Last Friday I was invited to speak at the Canadian Reformed church in Houston as they concluded a month-long program called "God's House - Open House." The topic of my presentation was "Overcoming Excuses." We often have excuses for not speaking about our faith openly, and I spoke about three excuses in particular:
1."It's not my job."
2."I'm not good at speaking about my faith."
3."I don't know enough to speak out."
Pastor Wes Bredenhof made some good comments over at
www.bredenhof.ca on how we teach our children, and that reminded me of excuse #2, so, in a form slightly modified from that of my presentation, here's a response to the common excuse, "I'm not good at speaking about my faith."
One of the foundational texts for the covenant community is Deuteronomy 6:4-9:
Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
In this passage, our calling is laid out for us: we are called to love the LORD completely, to have His Word on our heart. And flowing from that, we are called to:
1.teach these words diligently to our children.
2.Talk of them when we sit in our houses
3.Talk of them when we walk by the way
4.Talk of them when we lie down
5.Talk of them when we rise
6.Let them guide our hands
7.Let them guide what we look at
8.Let them guide all of our steps, throughout our life.
If your excuse is, "I'm not good at talking about my faith," then you need to examine what lies behind that. As Reformed Christians, we know that we are God's covenant people. These words of Deuteronomy apply to us just as much as they did to the people of Israel when they were about to enter the promised land. We are called to
teach our children - diligently, constantly, always. We're called to
talk about these things
all the time - in our houses, on the road, before we go to bed, when we get up. I would go so far as to say that this is our
most important calling: to speak about the Lord, about His work, and about our response to His work.
When you're not good at skiing, you practice. When you're not good at skating, you practice. When you're not good at playing the piano, you practice. And the fact is, when you're learning how to ski, you're going to fall down a lot. When you're learning how to skate, you're going to end up with your rear end on the ice a whole lot of time. And when you're learning how to play the piano, even your own parents won't want to listen to you. It's exactly the same when it comes to speaking about your faith. In order to feel comfortable speaking about our faith, we need to
do it!
Of all people, we as Canadian Reformed people
should be good at speaking about our faith. We emphasize the covenant - our children are covenant children, and must be raised as such. But if it's really true that we're not good at speaking about our faith, we need to seriously examine why. We have everything in place that we
should be good at speaking about our faith. We are encouraged to teach our children. We are encouraged to do daily devotions. We are encouraged to speak about these things.
But do we?
If the sum total of our daily 'speaking of these things' consists of reading the Bible after dinner and singing a prayer before bed, we're not doing our job. We're not living up to our calling as God's covenant people. Our children don't hear
us speaking about the gospel, because we're not comfortable with it, and so they grow up in the same way. And remember, that things don't remain static in the Christian life - if we're not growing, we're shrinking. Look at the passage following the one cited above (Deuteronomy 6:10-12):
And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you - with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant - and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Compare that with our own situation. This is what happens when you don't speak about your faith. It has an impact on the generations in the church, and it has an impact on the way we speak with people outside the church. We don't speak about our faith at home, we let the minister and the Christian school do our work for us, our children don't learn how to be comfortable, and to delight in, speaking about their faith, and things just go downhill. This is a serious issue, and it's one we all need to take seriously.
We can all talk about matters of 'church.' We can all talk about church politics, or about church controversies, or about the latest problems that synod will be discussing. But do we talk about the
basis of our faith? Do we talk about "the hope that lies within us"? If we don't do it
within the church, how can we ever expect to do it
outside the church?