Minister’s Letter – Oct 2017
12Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3: 12-14 NIVUK)
I’ve been reflecting recently on how we, as Christians, go about sharing our faith with the world.
As part of God’s Church, God calls each one of us to serve Him. We serve in a way which best suits the gifts God has given us. The one area to which all Christians are universally called serve God is that of sharing our faith. No one who is a follower of Jesus is exempt from this call: we are tasked with telling the world about Him. How do we fulfil this call from God?
On one level, it is quite simple: we take time to understand the Gospel, and then we take any opportunity we get to tell it to others. We can tell them about God’s love and forgiveness; about how Jesus’ death means we are brought back to God; about how His resurrection is a promise of new life to all who believe. But is it simple enough to tell others this? Do we need to do more?
I chose the verses above to start this letter because I believe it is not just our words that matter when we share the Gospel: our actions matter too.
Paul gives a short list in these verses, explaining the qualities he would expect to see in Christians: compassionate, kind, humble, gentle and patient. He urges us to forgive one another, in the same way, God has forgiven us. He tasks us with adopting an attitude of love, which brings all these qualities together.
It is incredibly important that we, as followers of Jesus, live in this way. If we do not, I fear there may be those in our world who ask, “How can God truly love us, if His people cannot love one another?”
Let us encourage one another in love, forgive one another readily, and respond to God’s call to share our faith in a compassionate, kind, humble, gentle and patient way!
May God bless you,
Stuart