Sharing our faith 21.2 16

This morning I want to talk about sharing our faith and then look at practical ways that can we do this.

Firstly though I think the starting point for sharing our faith is having a faith that we believe is worth sharing.

It’s having a faith that we want others to share because we’re convinced that it will be good for them.

And this comes from both experiencing the love and goodness of God in our own lives - and also understanding what Jesus has done for us on the cross.

The people who tend to be most enthusiastic about sharing their faith are those for whom it has made the most difference to their lives.

Often people whose lives were falling apart – who were drug addicts or alcoholics or who were in prison –– make the most enthusiastic evangelists.

And this is because they are so amazed and delighted with the difference that God has made to their lives.

And they want to help others to get to know this God who has given them hope and a future – who has turned the darkness of their lives to light.

Now some of you might be thinking – well I’ve never really experienced the depths of despair or hopelessness that some of these people probably have – so my faith story isn’t as dramatic as that.

But if God is in your life – hasn’t He made a difference to it? Hasn’t He helped and encouraged you? On occasion haven’t you felt His presence and His love?

Don’t you derive comfort from being able to pray to him? And don’t you always 

have hope – whatever life throws at you – because you know God?

And wouldn’t your family and friends and neighbours benefit from this same comfort and hope?

Often in fact, people can identify more with our less dramatic or seemingly run of the mill faith stories - because they too haven’t been in the depths of despair or in prison.

So on the one the one hand – as Christians we have an experience of God to share – our faith story if you like – how we came to faith; what God means to us and how He has helped us – and on the other hand we have the gospel, the good news of what Jesus has done for us - to share.

And the more we understand what Jesus has done for us, the more we should want to share it - because it’s completely amazing.

Do you realise that the moment you believed in Jesus – the moment you said yes to God and invited Him into your life – He saved you forever?

He forgave you for everything you had ever done wrong or would ever do wrong in the future.

He saved you from judgment and being eternally separated from Him.

He came to live in your life with the promise that He will never leave or abandon you.

He made you his beloved child, a member of His family and household and He promises that one day – whatever life may throw at you - you will enjoy eternity in heaven with Him.

God himself in the body of Jesus - died on the cross for you. He took all your sin and was punished in your place – so you could be free from condemnation.

Now if that isn’t worth sharing with others I don’t know what is?

Personally I feel incredibly fortunate to be a Christian. So many people don’t know Jesus – and yet we have the tremendous privilege of knowing God.

Don’t you want your friends and neighbours and family to share in this amazing privilege as well - so that they too can know God and be saved?

And isn’t it therefore worth using any opportunities that come along to try and tell those around us that there is a God who loves them tremendously – and who wants a relationship with them so much - that he has died on the cross for them to make this possible.

But how in practice can we do this?

Well here are a few of my thoughts.

Firstly we must make the decision that we want to be known as Christians. How can people ask us questions about our faith if they don’t even know we’re a Christian?

Really we should be proud of our faith and it should be an integral part of who we are.

How can people get to know us if we hide the most important thing in our lives from them?

If embarrassment or shyness is a real problem for you then I would suggest praying and asking God for boldness. Perhaps also ask Him for an opportunity to share your faith with someone who will be friendly and kind – to build your confidence.

So how can we be known as Christians? Well there are lots of ways we can do this. Campbell told me for instance that when he worked in London he used to leave a couple of Christian books on his desk – and that sometimes this would lead to a conversation.

We can put a Christian sticker or logo on our car – although I took mine off a few years ago when Mary my wife pointed out that my driving wasn’t always the best 

Christian witness.

We can wear little badges or crosses –if that’s our thing.

On Facebook or social media we can state that we are a Christian and if we like something with a Christian angle or message we can share it.

If any of you use Twitter you can follow people like Nicky Gumbel and share any tweets you like.

All these things help to identify us as a Christian – and can lead to opportunities to share our faith.

I shared a video on Facebook of some young Christians in Australia praying for people to be healed on the street  – and I got into a conversation with a Facebook friend of my sister – who was dubious about Christian healing.

So we’ve identified ourselves as Christians but how should we share our faith?

Well Peter says in his letter – “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

So the emphasis here isn’t on trying to thrust our faith down people’s throats at every opportunity.

Rather it’s being ready to explain why we believe in God and what our faith means to us when people ask us about it.

The important thing here is that we don’t need to be theological experts. We just need to be honest and express in simple everyday language what we think and believe.

It’s also important to remember that if we are willing to share our faith the Holy Spirit will help us to find the right words to say.

