Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - How Do We Share Our Faith Now? Principles (with Q&A)

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

The first 30 years of my ministry life, I spent most of my time saying, “You’ve got to care about the poor. You’ve got to do justice. You can’t just do word—you’ve got to do deed.” The last 10 years of my ministry life in New York City, everybody wants to do justice—and that’s great. However, now I’ve got to say, “But you’ve got to open your mouth and tell people in whose name you’re doing it.” Jesus was mighty in word and deed. And just like Jesus, Christians have got to be mighty in both word and deed. There are four headwinds to sharing our faith today. These four headwinds are 1) the problem of attention, 2) the problem of comprehension, 3) the problem of attraction, and 4) the problem of the spectrum. This talk was given by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 14, 2019. Series: Missional Living. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

If you're a Christian, you want to see your neighborhood workplace in city renewed by the gospel. But in today's culture, the challenges to sharing our faith or discipling someone can feel almost insurmountable. How can we effectively share our faith in spite of tough questions and misconceptions about Christianity. Today's podcast features teaching from the 2019 Missional Living Conference held at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Listen as Dr. Keller explores how we can share our faith in a way that is relevant, win some, and true. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles from Dr. Keller as well as other valuable

gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandlife.com. First 30 years of my ministry, the life, we're pretty, we're a lot different than the last 10 years. And a lot of you, I know you're saying, you don't look that old. That's irony. By the way, Americans don't get irony,

but that was irony, all right. First 30 years, I spent most of my time with born-again churches. Churches filled with people who said time with born-again churches, churches filled with people who said they're born-again. Those 30 years I spent most of the time saying, you know, you've gotta care about the poor. You've gotta do justice. You've gotta love your neighbor.

If you're read the Good Samaritan parable. So I spent all my time saying, you gotta do that, you can't just talk about, you can't just do word, you need to do deed. Jesus was mighty in word and deed, it says. So we can't just be a place we're always talking about, Christianity and about the faith, we need to be doing it. So let's get out there, let's help the poor,

let's be good neighbors. Now I can tell you in the last 10 years in New York City, for example, amongst Christians, I have not had to beat that drum that much. Everybody wants to do that. There's a whole lot of reasons for it, and that's great. However, now in the last 10 years, I've got to say,

but you've got to open your mouth. You've got to explain why you're doing it. You've got to, you have to tell people in whose name you're doing it. Because just like Jesus, Christians are supposed to be mighty in word and deed. And the fact of the matter is, and I'm giving us credit here, there are headwinds that we have now, that if you wanted to open your mouth and share your faith and talk to people around you about your faith and Christianity,

that 40 years ago just weren't there. They just weren't there. In fact, I'd like to talk to this first half of my discussion here. I'd like to talk about four headwinds that we have, and it's making it very hard, and especially the younger you are, the more likely you feel these headwinds with the people around you. The younger you are, the more you feel these headwinds.

First of all, there's the problem of attention. It's hard to get people's attention to even care to talk about Christianity. It's not just that more and more people think Christianity is irrelevant. Yes, of course that's true. So they're not going to pay attention. They're not going to listen. But it's more than that.

There's a good book by Alan Noble called Disruptive Witness. And he talks about the fact that in an internet culture, in a social media dominated culture, and some of us are more shaped by it than others. Those of us who are older are less shaped by it because it has not been as big a part of our life proportionally. But what social media does is it makes you distracted. That you never pay a whole lot of attention over a, in a sustained way to much of anything. Now, as a result of that, you never change deeply. If you're constantly going from thing to thing to thing,

which is what it means to be on social media, you're going to thing to thing to thing to thing like this, you zipped from one thing to another thing to another thing, and you might make changes, but there's superficial changes. Because the only way you change deeply is if you pay an unawful lot of attention over a long period of time to something. You have to give time to something.

You have to give yourself to it. You have to reflect on it. You have to take it inside. You have to pay attention over a long period of time that's the only way you change it any direction at all. And virtually nobody does that anymore. And the younger you are, the less you're able to do it. So it's very hard to get people's attention. How do we even talk, how do we get people's attention

to talk about Christ? Number two, there's the problem of comprehension. And the reason is, and this is a incredibly over general, it's, you know, actually, when it comes to talk about culture, unless you over generalize, you're going to be boring. And I don't want to be boring tonight, so let me over generalize. That up until this culture, every other culture, you found truth outside of yourself,

and you went outside to find truth. Your truth was God or family or the nation or something like that. But in our culture, you find truth by going deep inside yourself. You find truth inside. That's where you find truth. And only you can decide who you are. And only you have the right to tell, to determine for yourself what is the right or wrong. Nobody has the right to tell you what is the right or wrong. And so truth and right and wrong are things you discover on the inside.

