Implications of the Incarnation for Evangelism

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made....And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-3, 14).

Christ's becoming man (His enfleshment or incarnation) has implications for the way in which we minister to others in the world. In particular, it has implications for the way in which we share the gospel (the good news of what God has done for us in Christ). John Stott has stated this very clearly in a passage I read last night.

“In all evangelism there is also a cultural gulf to bridge. This is obvious when Christian people move as messengers of the gospel from one country or continent to another. But even if we remain in our own country, Christians and non-Christians are often widely separated from one another by social sub-cultures and lifestyles as well as by different values, beliefs and moral standards. Only an incarnation can span these divides, for an incarnation means entering other people’s worlds, their thought-world, and the worlds of their alienation, loneliness and pain. Moreover, the incarnation led to the cross. Jesus first took our flesh, then bore our sin. This was a depth of penetration into our world in order to reach us, in comparison with which our little attempts to reach people seem amateur and shallow. The cross calls us to a much more radical and costly kind of evangelism than most churches have begun to consider, let alone experience” (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 291).

Father, help us to consider the radical way in which you entered our world and live in light of it. May we not exalt ourselves above our master, Christ Jesus. Help us to love You more than our own safety or comfort or ambitions. You are our only hope and the only hope of the world. Let Your kingdom come.

"Beauty so old and so new"

I was struck by the following quotation from Augustine's Confessions tonight:

"Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours."--Augustine, "Confessions," 10.27 (38)

May God shatter our deafness by His voice, captivate our attention from the lovely things He has created, and put to flight our blindness by His beauty. May we taste of His goodness and hunger for His righteousness all the more.

P.S.--For a creative interpretation of this quote in music, see Blake Hicks' song "Beauty: Ancient Yet New" on his album, Songs of a Pious Heart..

J

Training Your Children to Manage Money - Resources - Eternal Perspective Ministries

Our children's ministry leader shared the following article by Randy Alcorn with families at our church. It offers 10 practical ways to teach our children to handle money in a God-honoring way. This is an insightful article that will take only a few minutes to read.

Here's the intro:

"In the days of the Klondike gold rush, two miners struck a huge deposit. Feverishly excited, they unearthed more and more gold each day. Meanwhile they neglected to store up provisions for the winter. Then came the first blizzard. Nearly frozen, one scrawled a shaky note explaining their predicament. Months later a prospecting party discovered the note, along with two frozen bodies lying on top of a huge pile of gold.

Today countless children grow up begging and grabbing and clinging onto all the things money can buy. As adults, they rarely outgrow this shallow self-centeredness, but simply graduate to more money and bigger toys. Living their lives on earth as if this were all there is, they fail to prepare for their eternal future.

Christ told the story of a rich fool, to whom God said, “This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:20-21).

Five minutes after we die we’ll know exactly how we should have lived. But then it will be too late. The good news is, God gave us his Word so we don’t have to wait till we die to discover how we should have lived. And God gave our children Christian fathers, so we could show them what the world will not—how to live now in light of eternity."

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Training Your Children to Manage Money - Resources - Eternal Perspective Ministries

J