If people ask us a question we don’t know the answer to – like why does God allows suffering – it’s fine to be honest and say that we don’t know the answer to that.

Having said this, Nicky Gumbel who does the Alpha course - has written a book called ‘Searching Issues’ where he covers some of the big questions that people may ask – and offers a few suggestions as to how we can respond.

And of course sharing our faith doesn’t always mean entering into theological discussions.

We can offer to pray for people who are unwell or facing problems. For instance if a friend or work colleague is going through a difficult time in their marriage or with their health we can just say - I’ll pray for you.

If we offer to pray for someone though – we must mean it and do it.

If we’re really brave – and it seems appropriate - we can offer to pray with people. Sometimes people like the re-assurance of someone praying with them.

We can send people Christmas or birthday or get well cards with bible verses that we feel are appropriate written in them.

We can write letters to friends or family explaining the gospel or telling them that we’re thinking of them and praying for them – or perhaps suggesting they try a particular church or do an Alpha course.

When my French aunt was diagnosed with cancer I sent her a letter telling her that I was praying for her – and quoting part of the 23^rd Psalm which I hoped she’d find comforting.

We can give people Christian books or CD’s we think they’ll like. We can send people e-mails with links to websites or YouTube videos we think they may find 

interesting or helpful.

We can buy our nephews and nieces or grandchildren - children’s bibles when they’re little. Or we can buy them films or animations with a Christian message as presents.

When my children were young they loved a series of animated Christian videos called Veggie Tales which were very funny – but had a Christian message.

And as Campbell has said on a few occasions – one of the best things we can do is to invite someone to church – where they can hear the gospel for themselves.

So there are all sorts of ways we can encourage and help people to find their own faith in Jesus.

If we do identify ourselves as Christians and seek to share our faith, we should also do our best to be loving and patient and generous and kind.

We should be people that others can confide in without fear of being judged or condemned.

Of course we’re not perfect – but hopefully people should see something of the love of God in us.

If people find us unfriendly, impatient and selfish – they are unlikely to want listen to what we might say about God because our lives and characters don’t back up our words.

Seeking to love people is fundamental to sharing our faith – because the God we want to help people come to know is love – and loving actions carry more weight than words alone.

In fact our whole motivation for wanting to share our faith should be because we love and care for those around us – and want the best for them.

And finally of course we should be praying for people around us to be saved and to come to know God and for opportunities to share our faith with them.

Generally the more people pray – the more effective they’ll be at sharing their faith with others.

Ultimately however – we need to decide that we’re prepared to take a risk and speak about our faith when the opportunity arises.

And the more we do it the more comfortable we’ll feel.

If you’re a Christian it’s because others cared enough to speak to you about God and encouraged you to seek Him.

Think about the people who helped you on your faith journey – and try to do the same for others.

In the name of the living God. Amen.

MIDNIGHT MASS 24TH December 2015

MIDNIGHT MASS 24^TH December 2015 

                                                                                                                                                                    A colleague of mine in another part of Kent said that in his parish the Midnight Service had tended to be for the drunks who either had lost their way from the pub on Christmas Eve or who had suddenly been overcome either with an attack of nostalgia or an escapist desire to blot out the real world. ‘But’, he went on, ‘we now get a much more sophisticated clientele.’

Well, forgive me if you are a member of the latter group because my message tonight, though profound and potentially life-changing, is simple rather than sophisticated. On the other hand, if by some navigational misfortune you are a member of the former, don’t panic: rest assured we will get you home somehow or other after the service.  

But neither nostalgia for childhood memories, nor escapism from real world, nor the comfortable carapace of sophistication will save us if we actually take the Christian message of Christmas seriously and examine the facts and the evidence with an open and unprejudiced mind. Because the question before each one of us here tonight, the challenge offered to us by our carols and our readings, is, ‘Is it true?’ Is it true that there is a God who created the world, and that he interrupted the Laws of Nature to come into the world he had created to be born, miraculously – because that is what interrupting the Laws of Nature is - as a human. Christianity has never claimed that the birth of Jesus was not miraculous.

Now such an examination is actually quite difficult these days. Our minds are filled - whether we realise it or not – with so many unproven and often blindingly illogical facts about our world and about ourselves that it is difficult to clear our minds for such an important exercise. We have tended to swallow and take for granted as truth the secular or scientific ‘gospel’ - so many theories and assertions about our world and ourselves that are  – if you actually bother to study them – nonsense.

