The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - A Cup of KeurigMa: How to Proclaim the Gospel

Episode Date: January 20, 2018

Just as you can share a cup of coffee, so can you share the gospel with others. This sharing of the gospel is called kerygma. In this episode, Jeff breaks down kerygma so you can discover how simple it can be to share Christ with your family, co-workers, friends, neighbors, and more. 7 Parts/Messages of the Kerygma: 1) God loves you and has plan for your life. – Yes, God the Father loves you and seeks you. And that ache in your heart, that longing, that yearning, and that “never satisfied” quality in your desires all point to God and he has written his name in your heart. He wants to turn you away from a passing and unsatisfying world, towards him.  He wants to save you and prepare you to live with him for all eternity. He wants to fill the God sized hole in your heart and its infinite longing with his infinite Love. (CCC 1). 2) Sin will destroy you. – Nothing is so destructive in your life and this world as sin. It is desire gone wrong, it is rooted in the lie that the creature rather than the Creator can help and save us. Cultivating sin will put you in bondage to desires gone mad that will not ultimately be satisfied. Satan is lying to you and saying that rebellion form the One who made will bring happiness to you. It will not. And you know this already don’t you? Sin and indulgence does not ultimately satisfy. The world cannot satisfy, for it is finite and your desire is infinite. Sin does not ultimately bring happiness, it brings bondage, addiction, dissatisfaction, and ultimately resentment and spiritual death. 3) Christ Jesus died to save you. – Into this mess of our wayward desires and our foolish grasping at worldly trinkets Jesus came. He met the woman at the well (who is us) and told her that every who drinks form this well (the world) will be thirsty again. In other words, the world cannot ultimately satisfy or save us. We must die to this world and rise to God. But our way to God was cut off by sin. Jesus came and reopened the way to the Father by dying to this world, to its lies and false claims. Rising and Ascending he has re-opened the way to the Father, our hearts true desire. Now we can be saved by being led back to the Father by the saving power of Jesus. And dying to this world, we can one day fully be satisfied by God. 4) Repent and believe the Gospel. – To repent means to come to a new mind, to come to understand and accept all that has been stated: that the Lord loves me, is calling me in my desires, and want to save me from the sinful drives that will destroy me. It is time for me to come to believe in this Love God has form me and accept the promise and salvation of his love: Jesus Christ and the saving truth he proclaims. 5) Be Baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. – And thus in Baptism our sins are washed away, we are incorporated into Christ, we become a member of his body. And having done so, the Holy Spirit, the life, love, serenity, joy and wisdom of God comes to dwell in me and begins a work of transforming me, that includes the other Sacraments as well. 6) Abide in Christ and his body the Church. – Grow in this relationship with Jesus and His Father in the Holy Spirit by living in the life of the Church, which is Jesus presence and Body in this world. Abide there, that is go on dwelling there. 7) Go make disciples. – And so the cycle repeats with the newly Evangelized and more deeply rooted Christian calling others.

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, Episode 48, A Cup of Curigma, How to Proclaim the Gospel. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show. Hey, glad to have you join me this week as we talk about. things relating to our faith, things relating to being a modern day disciple of Jesus, and always a delight for me to meet with you. And I always look forward every week to sharing some of these ideas with you

and without this beautiful format of podcasting, online radio, whatever you want to call it, shows, electronic shows, digital shows. Without that, it's very difficult to capture the thoughts that you have and be able to communicate to so many beautiful people as you. And so once again, I've got a show that I'm really excited about. And this particular show that I'm going to talk today about proclaiming the gospel to other people. And it was actually inspired by using our Kyrig machine. You've seen these coffee makers at stores, at automobile dealers, in homes,

and offices around the country where you simply put in one of the little cups, the K-cups, and you can have any kind of drink that you want. A curing machine. I don't have any stock in the company, so this is not an advertisement. But it reminded me of a word that we use in Catholic circles, in Christian circles, in general, quite a bit, to proclaim the gospel. And that is called the churigma, the charygma. And I'm going to put all of this in the show notes, charygma. And the chrygma is the basic proclamation of the gospel.

