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.

If Christ were Lord over the world...

How do you create a community that shows what life would be like if Christ was Lord over the world?

The gospel's give us a picture of what life would be like if Christ was Lord over the world, as death is conquered, sickness is healed, demons are banished, sin is defeated and perfect obedience is lived out. It is this glimpse that we see fleshed out in Revelation 21 and 22 and the descriptions of the new heaven and new earth where Christ is Lord and God is on his throne and all barriers to that are removed, including our sinfulness.

The Church is to be the community that enables the world to glimpse what such a reality looks like now, just as Israel was to be for the people around it in its day. So what marks such a community?

Acts 2 shows us some of the marks of just such a community and the word that stands out is devotion. But it is only as the gospel is proclaimed (apostolic teaching), Christ is remembered (breaking of bread) and God is relied upon (prayer) that such a community (fellowship) is formed.

How do you create a community that shows what life would be like if Christ was Lord over the world? You don't, you pray that God would do so as you devote yourselves to God's word and remember together what Christ has done for us on the cross; taking the punishment for our rebellion on himself and crediting us with his right standing before God. You then look to devote yourself to those thinsg with thsoe around you. Wouldn't such a community turn the world upside down now just as it did in the first century?

The big question

Came across this question about the church yesterday, its well worth thinking about.

How do you create a community that shows what life would be like if Christ was Lord over the world?

I'll try to post some thoughts in the coming days.