Now, that's the first culture in history like that. Every other culture, different religions, of course. They differed on what the truth was, the Hindu culture, the Muslim culture, the Buddhist culture, the animist culture. They differed on what that truth was outside, but they all agreed that there was a truth on the outside, which meant you could fall short of it. You could, therefore you were a sinner.

You never lived up to the moral standard. But what happens in a culture that's dedicated to the idea that nobody can make you feel guilty, you decide what is right on it for you. Nobody can impose their values on you. You have to live your own truth. Is that a culture in which people actually have the idea of sin, not exactly?

So in every other culture, when you did evangelism, Is that a culture in which people actually have the idea of sin? Not exactly. So in every other culture, when you did evangelism, when you talked to a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or anybody about the gospel, you could assume that they knew that there was a truth outside of themselves and they fell short of it in some way and therefore you could work on that. There was a space there. You know you're a sinner, you know that you haven't lived like you should. Here's what Christian is to say to you, but this is the first culture in which that's not there. There's an awful lot of a typical gospel presentation that is completely incomprehensible.

Not just, obviously, if I tell a gospel presentation to a Hindu or a Muslim or Buddhist, they may say, you're wrong. In fact, they may say, you're really wrong, but they understand what you're saying. They have a different understanding of the sacred order. They have a different understanding of how to connect to the sacred order, which is a truth outside of yourself, of moral absolutes, a transcendent norm of some kind. But what you have in our culture is people

have no concept of that. So how do you even do your normal gospel presentation? You know, when I was in the 1970s, when I was in Virginia, I could go to any place in my little town, whether the person is believed in God or not or went to church or not. I could say, hey, when you die, you want to be all right, don't you? You want to know that when you die, you're going to go to heaven. And everybody would nod.

And you know you're supposed to be a good person, right? Everybody would nod. But you know you're not as good as you ought to be. Everybody would nod. Well, I got something to say to you. And they either accepted it or rejected it. But basically, it was comprehensible, but none of those first three or four questions in a place like New York usually you're not going to get a nod, are you?

So it's not comprehensible, so it's the problem of attention, the problem of a comprehension. Then there's the problem of attraction. Now people are not going to sit still and listen to a presentation on why Christianity is true unless they have some sense that it wouldn't be so bad if it was true. But what if they are utterly offended by Christianity, the very idea of it, and increasingly there's people like that, I'll tell you why real quick. We are in some ways becoming like the early church in this way. The early Christians were the most persecuted and the most vilified of all the various religions.

And the reason was this, that everybody had their own gods. So if you were from the city of Partheia, there was the Partheian gods. If you were from the city of Sithia, there was the Sithian gods. There was the, every town, every guild, if you were a leather worker, there were leatherworking gods.

If you were a, very often if you had a family, a large estate, there were always household gods. And you could have your gods, that's fine. But when you came to my town, when you came to my house, you had to pay tribute. You had a light of candle. You had to show a basins of some kind. And that was just the only, that's how you did it. That's how you should respect to that town or to that house or to those people.

Christians were the first ones to come along. The Jews of of course, did not worship other gods, but at least the Romans and Greeks looked the Jews as very strange people, but at least they were a particular racial group, and they said, well, they've got their God, we've got our God, we've got these God. They're kind of narrow-minded, but there they are. The Christians came along, and they were Greek Christians, and Roman Christians and Scythian and Parthian. They were Christians came from all these different groups, but then they said, no, we cannot bow down to idols. And therefore, Christians in that time

were not just weird, though they were. They were dangerous, because they were a threat to the social order. They were incredibly offensive because they would not honor all the deities. And of course, the Romans thought they were being more open-minded and the Christians were being closed-minded, but what they were actually telling the Christians is, you have got to honor the reality of every deity and the Christians were saying, we can't. What you're really saying is, we can't be Christians. You're being intolerant,

but here's the interesting thing. They were seen as a danger to the social order. They showed disrespect to people, and they were afraid, of course. You take a look at Acts 19. The fear is that Christians would stop worshipping the gods and the temple of Diana and Ephesus, and the gods would get angry. They were really considered a danger, but here's what Christians had to do. They had to say, you watch us. You say we will not, we're not good citizens. You would say we're not good neighbors.

