It’s easy to become a passive consumer of sermons. As a young Christian, I began to feel this tendency in me when I heard sermons; Then, one Sunday, I took a notebook to church and planned a small, simple practice so that I could exercise my discernment before I listened to the sermons, it was as simple as asking three short questions, and it caught my eye. I started using the same technique by listening to sermon podcasts, reading Christian blogs and books, and finally listening to Christian music.
The process highlights an important fact that we all know: We all need to be saved by someone or something, but, as an active listener will quickly see, the world is full of ever-changing gospels and every preacher, writer, and artist has a message. About Salvation We need to examine the truth of the gospel they share, and these three questions have made the process easier for me.
- So.
- Before I listen to a sermon.
- Listen to a Christian album.
- Or open a Christian book.
- I ask myself these three questions:.
Questions are brief, easy to remember, and cannot be more extensive. At first, I wrote them on a piece of paper and filled them out by hand, and then they became an intuitive mental exercise.
It has also become clear over time that these same topics are useful in many other contexts. These are evangelical questions, useful in the church, but they also help to test any worldview at its base. They work on announcements and messages from presidential candidates (yes, even Donald Trump?Try this).
For the sake of this article, I’ll focus on sermons. Ask the above three questions and the answers you’ll hear will usually fall into these four categories:
1. You will hear a therapeutic gospel
2. You will hear a gospel of prosperity:
3. You will hear a broken gospel:
4. You will hear a gospel of consideration
Even if these messages contain gospel suggestions, or fragments of total truth, or the complete manufacture of a non-gospel, everyone, implicitly or explicitly, will find their course in Christian books, songs, and sermons as complete messages, and will. it is often assumed, as sufficient presentations of the gospel. They’re not. In fact, they’re far from it. And each, in his own way, makes Christ secondary or optional.
The real work of the ministry is to allow the Scriptures to answer each of these three questions over and over again until the truth of the gospel flows in our blood.
If we describe some of the outlines of the biblical gospel, the answers to our questions are very obvious:
The gospel is deeply beautiful and deserves eternal study and celebration, but it is also not complicated. The challenge we still face is the perverted gospel, a gospel that slides imperceptibly into language that eclipses and obscures the answer to these three vital questions. We must be careful not to fall into a “gospel of intuition. “which uses various Christian jargons, all aimed at goals of personal realization and satisfaction of perceived needs, but at the same time does not explain the central themes of God’s wrath or essential purpose of Christ’s surrogate blood. In other words, is the natural deviation of our thoughts always to separate us from the simplicity and purity due to Christ?(2 Corinthians 11: 3).
Any preacher, artist, or writer should frequently return to these three simple and decisive tests for ministry in order to self-assess our message and the hope we offer, but it is equally important that each Christian constantly review these questions until we ask them. naturally:
I’m not suggesting that every song, sermon and book will answer all questions to the same extent, but be careful. Listening and reading, will you have what the Apostle Paul called: the standard of solid words?(2 Timothy 1:13). Each coherent worldview has a pattern, a pattern that you’ll see in the big picture and in the small details. The sound words of the Gospel have a coherence and pattern, and Christians must give ourselves to our ears to listen to and understand them. when they are absent.
What I’m defending is discernment. The ability of discernment learns to reject the false or fragile, but above all to enthusiastically embrace the precious (Acts 17:11; Romans 12. 9; 1 Thessaloniki 5. 21) . Evangelical discernment helps us know the difference, so that we can embrace and embrace. celebrate it fervently.
This implicitly means that we value men and women who give clear answers to key questions, as they are probably the best way to help us understand all the other questions.
If you ask these three questions long enough, a model will emerge. This information will do you good when life requires you to reduce your subscriptions to podcasts, blogs, music library, or playlist.
I am convinced that the Church will be healthier and happier as she becomes increasingly insightful, more receptive to the gospel, and more knowledgeable about what to love. Discretion is a call for all of us. In asking these three questions, we reaffirm the importance of the answers. But we don’t just hear the right answers; we want the right answers so that once again we can nurture our affections of the beauty of Jesus Christ.
And that’s how it works. Three great questions, the three most important questions we can ask in this life, remind us of the precious truth of the gospel of Jesucristo. Essayez-les. La next time you hear a sermon, ask these three simple questions, and listen?Enthusiastically,the familiar and precious answers that help maintain our daily joy in Christ.