And I would contend, I would argue that we need a cup of churigma. We need to know how to share this cup of churigma to other people to win them to the Lord. And so I'm going to talk about how to witness to others and the basic components that go into the basic. explanation of the gospel to others. I would start by saying that I really do believe after 42 years as an adult following Jesus Christ and listening to people in 15 years in a pastoral role and teaching the Bible for all these years. My observation is that people make this way too difficult. They make it too difficult to share Christ with their friends and family and colleagues and acquaintances of various kinds, they just plain make it too difficult. And as a

consequence, people do not share their faith with other people. And rarely do I run into a Catholic who sits down and explains the basic message of Jesus Christ to other people for a number of reasons. One is that they don't know that message. Number two, they don't think it's their responsibility. And number three, they don't not talk about being a transformed individual. And And that is basically what the message is built on is that your life has changed and you're explaining to somebody else about the beauty of that change. I think that too often we as Catholics get lost in the details and we forget this simple, basic message that must be effectively proclaimed as a kind of a foundation for the rich things

that will follow. We lose sight of the simple, and we make this very complex, and we think that we have to know all kinds of theology and Greek words and Aramaic and Hebrew and so forth, and that's just not the case. And if we're not careful, those who look to the Catholic faith can become easily and quickly bewildered as they are drawn into a world where people discuss everything from Novenas to Stations of the Cross to lives of the saints, spiritual traditions, contemplative prayer, meditative prayer, lexio divina, Latin Mass versus contemporary mass, debates over authority, who can be ordained, liturgical debates, religious liberties, sacramentals that you go on and on. And in all of that, which is good, the basic message of the gospel is lost. And while we learn a lot about these other things, especially as Uber Catholics, we fail to grasp the basic message of the gospel, and we feel that the basic message of the gospel

is so simple that it's almost unbelievable and that people are not going to respond to us if we give them the basic carigma, the basic gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, in Greek, the word corigma means preaching, but it refers more technically to the first preaching of the Apostles immediately after Pentecost. And some also translate Corigma as message. And so the word kind of connotes the basic or fundamental message, the foundational proclamation that was given out in the Book of Acts. And by the way, I'm going to give you a couple of connections online,

some links to some articles that I'm going to draw from in this show, that I think are going to be very, very helpful. And one of those, which I'm going to mention in a few minutes, brings out the point that in the book of Acts, there are eight carigmatic messages in the book of Acts, eight of them that have a certain style to them, a certain formation that we can learn from if we want to give the basic proclamation of the gospel,

the curigma, the cup of curigma, to other people. So along with these seven points that I'm going to give you, which are the seven points of the basic message of Jesus that we share with other people. I'm also going to give you some other points to follow that will ensure that you know how to share this message with other people. And I think it's going to surprise you at how easy this is if we would simply do it. But it's going to require you knowing your own story and knowing when you are transformed by Christ. and that transformation that you have gone through in Christ

is going to be the diving board, if you will, the starting point for this whole message to other people. So what I'd like to do, first of all, is I'd like to go through the seven points of the charygma, that is the basic message of Jesus Christ, which hopefully you will consider sharing with other people. but in your own words, in your own way. And that's the beautiful thing about sharing Christ with other people,

is that there isn't a formula that everybody has to imitate perfectly, but there is a structure to the basic message and the eight messages in the book of Acts, which I'm going to put into the show notes, that you can make your own, and then you can adopt it and come up with your own words and how you're going to share with people the great good news of Jesus Christ. So let's look at these seven points real quickly, and then we're going to take a break.

When we come back, I'm going to share some other points to remember about these seven. Number one, the message of the charygma starts off with, number one, God loves you, and he has a plan for your life. Now, everybody that we talk to in life, this might not seem like a deep message, but it's an important message, and that is, God loves you. it's important to realize how many people have never heard those words directly to them that I love you that God loves you and while you heard it many times they might not have heard it that God loves them and he has a plan for their life God the Father loves them seeks and he's seeking them and that ache in their heart that that longing that that yearning that never satisfied sense that they are living with day in and day out haunts them and that

They want to turn to what will give them life. Now, the catechism talks about this in the very, very first paragraph, I would really encourage you to read paragraph one of the catechism that really tells us that he wants to save our friends. He wants to save you. He wants to prepare you to live with him for all eternity. He wants to fill that God-sized hole in your heart with his infinite love. and the first paragraph of the catechism really gives a great synopsis of God's heart and love for you

and his plan for your life. That's number one, is that we have to communicate to people. God loves you. He has a plan for your life. Number two, the second part of the corigma, the message, the basic proclamation of the gospel, is that sin will destroy you. Oh, we're unpopular now, aren't we? We don't want to talk about sin. well, if you don't want to talk about sin, then you're in the wrong business. You do not belong sharing the gospel because the basic message of the corigma is that sin is destroying our life. Politically correct? Maybe not. Spiritually applicable? Absolutely. Eternally important? Absolutely. Sin will destroy you. Nothing is so destructive in your life in this world is sin. Sin is clever. Sin is