Well, we do love you, and we will be the best neighbors, but we cannot balcony to the reality of these other deities that we don't believe in them. Now today, we're in a similar situation, right? You see how? Charles Taylor, the great philosopher, says that modern people believe that sacred is inside you. We may not believe in a God out there,

but we believe there's something sacred inside you. You have depths inside you. So going in and discovering your identity is a religious thing. It's a sacred thing and nobody can question it. And nobody in any way can question it. Well, of course, as I just said a minute ago, where the first culture in which identity is deified,

it's unquestioned. It's not allowed to be questioned in any way because there isn't any standard outside of the self to judge it. There's no truth out here. It's all in here. And so if you as a Christian disagree with a person about any of their beliefs that they think

are part of their identity, then you are the bigot. You are a danger to the social order. And Christians are in the same spot. We have to say, no, you are being intolerant, actually. You're telling us we actually have to agree with your beliefs about identity and we don't believe that about identity. There's never been a culture that believed what we believe here at about identity. We don't believe it, but we do love you. We will love you. We can be good citizens. We can be the best neighbors you watch.

Now of course there's a lot of persecution then. Maybe there'll be persecution now. I don't know. But you see why Christianity is not seen as a very attractive thing. Because there is a there's if there is a baseline belief in our culture. It's that identity is deity. belief in our culture, it's that identity is deity. And therefore, if you question anybody's beliefs about who they are at all, then you're questioning, you know, you're probably in a way. You're doing the very same thing. You're showing disrespect, the way the early Christians show disrespect to the gods. And yet Christians have to say, look,

sorry, you're the ones being exclusive, but all we're going to do is we're going to say no matter what you do to us, we're going to love you, we're going to be the good citizens, we're going to show you. Nevertheless, it's a hard sell. It's one more thing to say quick. There's the problem of the, as I said, there's the problem of the attention, there's the problem of comprehension, there's a problem of attraction, there's also a problem. The problem of attraction means

how do you attract people to an offensive thing like Christianity now? And the last thing is the problem of the spectrum. What I mean by that is that there's really not just one, I wish everybody out there just hated Christianity, but it's not that simple. You've got all kinds of people. I talked some years ago, especially in New York,

I talked some time years ago to a man who lived in London, and he said that when he was a minister, he says, when I come out my door to the left on my block, are mainly Muslims and Hindus, people from the South, the South Asian continent, mainly Hindus and Muslims, and to the North are mainly white people, white English people. And he says, the people to my left think Christianity is too morally lax. It's not morally strong enough, you know, and the people to my right think the Christianity

is too moralistic. It's too down on people. It's always talking about sin. The people who are here saying Christians are just too loose. They're not morally strong enough. And the man said to me, can you give me a gospel presentation, an outline of the gospel, that I can give to everybody or my block? And I said, no. No way. Because these are people in radically different places.

Their understanding of truth is different. Their understanding of identity is different. Their understanding of reality is different. It's all different. And now we live in, especially in places like New York, we live in pluralistic societies and you have no idea who you're going to be reaching out to and talking to. They could be from different planets when it comes to world view.

You put all that together, we have headwinds. But I'll just say this, these are the headwinds. And I'll be quick because I know I've spoken on this in the past, not too long ago. John sought wrote a little book some years ago, and I read it as a brand new Christian, and I never really forgot it. He says, it was about evangelism, it was about sharing your faith. And he said, when it comes down to it, if your heart has been affected by the gospel, you'll find a way.

Headwinds are no headwinds. As in the end, he says, it's not whether you've been trained, it's not whether you have the right answers to all the hard questions you're going to get. It's a question of the heart. And he said, if the gospel has really affected the heart, it means it'll affect it in four ways. Number one, the gospel gets rid of pride.

It tells you you're just a sinner. And that gets rid of the idea that you have all the answers and you're superior to the person you're talking to, which makes you a terrible, terrible witness to the faith. So it gets rid of your pride, which is one of the and harshness, and abrasiveness, and argumentativeness. It gets rid of that, it should. And that's one of the main reasons that we're actually pretty ineffective when it comes to talking about our faith. Number two, the gospel should get rid of your fear. Of course, you should be afraid of offending, unnecessarily, afraid of hurting people.

Of course, you should. But that's not really what we're afraid of. We're afraid of being thought of religious fanatic. We're afraid it's going to hurt our job. We're afraid it's going to hurt our network, isn't that right? And see, the gospel says, you are loved in Christ. God made him sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

In Christ, we are the righteousness of God. Meaning God looks at us and he sees us as absolutely beautiful. And our self-image should be based on the fact that the only eyes in the universe whose opinion counts. Seize you as an absolute beauty. And we're scared by what other people say, because frankly, the gospel hasn't sunk in deep enough to really change our identity to a great degree.

We take our self-worth and our self-regard from what people think of us. The gospel should get rid of fear, it should get rid of pride, it should get rid of pessimism. If you look at somebody around you and say, that's not the kind of person would ever become a Christian. Oh, and you are. How wonderful of you. You were such promising material. How wonderful of you to come to God and let him do something with you. There's this little verse in Romans 3 that says, no one seeks for God.

