December 5--Muddy Water

Today's lesson was about simplicity. Andy Stanley used the analogy of a story about shark fishing to help us understand the dilemma that many people experience when they consider the Gospel Message. As Andy described, many people who say they reject Christianity are really rejecting some other aspect of religion that has nothing to do with the Gospel Message of Jesus Christ. Andy says that we (Christians) have a tendency to make the Gospel Message complicated and that the complicated issues and answers to Biblical conundrums are often the things which cause people to reject "Christianity." He makes reference to some of Paul's writings that are indeed difficult to understand or to the Old Testament laws of the book of Leviticus. Even though there are many questions and many issues described in the Bible that are difficult to understand and decipher, Andy attempts to boil down the Gospel Message to a simple formula that we can share with others in today's lesson. He bases the lesson on perhaps the best known Bible verse in the New Testament, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

Andy suggests that the formula can be reduced to the following:

GOD LOVED

GOD GAVE

WE BELIEVE

WE RECEIVE

It really is a pretty simple solution and an easy formula to share with others. As Steven mentioned in class today, there may be questions about the meaning of "believe" or even about "receive", and certainly we can have a discussion about these terms and the different understandings that many people embrace for these terms. Andy tried to demonstrate the meaning of believe when he talked about putting one's full weight on a stool...in other words, depending completely upon the stool to provide support and foundation for one's body. Even so, there may be many different descriptions for this term and these various descriptions certainly detract from the simplicity of this message. Yet, as Christians, we probably can all agree that God sent His son and, as a result, He offered us an opportunity to live in His presence for eternity. Yes, this offer is contingent upon our "belief" and we all must define that word for outselves. Even so, this formula can be used to help us and those around us to understand in a very basic way the amazing Gift that God gave us at Christmas. We can be thankful that He loved us enough to give and that we simply must accept His gift through faith in order to benefit from the greatest Gift ever given to man.