Telling Stories, Part Two

Last post, I talked about telling our own faith story; this one is about telling God's Story - what he has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I resist formulas and the simplification of complex things...that said, it is really important to distill the essence of the Gospel in a way that a child or a busy adult can understand it.

I'll be writing about some helpful ways to do this. Today is the one I find myself using the most personally in explaining the Story to disconnected people.

It can be summarized in a phrase: "Do versus Done".

The thing that makes Christianity unique among all the religions of the world is that it is the only faith that says people do not have to do anything to get to God; God does everything to get to us.

Religion says "Do". Obey these rules; attend this church; follow these teachings, etc.

The Gospel says "Done". Everything has been accomplished by the God - he initiated mending our broken relationship with him by sending Jesus, who lived the perfect life we failed to live, dying in our place the death we deserved to die, and then being raised from the dead to promise us that we can have full and eternal life, beginning right now.

The essence of faith is that we trust in Jesus' record rather than our own.

The interesting thing is that even irreligious people have their own version of "Do". We all have something - a goal, a relationship, a measure of popularity or success or influence - that we think will make us happy.

It's really important to unmask our "Do" so that we can see how great "Done" really is!