Building Gospel Bridges Talk 4

0:00 We are concluding our little series on building gospel bridges. And this morning we're going to spend some time in 1 Peter chapter 3 thinking about some of the challenges that there are for sharing faith and how we might overcome them. As we get into that, I'm going to read the text in just a minute. I'd like to start just by asking you to think a little bit with me and imagine a situation. I want you to imagine you are sitting in a coffee shop with a non-Christian friend or family member. Now the conversation has turned to Christian faith and it's actually going really well. And your friend seems genuinely interested and to your surprise, they are connecting with everything that you're saying about Jesus Christ and about the basis for faith and all the rest of it. In fact, it's going so well, you're pretty chuffed with yourself.

0:59 You've got your phone underneath the table and you're secretly recording yourself because the world needs to hear this later on. And the conversation goes so well that your friend eventually turns to you and says, you know, I think I could become a Christian. And your eyes light up and the choir of angels in heaven are tuning up the band ready to welcome a new person into the kingdom. and your friend says, there's so much about Christianity that makes sense to me and it's so appealing to me, but I just have this one final issue or question that I need you to help me resolve in order to remove my last objection. And if I think I could make sense of that, then I think I would be ready to become a Christian. Here's my question. What is the one question you pray they do not ask you in that situation? What is the one question that if they do ask you, you're hoping Jesus comes back right there and then in order to bail you out from having to ask this question before you have egg on your face?

2:08 I want you to think about it seriously. Think about it not just in a general sense. Think about it in a personal sense. Who do you know? What kind of scenario could a situation like that be plausible? And what is the one question that that person on your mind would ask? And what is the one question that you would fear the most having to answer? Park that question in your mind for a little bit.

2:34 And we'll come back to it later in the talk. Let's read a few verses from 1 Peter chapter 3. If you have a Bible, it will be on the screen as well. This is a letter that Peter has written to a group of believers who were in danger of losing their hope in Christ. And the reason why they were in danger of doing that was because of how their experience of suffering and living in a hostile world was at odds with their expectations of what it would look like to live in the full grace of God. And so as much as this letter is written for Peter to help recalibrate their thinking about what the true grace of God actually involves and doesn't involve, there's also a lot in here about the dynamics of what it practically looks like to live for and effectively witness for Christ in a world where in everyday relationships, people may not know who he is. Here's what Peter says in 1 Peter 3. He says, who's gonna harm you if you're eager to do what is good?

3:35 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear their threats. Do not be afraid. But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord, always prepared to give an answer to everyone he asks you, to give a reason for the hope within you that you have. And 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. For it is better if it is God's will to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. I still remember the heart beating and the cold trickle of sweat down my back when, as a 17-year-old sitting in a sick form center of the greatest school in Northern Ireland, I was confronted with the question, why are you a Christian? I'd become a Christian when I was 15, and up to that point, a couple of times I had been And giving my testimony is something you often did in church circles and in youth groups.

4:42 And often what that testimony involves was telling people the circumstances about how you became a Christian. For me, it was going on a youth group. But that's not the question that I was asked by my friends in the Sick Form Center. They weren't asking about the details of the circumstances of my life before and then how I became a Christian. they were asking me how I could rationally believe that this stuff was objectively true. What were the reasons that I trusted this, especially when what we'd heard in biology and other classes was that there were theories of science and theories about the origins of the universe that explained how we came to be that didn't need the positive God whatsoever. I remember them talking about the Bible and saying, don't you know that the Bible's being corrupted? I mean, don't you know that it was just arbitrarily selected?

5:31 The books that are in there were arbitrarily selected by a group of people who were interested in power and in controlling people. There's loads of other gospels, gospels of Judas, gospels of Thomas. There are a whole load of other epistles that never made it in. And there were questions like that. And I can remember sitting there thinking, not just that I didn't have an answer to those questions, but that I'd never even heard that those questions existed. I'd never experienced what those questions were. I'd never come across them in my church experience so far. And it left an uncomfortable question in my mind.

