The Boxed Up Bible

I'm finding it really difficult to get away from blogging about Schoolies and while this blog isn't about Schoolies it indirectly relates to an issue I seemed to come up against alot.

Lately I've been having great trouble with sharing the gospel. Not trouble about actually doing it, but trouble with presenting it without getting slammed for it.

At Schoolies we seem to come up against a catch 22 sort of situation. Now i haven't read the book but from what i know it's when you're in between a rock and a hard place. Our aim at schoolies is to share the good news about Jesus with them but at the same time, when i'm in a room with some schoolies, i almost feel as though we're not in there to share the good news about Jesus. It's CONFUSING!!!

We're allowed to share our faith and beliefs with them BUT only if they ask the questions and we don't volunteer the information in the first place.

Sometimes i just get so frustrated with how silenced we are about what we believe. I also get frustrated that Christians get slaughtered about their faith and are made to be quiet while other faiths are being encouraged to speak up about theirs - why can't we all just have equal right in expressing what we believe?

One example comes to mind when i was in TAFE (college, not uni). We were specifically told that no-one was to bag someone out for their beliefs which was all good and well until people started slagging off Christianity, which i might add was the ONLY religion anyone had coarse words to say about it. People were defending other religions left, right and centre but when i tried to defend my own religion, i got a verbal beating for it!

I know Christianity is NOT an easy religion to follow, in fact, it's probably the hardest one there is because we're actually fighting beings in a LIVING realm not a non-existant or dead realm. I'm just so sick and tired of this new age where i'm being forced to shut up about my faith.

I won't do it.

I've been doing some reading and researching and planning etc for the junior bible study i help run which'll be kicking off again in February for another mighty year. In one of the resources i read it had a paragraph kind of related to this sort of thing. The title of the paragraph is what caught my attention:

"The Gospel Will Cause Offence
The gospel must be either accepted or
rejected; there is no neutral ground. Young people who reject the gospel will probably leave simply because the gospel is being declared. We should not encourage such people to stay in the group but we should not be surprised if they leave.

Care should be taken when modifying the program to suit such people. We should examine ourselves when people leave and look for faults in ourselves and in our programs. But if we water down
our programs to hold people who have already decided to reject Christ, they will probably leave anyhow and we will have done little to build the lives of the others in the group. The goal of holding usually leads us to back off from the radical demands of the gospel.

Jesus did not try to hold people. There were many, like the rich young ruler, who found out about Jesus and went away. Jesus simply let them go. Evangelism polarises people. If we declare Christ, people will leave because of Christ. This does not mean that we should not organise events to attract young people. There is
still all the difference in the world to contacting and holding."

Incite by Ross Farley & Steven Forward

Tear Australia & Scripture Union

So long as we declare God's message and the truth of the gospel, God will do the rest. God is a faithful,loving and just God and all he asks us to do, is be
willing!

So long as our earthly laws line up with our eternally laws, i have no doubt in my mind that God will not let a single thing go wrong. It may appear wrong to us and our mere mortal thinking but if both things here on earth and in heaven (on earth as
it is in heaven is what Jesus taught us in the Lord's prayer) are aligned the path is made clear for God to do his most fullest work. Jesus himself obeyed and respected his authorities and in the end was killed by them but ultimately God's plan for mankind was achieved. Had it have happened any other way, we'd still be
sacrificing animals for our sins!

I don't know where this has gotten to, but simply put, just declare the word of God. Don't hinder it, don't fake it, don't exaggerate it - just tell it like it is, keep it real!

Tink
xoxo