Si Wilkins, when thinking about a conversation with a non-Christian, recently said “I haven’t got anything tangible to offer you. For me to say to you that Christianity has made my life better and more satisfying than yours is would be ********”, and, of course he’s absolutely right. I’m sure he’d be the first to agree that the Christian life not actually being about a better & more satisfying life which are two ultimately selfish & clearly worldly pursuits, at least here on earth and in the way that the world understands them. Jo and I are both incredibly frustrated & not satisfied, and we live on the edge of a council estate in S2 (which is about being “better off” than “merely better” I guess?) - with a worldly measuring stick we score quite low, but we see these things blessings because in our frustration we see that God is up to something, not sure what exactly, but he is close, and for some reason we wouldn’t change being where God has placed us for the world. Why is that?

It seems strange to try to sell God to someone presenting benifits that appeal to the world and not to God - and yet we often feel an inexplicable pressure to do so and so either patronise the listener or think of ourselves more highly than we ought. (again, I’m not saying God doesn’t want someone to have a better and more satisfying life - but I’m sure you’ve picked that up now..?).

I don’t think its possible to recommend Jesus to the world by what the world finds appealing, and I’ve thought about this a lot. If you did you’d be waiting to tell people about Jesus until your life was clearly and visibly better (more blessings, God blesses you with a permanent miraculous gifting or some other non-cross based fantasy), and if that is a persons basis for evangelism then they’re either evangelising without integrity or they’re going to keep quiet.

The key, as Si puts it, is to be honest (its what I’ve been talking about in the topic “where have all the weak preachers gone?”), to say where you’re really at, what you really struggle with. And a I said before about preachers in the post below: not to package, sweeten or round off, but integrity, honesty & weakness (and therefore Gods power).

I had a fantastic time at Jenny & Hugh’s wedding. The party in the evening was awesome too, and I had a couple of conversations with people about God that were truly fantastic. I was halfway through the conversations when I realised that what was actually happenning was that I wasn’t a) trying to sell a package, or b) seeing myself as anything different to the person I was talking to (I didn’t think of myself more highly than I ought - as St Paul said). It makes a heck of a lot of difference. All of a sudden I was looking around this person’s life from the point of view of a ‘co-seeker’, looking for God in it, looking for what God was up to. And so we started talking about that, etc.

For co-seekers are what we really are.

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Positive self-delusion and the meaning of life
Cold Calling on a train
Where have all the weak preachers gone?
A Gospel of Power not of words