And nowhere are these theories and assertions about why the world exists and why we exist more called into question and shown to be false – on the basis of sound historical evidence - than at Christmas.

The incarnation of God, his choosing in one of his forms of being God to enter the world he created, as a human being, challenges the naturalistic view of the universe – a view proposed most famously perhaps by Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins – the view that there is no God and that eventually we will be able to explain everything about the universe, including its origin, purpose, and destiny, from the inside because the cosmos is all that exists and everything can be explained in terms of mass and energy.

But this belief in naturalism – not to be confused – be warned! - with naturism – is just as much a position of faith as my belief in God and in his coming to us that first Christmas: if Jesus was whom he claimed to be, it makes best sense of the evidence, it explains it. I don’t understand how God could be born as a human being, but on the basis of the evidence, together with trust in who it is we are actually dealing with here, it is perfectly reasonable and rational to believe that he could. And in his coming I also find the answers to life’s most profound questions, the one’s science by its very nature cannot answer.

 In some key areas Science only has best guesses: it’s surprising how much Science cannot explain. Scientists admit that they don’t actually know what consciousness is, what energy is, what gravity is, even what light is. But they believe in these things because they have explanatory power; that is to say, they explain, for instance, why we can see and why things fall.

And so it is with God. God has given us sufficient evidence on which to believe in him, to trust him. If God designed the universe, why could he not enter it? Why can he not break the laws of nature? After all, those laws are only humanity’s understanding of how a rational universe works.

Christianity not only claims to have a basis in reality – in hard facts and evidence, it goes on to claim ultimately to determine what reality is. The incarnation of God challenges the naturalistic view of the universe and says that the universe did not create itself out of nothing, or from a set of laws, was not a matter of chance, but was created by God, the personal agent who caused its creation and who can intervene in it. The view held by naturalists - that it all can be explained without the need for God - is as much a position of faith – though they often won’t admit it - as my faith in the existence of God and his entry that first Christmas into the world he created in order to save us.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying that God and science are at odds, that they are incompatible: I am simply saying that science can only answer the questions science is equipped to answer; and that to rule out the idea of a personal Creator without considering the evidence is, frankly, unscientific. 

 But is it true? Well, why not examine the evidence? Why not put your doubts and preconceptions aside for a moment and consider the evidence of the Gospel record, the archaeological record, the changed lives of those who have come to faith? But also, examine the evidence and the arguments of those who dogmatically exclude God from the equation.                  

The claims made by Christians about the meaning of that first Christmas are the most profound set of claims ever made in history. If they are false then we should have nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity: but if they are true, then it is the most important matter in the world. Some people will say that they are perfectly content living without God and according to their own moral code. Well, yes, moral codes are important; but they cannot either forgive us or empower us to live as we know we ought. Only Jesus can forgive us – because he died for us; only Jesus can empower us to live as we know we ought – because he rose again for us and offered himself and his power to all who would humbly receive him. This offer of eternal life came at great cost and, he said, we refuse it at our peril.      

The Christian faith, the Incarnation, the virginal conception, the miracle of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection make the best sense of the evidence, of the facts, if Jesus was indeed whom he claimed to be. 

Christianity is an evidence-based belief; it is not a leap into the dark but a step into the light, the light not just of understanding the truth about the world and about ourselves, but also that the Creator of our world loves us so much that he entered our world with a specific purpose: that purpose was to save us, to save us, again he himself said, from the sins that separate us from him. This he chose to do through a person’s faith in Jesus. Through faith in him and through him alone, God our creator calls us to enjoy a relationship with him that can begin now and last forever. This is the Christmas story; this is the wonder of it; this is the truth of it that our carols and our readings speak of and challenge each one of us either to accept or to reject.

For those who are seeking him, and humble enough to admit their need of him, I pray that the words of the carol might become true for you: ‘O Holy child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.’

For those who are still not sure but would like to learn a more, do ask me afterwards; take a booklet from the font as you leave, or give me a call. May God bless you all this Christmas; but above all I pray that you will come to know him or to know him more deeply, his truth and his love for you, his saving grace in your life.

Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols 6.30pm 20th December 2015

        Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols 6.30pm  20^th December  2015

I can smell the mince pies from here! For some of you this evening, the question will be ‘How many’ mince pies can I fit in?’ But the question before each one of us tonight, whether we like it or not - after all, we’ve made a decision to come to this service and to join in the celebrations - is ‘Is it true’?   Is it true that there is a Creator of our world, the Creator of our existence, the one who built into you and me the very ability even to ask that question, who actually became one of us 2000 years ago in Bethlehem? That is what Christmas, God taking human form, asks us to believe.  Now it may be, for some, that your ‘world view’ - your view of how the world is and how it came into being - would not normally allow you even to ask that question, because you’ve heard somewhere or other that the world’s existence and its origin can be explained by chance rather than a Creator. But tonight our carols and our readings invite us, indeed they challenge us for this short hour of celebration, to consider the truth of the Christmas story – that God became man.

We have already read what scholars call ‘the infancy narratives’, the accounts of Jesus’ birth: and I have just read from the prologue of John’s Gospel which reveals to us the meaning and significance of those accounts. But are they true? Is that what happened? Is there a God outside of a world he created who chose to come, miraculously, inside it, in person, in order to reveal himself, and with a very specific purpose - to save us? Was Jesus supernaturally conceived, or is the whole shebang at best a naive myth, at worst a despicable hoax invented by the writers of the four Gospels?  Well, those gospels certainly don’t read that way. They read as four different records written by ordinary people for ordinary people in order to communicate an extra-ordinary set of events. Read Luke’s Gospel and we are compelled at least to admit that Luke was writing out of a conviction of certainty – certainty that he was recording events that actually happened. And we must note that whenever Luke’s historical accuracy has been called into question, the archaeological evidence has always found in his favour.

Of course, it’s very easy to avoid having to make a decision about all this, even if the evidence and this Creator are challenging us to do so. It’s very easy, not to mention convenient, to carry on either in the bliss of ignorance that it does not matter – ‘I’m very happy as I am, thank you, without having to stop and think about all this’ – or in a dogmatic refusal even to look at the evidence objectively and honestly - ‘I mean to say, in the light of all our knowledge and understanding  of the science of it all, it is just too ridiculous for words even to consider such an intrusion from outside - and by a virginal conception? Impossible! Why should we believe what we can’t explain just because the Church tells us to?’   Well, I agree the incarnation of God challenges the naturalistic view of the universe (a view proposed, most famously perhaps, by Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins), the view that there is no God and that eventually we will be able to explain everything about the universe, including its origin, purpose, and destiny, from the inside. Oh, yes, this intrusion by God that first Christmas raises huge doubts about so many of the scientific theories that dogmatically exclude him from consideration.

But this belief in naturalism is just as much a position of faith as my belief in God and in his coming to us that first Christmas: if Jesus was whom he claimed to be, it makes best sense of the evidence, it explains it. I don’t understand how God could be born as a human being, but on the basis of the evidence, together with trust in who it is we are actually dealing with here, it is perfectly reasonable and rational to believe that he could. And in his coming I also find the answers to life’s most profound questions, the one’s science by its very nature cannot answer. 

In some key areas Science only actually has best guesses: it’s surprising how much Science cannot explain. Scientists admit that they don’t actually know what conscience is, what energy is, what gravity is, even what light is. But they believe in these things because they have explanatory power; that is to say, they explain, for instance, why we can see and why things fall. 

And so it is with God. God has given us sufficient evidence on which to believe in him, to trust him. If God designed the universe, why could he not enter it? Why can he not break the laws of nature? After all, those laws are only humanity’s understanding of how a rational universe works.

One Nobel Prize winning scientist – not a Christian – said this; ‘It seems very clear now that some one has written his mind into every cell in the universe’. 

The Christian faith, the Incarnation, the virginal conception, the miracle of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection make the best sense of the evidence, of the facts, if Jesus was whom he claimed to be.  Christianity is an evidence-based belief; it is not a leap into the dark but a step into the light, the light not just of understanding the truth about the world and about ourselves, but also that the Creator of our world loves us so much that he entered our world with a specific purpose: that purpose was to save us, to save us, he himself said, from the sins that separate us from him. This he chose to do through a person’s faith in Jesus. Through faith in him and through him alone God our creator calls us to enjoy a relationship with him that can begin now and last forever. This is the Christmas story; this is the wonder of it; this is the truth of it that our carols and our readings speak of and challenge each one of us either to accept or to reject.

 For those who are seeking him, and humble enough to admit their need of him, I pray that the words of the carol might become true for you: ‘O Holy child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.’

And for those who are still not sure but would like to learn a more, do ask me afterwards; take a booklet from the font as you leave, or give me a call. May God bless you all this Christmas; but above all I pray that you will come to know him or to know him more deeply, his truth and his love for you, his saving grace in your life.