is smart, sin will out-fool you and it'll destroy your life. It is desiring gone wrong, as one man put it. It is rooted in the lie that the creature rather than the creator can help and save us and we can save ourselves. And it's a lie. Cultivating sin will put you in bondage to desires gone mad that will not ultimately be satisfied. And Satan is literally 24-7 in the business of lying to you and saying that rebellion from the one who created you really is the secret to happiness. And that's what he pulled in the book of Genesis in chapter three didn't work. And you know this. You've experienced the liberation from sin. You know what sin will do to you. That its end goal is death and destruction. It's to ruin your life. You know that

it's stronger than our own will. We know that. The people that we are going to witness to need to know that. To be able to say them, listen, sin will destroy you. Sin will destroy your family. Sin will destroy your business. Sin will destroy your soul and its goal is for eternal destruction. We owe that to people to tell them that. So number one, God loves you and has a plan for your life. Number two, sin will destroy you. Number three, Christ Jesus died to save you. That's the third part of the carigma is that Jesus died to save you. So into this mess that people find themselves in, we must proclaim this good news that sin has cut you off from God, but God died to save you. He is opening up the way to the Father again by dying for you,

and he is offering you new life. And that new life will bring you joy. and peace and a sense of purpose in your life, and it is very, very powerful. So Christ, Jesus died to save you. And once again, you can come up with your own words on how you would communicate that to others. Number four, repent and believe the gospel. That's part of the curigma, the cup of curigma that we need to give the world. And that is to repent and believe the gospel.

To repent literally means to come to a new mind. It's to come to your senses and to understand that God loves you and that the way you are going is destroying you. You need to turn around, come to God, and believe in the gospel. We find in the gospel that Jesus said that he was preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. And repenting metanoia in Greek means to turn around and to go the opposite direction. It's to return to God, to be restored, and to believe the gospel means more than simply an intellectual assent. To believe is two things real quickly.

It is mental assent, yes. But number two, a personal entrusting of yourself to God. So part of the curigmatic message is the charygmatic message, we'll call it the curigma, is you've got to repent, you've got to believe the gospel. We cannot, I'll give you a Greek term here, we cannot chicken out. We cannot chicken out of telling people in a loving way that the way out of your sin and the predicament that you're in and the anxiety and the depression that you are in is that you need to repent. That means you need to turn from that and turn to God. This is a beautiful thing. and believe the gospel. Number five, be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. Be baptized and receive the

Holy Spirit. In baptism, what happens? Our sins are washed away. We are incorporated into the body of Christ. We become members of the church. And having done so, the Holy Spirit, the life, love, the serenity, joy, and the wisdom of God comes to dwell in us and begins the work of transforming our lives. We are his workmanship, okay? And as well as the other sacraments will work in our life. And so we receive baptism and receive the Holy Spirit after we repent and believe the gospel. Number six, abide in Christ and his body, the church. So once we have been baptized and we receive the Holy Spirit, we are incorporated into his church. We grow in this relationship with Jesus and our Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, by doing what?

By living in the life of the church, which is Jesus' presence and body in this world. That's number six. And number seven, this is part of that cup of curigma, go make disciples. So the cycle repeats itself. Now we have the responsibility once we have responded to go out, and once we're deeply rooted in this message,

we call others to this relationship. to Jesus Christ. My friend, that is a cup of curigma. And that is what we share with people, not in a stilted, black and white, judgmental way, not standing on street corners, screaming, you're going to hell. We share this cup of curigma with people in the most loving, gentle, natural relationships that we find ourselves in. It is a, a structure that becomes a part of your heart in conversation. You lose the structure because it just becomes a part of your message. But I'm going to share with you after the break. There's more to this than simply bringing up these topics. It must spring from a transformation in your life.