6:12 As much as I'm committed to this faith, as much as I believe it, as much as I love the group that it has me a part of, is this actually true or have I been brainwashed? And because my faith was so meaningful to me, rather than honestly explore those questions in order to strengthen my faith, I instead privatized my faith in the school context, rarely having it on display in school. And I retreated to only exposing it to the safety of the Christian subculture that I hung out with on the weekends because I was so afraid that if I did expose my faith to these kinds of rigorous questions about whether or not it was true, I may end up losing it. And the sentiment of having my faith was so important to me and so meaningful to me that I was prepared to hold on to it and ignore the tough questions, even if it meant that it wasn't true. And I'm sure that I am not unique in that kind of experience. And I think that's why I find Peter's words in this passage so encouraging, because he encourages these believers that he's writing to, to share the hope that they have in Jesus in full appreciation that the context in which they're meant to do that is often not easy. And one where it can often be very costly to be a Christian. If you read 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2, you'll see that this book is written to Christians who are often persecuted and suffering for their faith.

7:46 The church began in Jerusalem, they've been persecuted in Jerusalem they scattered around all the different regions of the Middle East and now that they've settled in the Middle East they're also finding that still living as a Christian and seeking God's kingdom first and his righteousness in their everyday lives was not something that the people around them were always indifferent to. Verse 16 of what we just read says that some of them were being slandered they were being smeared. Chapter 4 Peter goes on to talk about those who are insulted and maligned because they don't join in the essential practices and the hedonism of the people around them. And some of them are even physically persecuted. And yet Peter is clear that that does not mean that you just write off culture altogether as morally corrupt. Because the verses that we didn't read, the verses just before the ones that we read in 1 Peter 3, is Peter encouraging these believers to live positively even though the environment that's tough. He says things like, don't repay evil for evil. Don't let your tongue be speaking evil.

8:52 Don't have lying lips. Pursue peace and pursue good with people. And he expects that it's very reasonable to anticipate that if that is the way you're living, then what he says is there's every possibility that you will love life and see good days. But he's also realistic enough to say that no matter how pure our motives or intentions are, there will be occasions where God permits believers to suffer simply for what is doing, for doing what is right. Because the values and the ethics of our culture are not the same as Christian values. And when we choose to obey God rather than the expectations of other people, sometimes the cost will be significant. Christians lose their jobs because they refuse to cut ethical corners in their work. They're overlooked for promotion.

9:44 Christians lose relationships because they challenge misogyny or don't join in the classroom character assassinations or don't affirm certain behaviors even in people they love the most. I can remember years ago sitting with a believer from China who'd been in prison for 24 years because he refused to deny his faith and believed that other people should be introduced to Jesus. And I can remember thinking, I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do in heaven when I meet people like this who've maybe lost their life for sharing Jesus. And I have to tell them that I wouldn't share Jesus because it made me uncomfortable. Now, our context is different. And although there's been a lot of evidence recently that there might be a bit of a renaissance of spiritual interest among young people, I think many of us are those who've experienced that this cultural moment that we're living in is a moment where we've experienced significant spiritual climate change, where many of the ideals, the laws, the values that once cohered with Christian values are no longer there and they're now often disintegrating. Christian ethics has moved very much to the mainstream and the margins of society and is being reinterpreted as old-fashioned, hate-filled, unwelcome.

11:15 And for many people, Christianity is simply either rational, Irrelevant or immoral. Is this PowerPoint not working, guys? There we go. That's great. Erasional. The kind of thing that, from one end, the kind of Ricky Gervais, low-hanging fruit mockery of, look, this stuff, believing in God as an adult, is equivalent to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. But it's often not quite as antagonistic as this. It's often this sense that some people will say, well, that's good for you to believe in Jesus, but I just don't have your faith.

