This is part of a series that was recorded at the European Leadership Forum in Poland in 2015. You can get the rest of them here – http://foclonline.org/answer/how-can-christians-engage-non-christians
The Blog of David Robertson
The Blog of David Robertson
This is part of a series that was recorded at the European Leadership Forum in Poland in 2015. You can get the rest of them here – http://foclonline.org/answer/how-can-christians-engage-non-christians
Yes it is a daft question.
Find what you are passionate about and do it with the joy of the Lord being your strength and yes be ready to give reason for your hope.
It really is simple and not worth getting tied up in knots about or thinking there is a magic formula “how to” to follow like an instruction manual for putting together a table you have just bought from Ikea.
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Not sure it is quite as easy especially if you go further than getting to know someone.
The recent expulsion of a Sheffield University student from an MA course for an entry on his facebook, and the disciplinary action against an NHS employee for inviting a muslim colleague to church and giving her a book about the conversion a muslim are indicators of the difficulties, as is the removal of a magistrate and subesquently his NHS position.
I know things have changed rapidily within the last 5 years but my experience is that there are always opprtunities, even in the NHS. A public policy of “having a good death” on which the (now discredited) end of life “Liverpool Care Pathway” was based, was predicated on the belief, that there is no life beyond death.. There is here a proper opportunity to briefly state the Christian perspective, much to the discomfort of professionals, who would be wary of challenging in an open meeting. It’s still not easy, as it goes beyond comfortable conversation.
But I’ve not been in the workplace position of the previously mentioned magistrate making decisions on the placement of children with homosexuals, or Liillian Ladelle, the registrar of births deaths and marriages who opposed SSM, and sadly has subsequently died at a young age, nor of the Christian B&B owners who refused a room to homosexuals, nor Ashers Bakers in Northern Ireland. To them, a life lived in grace is free, but not cheap.
Nor was it for Bonhoeffer. I find all this deeply challenging, but it is only in and through the cost to our Father and our Saviour Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit is any of it possble, encapsulated by the heading of book by AW Tozer- “Man the dwelling place of God.” And yes, that is not a a thoroughgoing theology.
Geoff,
I said it was simple. I didn’t say it was easy. You rightly point out difficulties.
Take your example with Bonhoeffer. In the climate of Hitler’s “positive Christianity” i.e. a blending of Christianity with Naziism, that eventually was subsumed by Nazisim and Hitler in the place of Christ, Bonhoeffer practiced “confessional Christianity.”
Thankfully we live in a part of the world where paying the ultimate price with the sacrifice of our lives is unlikely to be the cost of following Jesus. But what do we do when it comes to sacrificing for example our careers, relationships with family members and friends and dare I say relationship with the church?
The reality is that this is likely to happen. For comfort we have the words of Jesus in the beattitutes that if you are hated because of Christ then great IS your reward in heaven, Note emphasis on “is” as it is for the present as well as the future.
So what will you choose? Keeping your own life or losing your life for Christ’s sake?
Don’t know where to mention this, but it was disconcerting today to find that for the first time, my phone wouldn’t allow immediate access, but came up with a “site warning”, and I note today on a search,on the security label the site is marked with an amber warning. Has anything changed? I’m not very net savvy.
“God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.”.