Be Prepared...to Give an AnswerParaugs

BE PREPARED TO... GIVE AN ANSWER

DAY FOUR 

As a kid, most every Sunday I recited the Apostle’s Creed, along with the rest of the Morris United Methodist Church congregation.  I can hear it now, the monotone, somewhat creepy, sound of the voices reverberating in the room, “We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” we said, “and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried….etc., etc., etc.    

I believed it, I guess, but what proof did I have that it actually happened.  It is some pretty unbelievable stuff.  I can only imagine what might go through a non-believer’s mind when they hear these liturgical recitations.  These people are a bunch of robots who can’t even think for themselves or fools one. 

Millions of people, like me, grew up in Christian homes and attended church most every Sunday.  But that didn’t make us followers of Christ—Christians—any more than standing in a garage makes us a car.  A person can even believe that Jesus is the son of the Virgin Mary and the Son of God, and yet that doesn’t necessarily mean that their faith is in the saving grace of Jesus either.  For even the demons believe that He is the Christ, the Savior of the world (James 2:19). 

Whether you grew up in church or never set foot in one, most everybody concurs that Jesus was, in fact, an actual person in history.  There’s just too much historical proof to deny it.  What is debated about Jesus is not that he lived and breathed, but that he lived and breathed as God in human form here on Earth, and that He died for our sins, defeated death itself, and now sits at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.    

Contrary to what many think, the Christian faith is not a blind faith or a faith in faith; it is a faith based on facts.  In the New Testament, the Greek word for faith is pistis, which is defined as a firm persuasion or conviction.  

How can one have real Biblical faith (pistis), a firm persuasion or conviction, without reason or evidence?  As Christians—or even those searching—shouldn’t we want to believe the right faith for the right reasons?  As for me, I want to know my faith is true outside of my parents telling me that it is, or beyond reciting its creed like some robot every Sunday.  I need reason.  I need evidence.     

Please know that I am not saying people can only come to know the Lord because they are intellectually convinced that he is the way and the truth and the life.  For it is only up to the Holy Spirit how and when He convicts a heart.  Those Christians who don’t feel the need to know the reason and the evidence behind their faith in Christ are no less saved than those who do.  I have many Christian friends who fall in this category.        

In creation, there are a jillion different kinds of trees and flowers and colors—and dogs.  There isn’t just one type of any one of those things, but a great diversity.  Stories of coming to know Christ are similar.  There are a jillion of them, each different in their own way.  

I know of a person who was saved by the Grace of God in an instant, just before he snorted that last, possibly fatal, line of cocaine.  I know of another who barely knew anything at all about Jesus (they lived in an Islamic-state county), and yet she came to know Him as her Savior through a dream.  Neither of these people longed for the reason and evidence of Christ the Messiah.  They just supernaturally knew it, thanks to the grace of God and His plan.     

But the Bible tells me, as a believer in the Good News, to always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within me, and therefore, I should strive to grow stronger in that preparation.  We grow in our job, in our hobbies, in our relationships.  Why would we not want to grow in our faith?  

Paul makes the importance of this very clear in the book of Hebrews when he says, “By now you should be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.  You need milk, not solid food…solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”       

We don’t know how or when God is going to speak to another’s heart.  It just might be through us.  And that is why we need to be prepared.  The more seeds of truth we are able to plant with those who aren’t sure about Jesus, those who are searching, those who are yearning for answers, the more likely it is for those seeds to take root.      

Sadly, I was thirty-one years old before I took this seriously.  And yet, I’d been in church most all my life.       

But no matter how old we are, it's never too late to grow in the Lord.