And that is going to be the key to sharing the gospel with other people. We'll be back in just a moment. give you quite a bit more here in the second part of the show about a cup of curigma, knowing how to proclaim the gospel, you're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. And if you're looking for a way to learn more about your Catholic faith, I invite you to check out the Ascension Presents YouTube channel. You're going to find tons of free videos featuring Catholic presenters like Matt Frad, Leodero, Jackie Bobby Angel, and Emily Wilson. Go to YouTube.com slash ascension Presents. That's YouTube.com slash ascension presents. And if you like what you see, please share and subscribe

welcome on back hope you can pour you another cup of churigma here and we can continue on we've been talking about the seven steps or the seven points that are in the message of the charygma that we need to employ in our own sharing

of the gospel very very important a couple of things I want to bring out to you one is I have a link to a great article that was given at the Quinn Institute of Biblical Studies in St. Paul, Minnesota by Father Andreas Huck. And he talks about the progression of the charismatic message in the Book of Acts, and he gives this geographical progression of this seven-part message in the Book of Acts from the

beginning to the end. And there are eight charismatic messages or proclamations of the gospel in the book of Acts. And I'm putting that in the show notes for you. I got the link ready for and that is Father Andreas Hoke, so I'll give you that. And there's another great article that I want to comment on here by Monsignor Charles Pope. It was an article that was written online, and I have the link for you about how to do the charismatic sermon on the sermon of Acts, how the sermon of how the book of Acts teaches us about the corigma. That's what I'm trying to say there.

One of the things you want to do in proclaiming the gospel is learn how to speak, I guess. So, in the sermons, in the book of Acts, the kyrgygmatic messages that contain those basic elements that I just went through at the beginning, the sermons in the Bible, they contain three fundamental elements. And I'm not going to get deep into this, because I don't want to go deep into it. I just want to bring this to your attention, and maybe at a later show we'll go a little bit deeper. But I think this is something that we really got to touch on. Number one is those seven elements that I talked about before the break. Okay, number one, when we talked to three fundamental elements in this structure of seven things that we talked about,

number one is what what Monsignor Charles Pope calls effect. What is effect? Well, this is some event, some message to someone about you, healing, a change in life, a radical transformation. It's an event. It's a happening. And it generates an audience. That audience could be two people over a cup of coffee. It could be a city. It could be newspaper or it could be a news story. It's an effect. It could be you just telling somebody about the joy and the piece that you have received in your life in the last week. An effect. Okay. So number one effect, and I'll get into this in a moment. Number two, an explanation. There's an explanation for the events presented that is rooted. in Jesus Christ. This joy in your life, this transformation, this healing in your life was rooted in Jesus Christ and what Jesus did in your life. You're going to give an explanation as to what he did in your life. And number three, exhortation, there's an appeal to repentance and the call to receive Jesus in faith. Now, if you were to read, let me read one of these messages to you.

one of the carigmatic messages, and it is in Acts chapter 3, and I'm going to put this in the show notes for you, but let me read it, because then I want to go through the effect and the explanation and the exhortation real quickly with you here. Okay? So, here's Acts 3, 12 through 26. I love this stuff. When Peter saw this, he said to them, this is the message, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? You see, there was a miracle. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed and you disowned him before Pilate, though we had decided to let him go. You disowned the holy and righteous

one and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead, we are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name in the faith that comes through him that is given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders, but this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that His Christ would suffer. Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ who has been appointed for you, even Jesus. He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything

as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. For Moses said, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people. You must listen to everything. he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people. Indeed, all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, through your offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed. When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways. So we've got these three basic elements now, effect.

The first verse, when Peter saw this, he said to them, Men of Israel, why does this event surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man lock? Okay, so number one, there was an event, an effect. Something happened that caught everyone's attention. This man was healed. Now, monseigneur Pope brings out some really good points here. He says, note then, we are looking at a fact that is to say an event that has taken place

something that is observable. In this case, a man who had been crippled from birth was healed and he not only walked, but he danced. Now, he brings up a good point here when he asks the question. He says, this visible effect of God's grace had the additional effect of drawing a crowd. It drew the crowd. When God does something in someone's life, it draws people. Now, you might be saying to yourself right now, well, I've never been healed.

I've never been blind or deaf or anything like that. No, but you have been transformed. And when people find out that you've been transformed, it brings a crowd. people want to know. People have questions. And Monsignor Pope has this great question that he says, he says, now we may ask, does this mean that we have to show forth works and miracles in order to preach the gospel? You know what his answer is? Yes. He says, it may not necessarily be miraculous physical cures, but surely this effect is required, the miracle of a transformed life. on the part of the one who announces Jesus Christ

at some very obvious level we have got to be able to demonstrate to those to whom we preach and announce Jesus Christ that we are not merely announcing some facts about a historical figure or the doctrines of the church we are announcing a man

that we have personally met the Lord Jesus who has transformed our lives. life. Very, very powerful. Very powerful. And so those who preach the carigma, those who hand out cups of curigma, must preach it as first-hand witnesses. You, my friend, listening to this show right now, if you are a Christian, you are the first-hand witness. Stop waiting for other people to do this. You are the witness. As a witness, you have met Jesus Christ. You know what he's doing in your life. And the cup of

carigma is preaching not a technique, but a relationship, an experience, a transformation. Number two, the second element is an explanation. It's explaining how the crippled man had been healed. Peter takes no credit of his own. He attributes it all to Jesus. And so when you begin to explain to someone the transformation that's happened in your life, you're going to talk about how Jesus has changed you. And in this example in Acts, Peter goes on to declare the paschal mystery, saying that though this world killed him, God the Father raised him from the dead. Peter says he is a witness of this very fact.

