As I have said before, we are going through the parables in a modern context during Switch Christian Fellowship on the college campus. It has gone very well, and I think pretty well received. Today and next week we are covering the prodigal sons. This has become my favorite parable that Christ taught. More and more I am discovering layers to this story that is just amazing! It is so much more than just the touching story of the lost son coming home to his father (Christ). We tend to forget that the parables opening line says “A man had TWO sons…” The aspects of the second son and his role in the story are amazing. And then last week I read an article talking about some of the key ideas of the father in the story. It all prepped and led to this week, which was pretty cool. Not going into too much detailed stuff here, but it was fascinating! And more and more this past week a lot of past friends and acquaintances have been on my heart and mind big time. Specifically those that have walked away from their faith or those that have faith but are not really living in that relationship, both have a broken relationship with the father. I have been praying and meditating on this idea and more importantly for my friends. Next week we will wrap up this topic and hopefully we can get through it all (we ran out of time today).
The other thing that I have been thinking about lately, and I think some of it I talked about previously, is confidence in the Gospel. Not that I am not confident in the gospel, but I have found myself trying to “assist” the gospel. Like it cannot stand on it’s own without a “resource”. What does the gospel have to offer all people? I was so focused on not scaring people off by my faith, that it got in the way of what I needed to be doing. I was never afraid to say what I did, who I was or what I was doing, I just felt that I wouldn’t allow Christ and His gospel to stand on it’s own and me just getting out of the way.
The other aspect of this is really the fact that the Gospel is offensive. It hurts. And in today’s world we hide under the banner of “coexisting” really, we just don’t want to hurt anyone’s delicate sensitivities. And I have been prone to that. Don’t read too much into what I am saying, I’m not saying do and say whatever you want regardless of people and their views. Contrary it’s speaking the TRUTH in love. Ok, I think that’s it.
Again, I’m not going to spend a lot of time writing it all down, way too many thoughts. So that’s it…Goodnight and Goodluck.
