Irresistible By Andy Stanley - 6-Day Reading PlanSample

History Worth Repeating 

When I hear Christians and church leaders in the United States complain about the obstacles the church faces today, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Obstacles? Seriously? What kind of obstacles? When compared to the insurmountable challenges faced by first- and second-century believers, our obstacles are laughable. The secularization of America? Moral decline? Loss of religious liberty? Hollywood’s mischaracterization of Christians?

That’s it? 

Imagine voicing those complaints to a handful of first-century Roman Christians huddled in the back room of a second-floor apartment reading a portion of Matthew’s Gospel by candlelight, the only scrap of Scripture they possessed. Imagine transporting the folks who’ve abandoned faith for all the wrong modern reasons back in time to that harrowing era of church history. Imagine how hollow, shallow, and completely nonsensical their arguments would sound to Jesus followers who had never owned any portion of Scripture but who sat under the teaching of the apostle Peter himself.

Imagine transporting this same group of time travelers to a house church in Corinth or Ephesus. Picture the confused looks these modern skeptics would receive when they began complaining about the violence depicted in the Jewish Scriptures. First-century followers of The Way weren’t put off by violence. They were surrounded by it. Besides, the message of Jesus stood in stark contrast to the bloody, violent methods of empire and temple. 

How would our time travelers respond to a version of faith that had nothing to do with the creation account or the history of the Jews? Imagine their surprise once they discovered that these extraordinary people chose to follow Jesus because he offered eternal life and rose from the dead to authenticate his right to make such an outrageous offer. 

But enough imagining.

How would we respond?

How would you respond?

How would your version of faith hold up under the scrutiny of that mostly illiterate but oh- so-brave generation of Christians? 

There once existed a version of our faith that rested securely on a single, unprecedented event—the resurrection. That’s the version I’m inviting you to embrace. The original version. The endurable, defensible, new covenant, new command version.

Reflection: Do you think our modern version of faith is too easy to resist and thus easy to dismiss? Are we too caught up in what’s in it for us than what love requires of us? 

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