12:00 And the assumption is that faith is simply this gift. It's just this thing that some people have based on their personality or based on their life circumstances. And other people can't have it or don't have it until they experience the same thing. A few years ago, Stephen Nolan did a documentary where he tried to sort of explore how he could find faith. And he talked to a lot of really interesting people. He had a lot of very powerful stories, but the whole basis on which people believed in Jesus was because of their personal experience. Now that's not irrelevant, but the problem is, and this is where Nolan finished, was to say, well, that's great for you guys. And I'm really happy for you.

12:39 And I find it really compelling, but that's just not my experience because the basis for trusting in Christ wasn't objectively true and therefore should be true forever. And the basis was it's my personal experience and I don't have that personal experience and I haven't acquired that level of faith. So it's not my fault that I don't believe. And ultimately what that's saying is it might be meaningful. It might give your life some value, but it's not objectively true and therefore it's irrational. For other people, it's simply irrelevant. Just doesn't impact their lives. It's just not something they think about.

13:16 Just don't really care. And for other people, there's this increasing sense that actually Christianity is not neutral. It's immoral. And from one extreme, it's kind of the stuff that emerged after 9-11, that religion radicalizes people. You know, science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. That's the problem with these sort of dogmatic beliefs that they radicalize people. And that becomes a danger to the safety and the humanity of other people.

13:46 But often it's not like that. Often it's just this assumption that Christianity, and particularly evangelical Christianity, is largely anti-science, it's anti-freedom, it's anti-women, it's anti-ethnic minorities, it's anti-inclusion, it's anti-LGBT. And it's dangerous to your well-being and your mental health to believe that there's a God in the sky somewhere that you might be accountable to. and if we accept that the spiritual climate of Northern Ireland has changed and we are increasingly in a post-Christian society even if the population of those who identify as Christian remains largely the same but the influence and the voice of Christians has largely moved from the mainstream to the margins and what's left of Christianity in the mainstream is largely a parody of the real thing. That's an environment that creates a serious challenge for confidence in sharing your faith with others. This is the external challenge of sharing faith, the environment around us that we are not in control of. And often in an environment like this, it creates a huge unspoken fear factor for people. To rephrase what Lewis said one time, C.S.

15:05 Lewis said about why people become atheists. Let me rephrase it in order to apply it to sharing Jesus. He said it's not the books or the media that is written directly proclaiming this kind of accusation of Christianity that intimidate people from sharing their faith. It's the assumption of this sort of stuff in all the other books. The unspoken, indirect assumption that this is what Christianity really is. in all the other books that suddenly, slowly drip feeds into Christian psychology and intimidates people into sharing their faith. And the question is, if that is our external challenge, how do we respond? I think we've three options.

15:53 I think one option is to retreat and privatize your faith like I did. So in this kind of environment, We're comfortable. We're clear. But in an environment where we're not surrounded by Christians, in the public square, our faith is largely hidden. Or, very often now, it's quite common for people just to radicalize and become activists if they're concerned about issues that they feel are being overmined, whether that's the climate or whether that's other things. and the response to that is just to become an activist. Is that what Christians ought to do? Do we protest and lobby and create a Christian equivalent of extinction rebellion?

16:43 Do we try to create a moral majority or try to outpopulate the non-Christians in order to take back political power and once again enact laws that cohere with Christian values, whether the rest of the people in Northern Ireland accept it or believe it or want it or not? or do we take a third option and do what Christians have done for millennia? What Daniel and his friends did when they lived in Babylon where you learn to live in a secular or a pluralistic culture that's often deeply contrary to the Christian worldview and not just maintain our private devotion but maintain our public witness. where we see work, family, relationships, friendships, volunteering, hobbies, clubs, social engagements as connected to our life and witness in Jesus. Constantly thinking about what does it look like to seek first the kingdom of God and what God calls right in this context. To engage meaningfully, intensely with relationships with a hope of having meaningful conversations. About six years ago, I was part of a team that spent a week in Ealing and West London supporting churches in their evangelism to the town.

