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| Maybe Saint Francis was right...1 Peter 3:15-16
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.
I remember these words haunting me. Always have an answer. My answer? What do I say: it looks good on a transcript, chicks dig the salvation hope?!?!? What answer would I give?!? For a long time it was solely because I get to go to heaven when I die. However, at that point someone would ask “are you sure your going to heaven” and I would say “I guess so”. Honestly, these verses scared me. I would sit at summer “church” camp and think about this: what’s my answer…. Saying that I was a Christian was a scary thing cause I didn’t have an “answer” to the hope (or so I thought).
But these verses of horror have become something beautiful.
When was the last time somebody asked you to do give an answer for the hope you have?
If we think about Peter writing, you can see that he is assuming that the way of Jesus would be so different, so “not of this world”, so counter-cultural, so against the grain.
He assumes that the people that live “The Way” would be constantly asking questions by people in the world like: Why do you care? Why do you serve me? Why are you listening to me when you could be doing something else?
Rob Bell asks this question: If your mouth was duct tape shut; would we still know you’re a Christian? If our church was duct taped from being able to say anything; would the community still say these people are an unquestionable force of good in the world. Would the community still be asking “Why do you live like this”?
“Always be ready…”
Without saying a word; people would know clearly who you are and what you’re about.
Maybe we need to just shut up and do what Jesus says instead of saying what Jesus says so that people who are burned out and tired and miserable about the same things about church that the next person is burned out and tired and miserable about could look at Christianity and look at following Jesus and say “man, that is something unbelievable” or say “oh that’s what He meant”!
If your mouth was duct taped would you still be able to give an answer to the hope that you have? | | |
| The Garden Resurrection Revolution
John 20:11-18 (click on the scripture reference to see the passage)
I love how John’s Gospel comes full circle. John doesn’t begin with a simple nativity scene but goes even farther back: “In the beginning…”. Back to the creation of the “all things”. It’s almost like John is saying that these accounts you are about to read are a big deal. Something bigger is about to happen then just a story about a good moral man. But then we quickly move through John’s stories of Jesus and we come to a scene of a woman near a tomb. Rob Bell brought this to light for me this week and have read it before but never really found the beauty of it. When Jesus appears to Mary what does she think he is? A gardener. The story comes full circle to a garden (the beginning). The fall of mankind begins in a garden and the beginning of the new way of life begins again in a garden (even if we move into the accounts of Revelation we see when God makes all things new that we see the garden image again). So I see in this God reconciling his creation back to the way it was suppose to be. With this happening comes a new way. Tom (or N.T.) Wright talks about it this way:
“It’s a moment when it becomes clear, to the careful reader of John’s Gospel, that something extraordinary has taken place, not only to Jesus- though that’s extraordinary enough – but to the way the world is, the way God is, the way God and the disciples now are. Up to this point Jesus has spoken about God as ‘the father’, or ‘the father who sent me’ or ‘my father’. He has called his followers ‘disciples’, ‘servants’, and ‘friends’. Now all that has changed. Fell the force of verse 17: ‘Go and say to my brothers, I am going up to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’ Something has altered, decisively. A new relationship has sprung to life like a sudden spring flower. The disciples are welcomed into a new world: a world where they can know God the way Jesus knew God, where they can be intimate children with their father” (John for Everyone Part Two 144-145).
So as we celebrate Easter may we see that this event wasn’t just the saving humans from hell but that the Easter day was apart of something much bigger. May we walk away from the garden tomb knowing that we have a new way of living that is different from what the world thinks. May we walk away from the garden tomb changed and into a new relationship, a new way of life, a new revolution.
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| Emerging Ministry to StudentsAdam Ellis and I are teaching a class called Emerging ministry to Students: Engaging Teenagers in the Story of God at the Ohio Valley University Bible lectures this week. We will be teaching till Wednesday each day. A recording of our sessions are available on the link below and will be updated each day. Please give us feedback on our sessions.
CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO THE RECORDING! | | |
| so I have found some new "online" sites to play with:
I have a My Space: http://www.myspace.com/matthewjameswilson
and now I have a Facebook...
No idea what I'm doing with them but hey that's how I roll 
I still update regularly my blog www.matthewjameswilson.blogspot.com
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| Post Restoration Youth MinistryMy friend Adam Ellis invited me to come and join in a conversation on Youth Ministry in a Post-Restorationist context on Post Restoration Radio. Adam and I will be presenting some of these thoughts at the Ohio Valley University Lectureship in April. Please take a few minutes and listen to the broadcast and please leave some of your thoughts and ideas on this blog, on my other blog (www.matthewjameswilson.blogspot.com) and/or also on the Post Restoration Radio site. We (I) would love to hear your feedback.
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