always prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have

It is quite a challenge that Peter makes in his letter (1 Peter 3:15) 'always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.'

It assumes that people will have looked at your life and had questions to ask you. In fact at the start of that verse Peter even tells us how to ensure that is that case; 'But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord'. If people see that Christ is Lord of our lives, that we are seeking to live for his glory and not for our own then it will provoke questions. If people see that actually we are maximising the law not minimising it then they will ask questions. If people see by our actions that we love others because we have been loved by God then they will ask questions.

And that is when we must be ready. I think the first challenge for us in 2007 is to be close enough to people that they can see that Christ is Lord, unless people are seeing how I act under pressure, in the home, on the squash court, in the pub how will they ever know that we have a hope. Unless we are in the world people cannot ask us the questions Peter assumes they will be asking. We have to get out of the Christian ghetto, move away from the holy huddle. And not just into superficial relationships but to real relationships that show those around us that we love them, that we care, that we are different.

Only then will it provoke questions about the hope that we have, about our reasons for believing such hope. Then we must be ready to answer those questions. I wonder some times if we spend so long on preparing to answer the questions that by the time we feel we're ready we have no one who knows us well enough to see our lives and to ask the questions.