Good News

Last week I ended the blog saying, “Let’s never give up on sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.”  Many consider Christianity a moral code – teaching and advice on how to live.  But it is not first that.  It is first news.  There’s a big, big difference. 

Advice is something you believe someone should follows so that things go well for them.  It’s about the future.  News is about what has happened, the past.

Let’s say an army was approaching.  Advisors … advice-givers would tell everyone in the town, barricade this, build up that, store this, cover that, … archers here.  On the basis of worry, how might we save ourselves is the matter.  We live in a certain way based on advice rooted in effort.

The phrase “good news” is a translation of the word, “euangellion.”  See the prefix, “eu,” for “good.”  See “angel” in “angellion” and an angel is a messenger.  An euangellion was a technical term for a herald, someone who ran back from, say, a field of battle, to the hometown.  They’d shout, “Our King won!” People would then live a certain way but based on news rooted in someone else’s effort.

Christianity is all about good news.  Two thousand years ago Jesus rose from the dead.  It’s possibly harder to disbelieve the evidence than to believe it.  Based on that victory we live in a certain way.  Thanks be to God!

For info on the resurrection I recommend:  The Case for Easter by Lee Strobel and The Resurrection of the Son of God by Tom Wright.  The first is short and the second is long.  

New Christian

New Christian …

I was at a meeting today.  A guy named Joe asked Reuben and then me how we met Jesus.  He was asking because he just met him on May 23.  Someone asked him to church and out of politeness he went.  The message and the presence of Jesus hit him like a ton of bricks.  He became, in his words, “born again.”  He travels a lot and this was his first men’s disciple meeting.  He had a new Bible that was called, The Beginner’s Bible. 

He shared that he told a colleague about his experience and got the reply, “Oh yeah, I tried that once.”  After a bit, Joe was pretty confused and a little angry at some other ways the man was treating him.  Instead of taking it to him, he prayed.  He prayed because that was the first advice he got about being born again – you should pray.  A little while later the man apologized and Joe thought, “Man, this really does work!” 

I noticed the whole room nodding and encouraging Joe.  It was as if everyone was remembering anew, “Jesus does work!  I mean, truly.”  New Christians I have always thought are vital to churches.  Worship, it’s higher when you are standing next to a person who is feeling like, well, they have been born again.  Education, it’s real when you are the one teaching a brand new Christian what’s what.  (Joe said he’d been propositioned by three women in the last month and that had not happened to him in years.  The men in the room said, “It’s Satan trying to mess you up.”  See, they were teaching him.)  Fellowship, go to the nursery window of a hospital and watch the family peering in at the newborn.  Is that fellowship or what?  Evangelism, it’s higher because you see once more but up close and personal and now, Jesus is touching lives.  So off you go ready to share him convinced he’s who he said he was. 

Let’s never give up on sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.  

Still Time

There's still time to sign up for the Leadership Summit.  It is avaliable in every major city in the United States.  It is the one conference I go to year in and year out.

There's still time to volunteer to help with VBS at Cocoa.  We'll be doing it in conjunction with Celebration Tabernacle.  It starts this Sunday evening in Flaniken Hall.

I do a little volunteering at Civil Air Patrol, Merritt Island.  One of the first mini-lectures I gave was on the difference between the urgent and the important.  Do you know the difference?  It's critical to realize that the urgent feels important but may or may not be.  Conversely, the important may or may not feel urgent.  It is simply the road to ruin to not get that some very, very important parts of life are not and never will be urgent.

A deepening life with God is seldom experienced as urgent.  But is there anything truly more important?  Make room in today for the important.

Have you heard of C.S. Lewis' essay, "On Learning in War Time"?  He was in university when he was called up to WWI.  He took a little Latin book or something like that with him.  For everyone else, they'd get back to learning after the war.  For everyone else, the trenches were too dirty to read in.  For everyone else, the situation wasn't quite right.  He realized that in real life there is always something that makes it less than ideal to learn, some reason to say, "I'll do it tomorrow."  But learning is important.  It may not be urgent.  It is important.  And he made room in today for it.