18:13 And one afternoon, we were heading out from the local Baptist church and we were going carol singing and doing evangelism down at the local shopping mall. And we used to carry these large 12-foot giant red question marks as we did that. It was really just to attract curiosity and invite people to ask their questions. These things were huge, just giant red glittery question marks. And we used to have to walk through the streets with these things, with heads turning all over the place. In fact, when we did it in Canterbury, yours truly ended up photographed on the feed, the social media feed of the local police service with the caption, careful out there folks, questionable man on the loose. Police banter. But as we left the car park of the Baptist Church that day, immediately we had to cross the road to the other side to head down to the shopping center.

19:10 And I noticed on the other side of the road, this guy sitting on a moped who seemed to be trying to engage some of the team. And I kept my eye on him. I was at the back of the group as we crossed the road. And I could see this guy constantly sort of saying things to the team, and the team sort of not sure what to do with him. And I kept my eye on him in case something was going to kick off. But eventually when I got to him, he was still sort of mouthing things, and I couldn't quite understand. So I stopped, and I introduced myself to him. And within 30 seconds, I realized that he wasn't hostile at all.

19:43 He just wanted to know what the question marks were. And his name was Rahim, and he was genuinely interested in what this group of young people were doing with these giant question marks. and when the team went on to the shopping mall I stayed and began to just ask him some basic questions about his life he was in his early 20s he was currently working as a deliveroo driver hence the moped he'd grown up in a nominally Muslim family and had recently dropped out of a psychology degree in Exeter University and because I had told him what we were doing there The conversation moved very quickly to faith. And to my amazement, Rahim opened up about how even as a young man, he had absolutely no hope for his life. And I talked about my hope in Jesus. And I asked him at one point, Rahim, have you ever read the Bible? And he says, you know, I've never read it. I've always heard things about it.

20:40 I've been curious. I would love to read it sometime. And I said to him, Rahim, if I can get you a Bible right now, would you read it? And he said, yes, I would love to. and so to cut a long story short we went back across the road into the baptist church spent far too long looking for a copy of the bible than should have been in a church and we sat down and we walked through the beginning of john's gospel similar to what simon was talking about on the podcast this week and we landed on john 3 16 and the idea the concept that god knew him and loved him and invited him into relationship was revolutionary for him. And within two hours of meeting, he'd sat in that church and committed his life to Christ and plugged into a local church. Now, I don't share that story to give you the idea that people normally come to faith that easily. They don't.

21:36 I tell it to you for two reasons. One, because people are often more interested than you think once you get below surface level conversation. But the second reason why is because that day I discovered a radical new method of sharing the gospel that I think is going to have real potential for Christians in the future. And that is talking to people. And that is precisely the kind of context and evangelism that Peter has in mind. Because the number one method of sharing or introducing people to Jesus in the early church wasn't preaching, it wasn't crusades, it wasn't alpha courses. It was conversational evangelism in the context of meaningful and consistent relationships with people who weren't yet Christians around them. And the question is, how well prepared are we to do it?

22:30 Because the challenge, as much as we talked about the external challenge, Peter now begins to focus in on the internal challenge. The challenges in our psychology, the challenges in our personalities, the challenges in our faith that we need to think about in order to do this stuff well. And the first thing that he confronts as a challenge is to not be afraid. This is the fear or the shame challenge. Fear is a huge obstacle for so many people. And there is a healthy fear that God has built into human beings in order to help us survive. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But when it comes to sharing our faith, one of the most significant and internal challenges that Peter identifies is an unhealthy fear and shame.

23:24 And he's not writing this abstractly. He context where you're around other believers, that you could lay down your life for Jesus and yet find your faith crumbling and yourself denying Jesus under the heat of an actual social situation where you're called to identify with Jesus. He knows that this is a real problem. Fear and shame. Shame that we aren't actually sure that it's true, which is what I had in the sixth form center. Fear that we'll lose respect or reputation or friendships. Fear that we'll look stupid. Fear that we'll damage relationships.

