Transcript
Sorry.
Can you hear me now?
Embarrassing.
Anyway, I was saying with the Covid19 restrictions loosening here in Tasmania it’s time to unmute ourselves and get back to being on mission to making disciples of Jesus.
Like any online lecture or tutorial, it’s easy to get slack and disconnect from the task at hand. When you’re called on to engage, don’t forget to unmute yourself.
If you’ve disconnected and been slack in making disciples during the lockdown, well, now is the time to engage, follower of Jesus. Let’s make disciples and show people that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Unmute your actions and your words and let’s get to it.
Unmute your actions
In the Old Testament, we are told to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. In the gospels, Jesus tells us that the sum of what God wants from us is to love God and love others. With physical distancing and online learning at Uni it’s been tough to love our friends in practical ways. Maybe you got comfortable in your jammies and ugg boots at home and the thought of opening yourself up to loving your friends, neighbours, families and classmates is a bit daunting.
If loving others like Jesus loved, means healing the sick, raising the dead and overthrowing a marketplace in a holy place seems a bit much. Why not start with other ways Jesus modelled loving your neighbour.
He forgave those who hated him.
He provided the basic needs of food but also offered people his living water.
He had time for those who asked hard questions.
He did not shun the undesirable.
He loved the person in front of him not looking for anyone better who might be around.
He had the big picture of self-sacrifice in mind.
He was a peacemaker but boldly spoke truth and held people accountable for their lack of love for God and others.
Are you ready to unmute your actions of love to make disciples?
Are you ready to make amends or reach out to someone who has become distant to you
Can you provide food, shelter, companionship to someone who is doing it tough financially or is lonely? Are your ready to stick it out and be there for the hard conversations. Are you ready to love the person that God puts in front of your to love? Are you self-giving?
Or are you a peacemaker but you’re still on silent?
Unmute your words
In the book Stay Salt, the author Rebecca Pippert who also wrote Out of the Saltshaker has noticed a shift in how we go about making disciples. She says we’ve become very good at making friends and developing relationships of mutual respect but rather than speaking the truth of the good news of Jesus to these friends, they are praying that God will send someone else to do it.
Why?
She says there are three internal barriers to us having gospel conversations with our friends.
1. We feel inadequate
2. We think we don’t know enough.
3. We lack confidence.
Does that resonate with you? If it does, sit with that feeling a bit. Evaluate it. Don’t just wash it away.
Why do you feel inadequate? What are you missing? Why do you not know enough? Maybe you became a Christian a year ago or ten years ago and you’ve forgotten the basic or thought that you were supposed to graduate from the gospel of Jesus and move onward and upward to more spiritual high levels of knowledge. Or maybe you’re just missing the HOW piece to the puzzle. How do you begin to communicate such an important, life-altering message of hope? How do we avoid pride and merely badgering someone with our philosophical wit, crushing a debate opponent?
Here’s my advice to you. Engage with Uni Fellowship. Our student leaders and staff are committed to helping you wrestle with these questions. Through our online and in person events and small groups, we hope to show you that when you feel inadequate to communicate Jesus as the way, God’s spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is the same spirit that lives in you and works in you and through you to live and speak his message. If you don’t know or need a refresher, we are committed to helping you learn the truth of Jesus. If you lack confidence, we’ll point you to the one worth putting your confidence in. We’ll even do some training in how to have these disciple-making, life-giving conversations.
Engage with staff and student leaders as we prayerfully depend on God to proclaim Jesus and make disciples at University.
Join us next Thursday when we’ll be gathering online on Zoom for our Engage: Online Conference. Be sure to unmute yourselves and learn how to love God and others with both your actions and your words.
I’ll be leading an elective on Is Jesus the only way to God? I’ll see you there.
At University Fellowship of Christians we are in a unique position to speak into the University realm of conversations and ideas and worldviews and point those who are questioning, confused by the world's lack of answers where authenticity becomes the ethical standard.
Christians and churches (both local and further afield) partnering with us in this important work makes a massive difference in young people's lives as staff and students are showing up and are here for these types of conversations.