And he goes on. And I don't want to belabor the point here because I don't want to make this too, complicated, but the charismatic preaching does not start with doctrines and scriptures. The charismatic preaching, the cup

of Joe, spiritual Joe, sort of speak, the cup of carigma starts with what? The effect. I've been changed. The effect of a transformed human life. That's how it begins. And then we explain what

he did in my life, what he did in my life, and how I repented, and how I turned to the gospel and believed it, and how I was brought into his church and nurtured. It might not be a great big movie on the silver screen, but it's your story. Your story has power. It really has tremendous power. I love it. I love it. So in an exhortation directed to the secular world, they're not going to really appreciate the authority of Scripture, but they will listen to your experience of transformation, which you can then begin to build Scripture into it. Now, the third element of the cup of curigma is the exhortation.

It's the exhortation. Peter concludes his sermon with a warning, quoting Moses, and then he calls on them to repent. to repent and to come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And so we see in the charismatic preaching that it's rooted not merely in reason or in discourse, but it's rooted in experience, the experience of the miracle of healing

and the experience of a transformed human life and that person that's been transformed explains what has happened to them. And then they end with an invitation that you can receive this too in your life. you too can repent. He loves you. He has a plan for you. And sin is destroying your life. And you can repent and believe in the gospel and you can experience the freedom. And you can come into his family, the church. Isn't that a beautiful message? That's the cup of curigma. That's the charismatic message. That's the basic gospel message that, oh my, oh my, the overwhelming majority of

Catholics do not share with other people. And please, don't write me and say, you're being judgmental. I'm not being judgmental. I know the landscape. I know it. I know of a lot of really good Catholics who are daily communicants that love God dearly. I don't even question that. But they are not handing out cups of curigma.

We need to become that person. And so I want to encourage you to do that. Let me end by it by saying this. And by the way, I'm putting all of that stuff I shared with you. It's in the show notes. If you're in the car, it'll be waiting for you. But more importantly, let's start doing it, huh? And I want to hear your stories.

I really want to hear your stories that if you share this information with other people, the basic gospel, I want to hear what happened. And I want to share that with the rest of our family here, the listeners. Now, Titus in the New Testament, Titus 1-3, in that book, Paul says to Titus that the proclamation was entrusted to him. Paul saw that this corigma was entrusted to him. It's not an option. It's something that we are entrusted with. I want to leave you with this today, my friend.

You are entrusted to start serving cups of corigma. That's right. Cups of Carygma. You may have gone through this show and realize that you really have encountered Jesus Christ. And this is the event in your life. It might have been 10 years ago. It might have been 25, 30 years ago. It could have been last week. But there's an event.

There's a transformation. God's going to bring people into your life that you can share this with. I would encourage you to start practicing and making it your own. And when the opportunity comes, step up to the plate. Okay? Get a cup out. Pour that person, a cup of curigma. And watch the results.

this is how people are changed. It isn't the cleverness of the message. It is the simple message that once again, God loves you. He's got a plan for your life. Sin is destroying your life. God is calling you to repent and believe the gospel. He rose from the dead and he will save you and transform you and he will bring you into his family. The church. And it's an eternal story. Make that story yours and share it. Let's pray. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, O Lord, we thank you that you have entrusted us with this message of the carigma, the basic proclamation. Help us, Lord, to make this our own and to know our story and to be willing to give a reason for the hope that is within us in every conversation and every

encounter. Lord, we don't want to go through our whole life and not tell others about the greatest gift in our life. Give us Holy Spirit guts to be bold witnesses for you and loving and charitable and kind witnesses for you. But may we not cower, but have courage, courage, which is the result of our confirmation to be official witnesses. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And remember, I want to hear from you, my email address. is the Jeff Kavan Show at ascensionpress.com. And please go to iTunes and rank the show, leave some comments and pass this show onto your friends.

God bless you. We'll see you next week.