24:03 Fear that we'll do a bad job and perhaps make it less likely for somebody to come to faith. Fear that we'll be exposed to questions and scrutiny that might unhinge our own faith. Fear's real. And maybe the first step in being effective at building gospel bridges is to acknowledge that it's there. And the Bible takes it seriously. God is not surprised by our nervousness and anxieties about sharing our faith. He's not going to condemn us for being open and honest to him. He's the God who spoke to Moses about his fears and sharing his faith.

24:41 But he's also not a God who's going to pander to us and say, okay, well, that's okay. you can just sit this stuff out. Because he didn't do that with Moses either. Sometimes like Moses, God is going to listen to our concerns, he's going to engage our fears, he's going to help us, and then he's going to turn around and say, okay, let's do it anyway. Because part of what helps us overcome fear is the act of doing it. When I used to go to university campuses in England and do evangelism, when I started out doing that, I was terrified. terrified that people wouldn't be interested terrified that I would mess things up terrified that everyone I met would have a Rolls Royce mind and would confront me with arguments and facts that I'd never thought of and had absolutely no answer to and I can remember a friend of mine from Singapore saying this as we did it together he said look Gareth I am as nervous and as anxious as you are about this. But let's do it scared.

25:44 And we find that the more we do it scared, the less scared we were doing it. One of the ways to mitigate fear in sharing your faith is to do it scared. But there's another way that Peter goes on to say that we can help ourselves in this area because fear is a condition of the heart and the mind before it works out in behavior. And Peter says that perhaps the most effective way that we can overcome fear, the fear that holds us back, is by setting apart Christ in our hearts as Lord. You know, in the ancient world, the heart wasn't simply the organ that pumped blood around your body. That's why Jesus says in Mark 2, why do you reason in your hearts? Very often in the ancient world, the heart and the mind were sort of interconnected as the center of a person's emotional and intellectual life. It was the very core of who you are and what you thought and where your values lay.

26:41 And so when Peter says, in your heart, set apart Christ as Lord, he's saying this. If you really want to be successful in navigating life as a Christian in a difficult world, if you really want to be effective in sharing Jesus with others in that world, the most important ingredient is to have a heart that is convinced that Jesus Christ is exactly who he says he is. Beyond books, beyond stuff on YouTube, beyond training, beyond all these things which all have their place. Peter says none of those things matter if there isn't a foundation of a heart that is convinced that Jesus is exactly who he says he is. He is Lord. He is the supreme value in my life. And there are different aspects to this. Because on the one hand, Jesus is Lord no matter what any of our hearts think about it.

27:33 It's an objective fact. God has raised him from the dead and appointed him Lord and given proof of it by raising him from the dead. But then there is the other side of this where it becomes real for us. And that's what Peter is talking about. He's talking about setting apart Jesus as Lord in our hearts. In other words, with the reality and the conviction of who Jesus is are real in our personal experience. And they influence our life and our thinking and our motives. and so the simple obvious question of that is this am i personally convinced that this is true we're back to the sixth form center

28:18 this is about more than just acknowledging stuff in creeds or singing worship songs it's about us doing the rigorous work and making the investment to explore whether this is true on the basis of evidence, whether it's true regardless of what my experience is of it at any given point. And many of us in Northern Ireland, because we've grown up in Christian homes and Christian environments where our faith has largely been handed down to us, have never come to a conviction about whether this is true based on scrutiny or based on sort looking at it from the outside. And that's a challenge. Many of us have just assumed that it is true and we've had the social and the moral infrastructure for a lot of our lives to reinforce that. And we've never come to belief in Jesus on the basis of questioning whether this is true in the faith of arguments to the contrary and on the basis of evidence. And the danger with a faith that's assumed or adopted is that you're only ever one difficult conversation or difficult experience away from an adopted faith becoming an abandoned faith. I am convinced that this stuff is at the heart of deconstructionism.

