How is our story unique?

What makes our story different from the other messages that are out there? Tom Cruise’s video has been all over the internet and serves as an advertisement for Scientology. Bin Laden is always sending out things (videos, audio tapes, suicide bombers), Mormons are always bicycling through our neighborhoods, and others are saying they all point in the same direction. Can that be true? Can all these extremely different completely contradictory messages somehow all lead us to the same destination? I find that much more difficult to believe than I do One God creating this place and then beginning a plan to restore sinful humanity to Himself. The story of Jesus prevents all stories from being true. Either the story of Christ is true, or some other story is true, it can’t be both. Christ makes too many claims to be the One Way and the One Truth and the One path to the Father. Either He is right and the others are false gospels, or He is wrong and is the false gospel. So the question for this week becomes, What makes the Gospel so unique? How does the Gospel, the true Gospel, set itself apart from all the rest?

This is certainly a topic worth studying in today’s “Anything Except Christianity Is To Be Tolerated” worldview. Before we can live a life that points to Christ, before evangelism can be fully integrated into every aspect of who we are, we have to know the truth. Not only must we know the truth, we have to be able to recognize a fake. I know this example is slightly played out, but I think it hits home the best. When law enforcement officers train to spot counterfeit money, they spend countless hours studying real money not fake money. Day after day they spend training time studying every facet of real money. No detail is too trivial. Their job is to know the real so well that a counterfeit will be easy to spot. The same is true for us. We are to know our faith and have a such strong relationship with Christ that we can recognize anything that differs from the truth and not be deceived by a false gospel. The goal for this week is to examine ourselves and honestly see how well we know the Gospel. It will be very difficult for us to live out something we do not completely know!

One a side note, a resource you may find very useful that fits this study very well is, Just Walk Across the Room by Bill Hybels. There is a video segment we watched last week that perfectly described the goals for this month’s focus. If you have the chance, check this book and video, I think it comes with the book, out and see how in very practical ways evangelism can be lived out everyday. I wish I had known about this resource earlier and I would have referenced it much sooner, but I guess it is better late than never. I hope you are enjoying and learning from this different look at evangelism. Let me know what you think!!!