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| Pointing to Our Hope – Part 2 (1 Peter 3:15) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace mercy and peace … Last Sunday we looked at the results of a survey. A survey taken of most of the modern western world. And we looked at how the Cross of Jesus Christ faired against other well known symbols in our Western culture. And we found that in terms of general recognition, the Cross came in 4th … behind the Olympic Rings, as first , the McDonalds Arches, as 2nd, and the Shell Oil Shell Symbol as Third. And we talked at some length last week about why that was so … why the Cross of Jesus Christ, in terms of its recognition, came in behind gasoline, hamburgers and athletic competition. Now, as a result of that, we didn’t decide that a several million dollar ad campaign was the way to go if we wanted to increase the Cross’ visibility. But we did note that there are not a few very satisfied Cross bearers in our midst … and also down the street … and even all around the world … as it has been for the past 2000 years. The problem has been, or perhaps better said, the challenge every generation of Christians has faced, is how to tell others about what the Cross means … particularly to them … individually. How does the Cross of Jesus Christ … His life, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension … His promise of always being with us to the end of the age … His promise to always hear and answer our prayers … His promise to fill us with His Holy Spirit … His promise to prepare a mansion for us in heaven … how do all those things finally make a difference … in our day-to-day lives? Well, we could talk about how we set our priorities, how we deal with our time, talents and treasures … how we raise our children … how we deal with our fears … or simply … how we live differently than the world does … because of the Cross of Jesus Christ. We could do that … but instead, how often do we go about our daily lives as “crypto-Christians”, like the Christian young man who worked all summer in the lumber jack camp … and was proud of the fact that they never discovered, by his words or by his actions, that he held an allegiance to Jesus Christ? Well. As we heard in our Epistle reading Last Sunday … light has no business with darkness. Because God dwells in us by His Spirit as Christians … we not only want to live God pleasing lives … we also want to live lives that look forward to those opportunities that God gives us to join Him in growing His Kingdom. And many of those opportunities take the form of verbally sharing who we are in Christ. Who you are. Not so much what you do…but who you are. Because the doing of Christian things … flows from being like Christ. And so … who you are … drives and determines what you do. So, as we began talking about our individual stories last week … we noted that our personal Story pretty much begins with how we came to faith. What is the story concerning your Baptism? Was it as an infant or was it later in life? Then, as you grew up in faith, or maybe as you came to faith later in life … who, what individual or individuals were instrumental in helping you grow in your faith? And as you think about your story, you may also recall some “Spiritual Markers” … some times in your life when your faith made a big difference in the decisions you made … or some special times when you saw the hand of God active in your life’s path. Those are some of the things to consider when thinking about your story. And beginning this Sunday … we’re going to ask you seriously to consider doing this: That you would take some quiet time and sit down and actually start to write out your story … Your Gospel story. Telling your story to someone is really hard to do if you’ve never taken the time to sit down and organize your thoughts. Now. We’ll be talking more about story writing over the next few weeks … But, right now, we’d like you to put those thoughts away for a moment. And consider this: We were saying that each of us has our own personal story … by God’s design. And also, by God’s design, we each have a different personality. What does that mean? Our personality means, for our purposes, how we interact with people. And for all of us, that is naturally different. Why are we talking about personalities, then? Because HOW we tell our story is as important as the story itself. And it’s our intention to affirm the fact that a particular style of interacting with others might be natural for some but very un-natural for others. Now, there’s been a lot of study done on personalities. And so, to keep it simple and also to keep it easy for us to remember … over the next couple of weeks we’re going to talk about four different personality types or styles … These four styles are understood to typify most of the differences in our personalities. And so, as we talk about them … you’ll probably recognize yourself in one style or another. Now, we said we’re going to keep this simple, and also easy to remember. As you noticed, we’re not requiring anyone to take notes. My experience is you never have those notes with you when you really need them. So. Today, we’re going to look at two different human personality types or styles. And next week we’ll look at two more, four altogether. And so, to help us identify what these personalities look like … and to help us to remember them … we are going to pick an animal from God’s Animal kingdom that might help us picture in our mind what that personality “generally” looks like. Ready? Well, let’s try it. Our first personality type is one we will label as a Lion. And to help us understand what a lion personality looks like, we have a video clip we’ll watch showing us someone with that personality, as she talks about how she shares her faith … As you might imagine, people with a lion personality type are the kinds of people who are not intimidated by walking right up and talking to people, even people they don’t know. They are positive, strong willed, very sure of who they are, and very willing to step up to almost any kind of challenge. So everyone should aspire to be a lion, right? Well, that would go counter to God’s design. You see some people might respond well to a lion’s straightforwardness … but even our lady on the clip acknowledged that some people might be put off with her style, didn’t she? Well, now, let’s listen next to this man as he explains a totally different approach to interacting with people and sharing his faith… We call His personality style: the Beaver. There we saw a more gentle, more cautious approach. One that starts slow, building a relationship to a point to where faith can be discussed, And then uses God’s Word in its various forms, the Bible, the Word spoken and shared one-on-one and in small groups, and the Word proclaimed in worship. This slow, cautious and careful builder personality we refer to as a beaver. Lions and Beavers. Maybe you know some people with personalities like that? And maybe perhaps you saw yourself in one of these two. Well, if you didn’t … we’re going to look at two more next week … and to give you a preview: one’s called the Otter and the other’s called the Golden Retriever. And perhaps many of us will see more of ourselves there. But, you see how personality drastically effects the way we tell our story? It’s big, isn’t it? But, also as we said earlier, we first we need to have our story … to be able to tell others about that hope that is ours … So … back to the assignment… If you would, again … start thinking about Your Story … Try to put the hope that you have down into words. And above all, do it with words that everyone understands. Not so much the words that we tend to use here in church like “righteousness” or “Atonement” … but words that you might share with someone in the Kroger parking lot. And talking about our stories, along with the Otter and the Golden retriever, will be our subjects for next week … as we continue on this journey together of telling others about the hope that we have, as we point to the Cross of Jesus Christ In Him. Amen. |