you would have done, what you want to do next time, etc.

- Continue to grow in Gospel fluency!