29:40 And so Peter is saying, you set apart Christ as Lord. Are you personally convinced that it's true? Because that's the only reason we should believe it. And if it's true objectively, then it can be true for everyone. Please notice that Peter puts the responsibility for this on us. He says, you set apart Christ as Lord in your heart. God will help us. The spirit will do the work, but this doesn't happen by osmosis.

30:14 This is not something that just happens automatically. Peter says the responsibility is ours. And so the reason why I think we invest in spiritual disciplines of daily prayer and Bible study and fasting and singing and communion And gathering together, the reason why this stuff, these rhythms of grace is so important, is because that is what continually reinforces the reality of Jesus' lordship and his hope in our hearts, day by day by day by day. And one of the greatest tests of how convinced our hearts are of Jesus' lordship is how it affects our lives. How does it impact how we live? Peter says, make sure that those who, make sure that who Jesus is and what he says is shaping your life, shaping your values, shaping how you do family, shaping who you are as an employee, shaping the kind of neighbor you are, shaping who and what you invest your money in. And again, it's just, this is basic discipleship stuff, but it's not disconnected from our effectiveness in evangelism. Because it matters.

31:39 Because the world is watching. Because Peter goes on, and he talks about the next challenge being this. Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you a reason for the hope within you. There's a big assumption in what Peter says here. Did you notice what it is? the assumption is this that as you live a life with Jesus as Lord of your heart as that impacts who and what you are in your everyday life and relationships and circumstances that will be seen by people around you and they will ask you about your faith about the reason for the hope that you have that is emanating from your life and from your experiences. And what's so interesting is that evangelism, according to Peter, is not often Christians being on the front foot. It's Christians living such curious and compelling lives that non-Christians naturally ask and are giving a hope is responsive.

32:48 It's responding to the questions that our lives have created in the people around us. And he goes on and he says, be ready. Be ready to do this. Again, the responsibility is yours. You be ready. And in actual fact, this word ready comes from a word that has at its root fitness. Now, some of you are training for the marathon and you know that fitness is a dynamic thing. I quite like fitness.

33:21 I don't always look like I do, but I quite like getting involved in different elements of fitness. But the thing about fitness is the minute you let it go, you never stay in the same space. So you train and train and train and train and train, and then you develop your body response, and you develop a level of fitness. But then you stop for six months, and you try and pick up where you left off, and you just can't do it. You're on the floor in the fetal position, ready to throw up. Because fitness is dynamic. And Peter says evangelism and being ready to engage people with reasons for the hope that we have is exactly the same thing. And actually, it's not quite the same as training for a marathon.

34:03 Because here's the thing. In a marathon, you know when the event is going to be. You know the target you want to peak at in terms of your fitness. But you don't know when somebody's going to ask a question. Non-Christians are so inconvenient and inconsiderate when they choose to ask you a question of your faith. It's never after you've just listened to a particular talk on the topic that they want to talk about. It's always out of the blue. And so you have to live in this perpetual state of readiness.

34:36 This word ready that Peter uses is the same Greek word that Jesus uses when he says, always be ready for the son of man comes at a day and hour that you do not know. In other words, it's going to happen, but you don't know when it's happening. So you have to live in this continual state of readiness. And what does readiness look like? I think it looks like us thinking about the questions that the people in our lives might ask, the issues that matter to them, the things that they're passionate about and thinking rigorously about how we can build a gospel bridge and give a reason for the hope that we have in that kind of question. And so let me ask you this. Imagine this week that you've got an interview for the job of your dreams. Great salary, great benefits, car, everything.

35:29 Absolute job of your dreams. Working for Glen Abbey, I'd say. No, no, no, no. And imagine that you have to go into an interview and you have to answer 10 questions. And how you do on these 10 questions, how you answer these 10 questions, is going to determine whether you get the job or not. Now imagine that I come along and park the ethics of this, but I tell you in advance what those 10 questions, or say I give you 20 questions and you're going to be asked 10 of them. I give you a sheet with 20 questions on it, 10 of which you will definitely be asked. How do you spend the next few days in the lead up to that interview?

