By David ReayFriday 1 Apr 2016LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read 1 Peter 2:12
12 Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbours. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honourable behaviour, and they will give honour to God when he judges the world. (NLT)
For various reasons, legitimate and illegitimate, the church hasn’t got a great reputation in many parts of our society. When we start mounting arguments for the reliability of the Gospels, the need for repentance, the reality of the Trinity, people may not listen. What we are saying (and saying quite rightly) is being drowned out by the static of apparent religious hypocrisy.
The response to this is not to give up in despair. It is to do as the New Testament tells us to do: live the sort of life that reflects something of the nature of God and his Son Jesus. Our world not only needs truth; it needs to see that we believe the truth so thoroughly that we live it out. People can argue back and forth about the Bible and about sexual morality and about miracles. But there is little argument with lives of love and grace. Our lives rather than our arguments become the apologetic for the faith.
What constitutes a Christian disciple is not merely the beliefs they hold but the lives they live. What constitutes Christian witness is not merely asserting a set of moral standards but practising them in such a way as to commend them to the sceptics.
We dare not give up ‘preaching’. Words matter. But they will have much greater impact if spoken in the context of Jesus-like lives. The music of a well lived life is the best accompaniment to the words we speak.
Blessings
David Reay