36:18 Most of us will spend every waking hour we can preparing the best answer that we can give to those questions that we know are going to come. So that we're ready to give an answer when we're asked. What about the questions that the people in our lives have when it comes to faith and truth and meaning and hope? Let's go back. Is it that we struggle to know what these questions might be? Well, if you had an answer to the scenario I gave at the beginning, if you had a question in your mind, then you know at least some of the questions that will be asked. And so the question is, if we're not ready to give an answer, if we're not able to give an answer, is it because we don't know what the questions might be? Or is it because we haven't invested the time and the energy and the effort

37:18 into giving an answer that might make some sense and that might make a difference? The final thing Peter says is this. Engage with gentleness and respect and keep a clear conscience. Our sharing of Jesus, our evangelism, has to be as Christian in tone and character as it is in content. I can remember when I lived in England, I was asked to have lunch with a new PhD student at Oxford who'd come from Sweden. And he spent some time in Canada before that. And we sat down, we got to know each other. He wasn't a Christian.

38:03 I was asked to just engage him, get to know him, be a friend, and talk to him a little bit about faith, because he was curious about this kind of stuff. And we sat down and we talked over lunch, and I knew that he had been spending time with a really well-known, really effective evangelist among students in Canada. And I talked to him about this, and I said, you know this guy, and you've spent so much time with him, you've heard him give talks and things like that. Was there nothing in there that he said that was interesting to you or made you think or made you ask questions? And he looked at me and he said this. Do you know he had some really interesting things to say and he was really effective at communicating it. But he wasn't humble. And so I struggled to believe him.

38:56 No matter how strong the content, no matter how gifted the deliverer, People need to know that our lives are authentic. And Peter knows again what it's like to let your character and your actions get in the way of people engaging Jesus. He knows what it's like to try and defend Jesus and end up cutting people's ears off. And there are so many people in Ireland this morning who have had their ears cut off to the gospel, not because of the content itself, but because of the character and the tone and the attitude with which it has been delivered. Engage with gentleness and respect. Respecting your workplace, respecting other people's questions, respecting the things that matter to other people, getting involved in that even if they're not things that particularly interest you. If they interest them, then get involved in it. Respect people enough to listen and learn and affirm the good and ask questions rather than just constantly want to make propositions.

40:04 Respect people's experience. Don't treat people like projects. Don't get discouraged. Be patient. Joyfully share the gospel through engaging with people's questions, through speaking positively about your own experience. Use language that makes sense to people rather than just Christian jargon. Be prepared to respect people enough to put yourself out in order to have conversations, to inconvenience yourself. Jesus went and met Nicodemus at midnight.

40:39 Not the easiest time to want to have a conversation, but it's the only time that Nicodemus could do it, and Jesus was prepared to inconvenience himself to do that. do not be afraid set apart Christ as Lord in your heart be ready to give a reason for the hope that you have and make sure that the character and the tone of your engagement reflects and rather than obscures the content of the message we have a hope that is worth sharing And these challenges are real and the Bible takes them seriously. But they can be overcome. And God will help us in doing that. Always be ready to give a reason for the hope you have. Let's pray. Father, thanks for an opportunity just to consider your word and think about these things.

41:42 Thanks for the challenge, Lord, of somebody like Peter. Pray that you would continue to speak to us, continue to help us think about these things. And that you would speak to us as we go from here and help us, Lord, as we think about the people we thought about at the very beginning in the coffee shop, the questions that they might have. Lord, help us to make the investment, to be the kind of people who are ready to engage because we've put the work in, because we care and we respect and they matter to us enough. that we would do what is necessary to be prepared to answer when we get the opportunity in Jesus name Amen Yeah.