No one seeks for God. Every person who becomes a Christian is a miracle. You're a miracle. And if you're pessimistic about anybody, you've forgotten what a miracle of grace you are. And number four, lastly, the gospel should give you enough joy and love that you really say, oh yeah, I'm sticking my neck out like this. It could be terrible. I'm shy. I don't like upsetting people, but it is just unloving for me to never open my mouth. And so John Stott concludes his little talk with a pretty convicting statement the way he often did.

He basically talks about the fact he says, oh, he says, nothing closes the mouth like the secret poverty of our spirit, the secret poverty of our spiritual life. The fact that the gospel is not really animating us, if the gospel is animating us, if it really changes our heart in those ways, taking those things away, giving us a gospel humility, giving us a gospel fearlessness, giving us a gospel love, giving us a gospel hood, we'll find a way. Headwinds are no headwinds. We'll find a way. For many in our culture today, Biblical Christianity is a dangerous idea, challenging

some of their deepest beliefs. In her book Confronting Christianity, 12 hard questions for the world's largest religion. Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin explores the hard questions that keep many people from considering faith in Christ. Tackling issues including gender and sexuality, science and faith, and the problem of suffering, McLaughlin shows that what seems like roadblocks to faith in Jesus can become signposts to a relationship with Him. Confronting Christianity is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today

at GospelAndLife.com slash give. That's GospelAndLife.com slash give. How are the headwinds you've described different for various generations? Millenials, boomers? That's an easy question. I think I hinted at it. It seems to me that they're just stronger, the younger. In other words, it's the younger the generation, the younger you are, the more likely you'll feel the headwinds. You'll feel the resistance.

You'll feel a real unease on the part of the people, friends and people around you, if you start talking about faith or religion. So I think it's as simple as that. Though, the thing that's, the thing that, the thing about New York that's so odd is, is because it's so diverse, let me just give you a quick example. I would say that if you're talking to a Hindu parents who moved here from India, but their kids are raised here.

They still consider themselves Hindu, but they went off to college here and grew up here. I think you probably would find the younger generation, perhaps a little more open to the things you're saying than the older one. So it's a little, in know, in a multi-ethnic, multiracial place, it's a little, it's dangerous to make a generalization, but I will say in general it's the younger you are the more the headwinds.

Okay. So our second question, what is the best way to even start a conversation about Jesus with people of the pantheistic persuasion, Hindus or Buddhists? Oh, really depends a great deal because Hindus and Buddhists are, I don't know, we've lived in the same apartment building in the same room, I mean, the same apartment for 30 years. And we have actually had both Muslim, it's funny, it's almost like we have a Hindu room and a Muslim room.

For some reason, there's one one apartment that's always had a Muslim family in it. There might be something there. And I think what happens is you get to know people as neighbors and it just comes up. They'll start talking about the fact that on the Muslim, the wife, mother, at the one end, that's a family that's gone now, just got into a relationship, got into talking to Kathy about the fact that she teaches what we would call

Sunday school, except that they do it on Friday and what she, it's, I think the way you start is you've, you've befriended them. There is not such thing as friendship, evangelism. There's friendship. And if you, I'll talk about this maybe a little bit afterwards, if you basically are a friend with somebody and you just don't hide the fact you're a Christian, it tends to come up somewhere. I'll talk about this maybe a little bit afterwards. If you basically are a friend with somebody

and you just don't hide the fact you're a Christian, it tends to come up somewhere. So I don't know that I would, unless you're really in a hurry, I wouldn't want to give you conversational strategies for how do you get around to the Christian, you say, you know, one of the ways to do it is at a restaurant, you say, is this seat saved?

You said, no, but I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am.

I am. Actually, that was a bad example, everybody. I, like I said before, Americans don't do irony. So, I was a scary. I'm afraid you're going to do it. So, I really think that conversational strategies, I've read them, I've seen them and I go, some of you though maybe more direct than I am and you can get away with it.

I mean, you have a temperament I don't have and that is you can just say, hey, I like to talk to you about, I can't do that. You're, be a friend, get to know them, just don't hide who you are or the fact that you go to church and it just comes up. just on hide who you are or the fact that you go to church and it just comes up. Okay, so now in the work environment and you know that we spend a lot of time at work as New Yorkers. So what's your advice on sharing the gospel in the workplace? Does anybody have success? Sure, I mean, but you know, some of this, I will, I think, actually, speak to this afterwards.

I mean, in my second talk, I'll speak to it. But in the workplace, I do think because it's, it's, the workplace relationships, as you know now, are so under scrutiny in a way they weren't even 10 years ago. But I do think you have to be extremely careful because what somebody considers offensive might not be, what you consider reasonable, but that's, they're different. So I do think, again, this is the problem with conversational strategies

where a person you don't really know, you haven't really walked with them much, you haven't gotten to know them, you haven't shown sympathy or interest in them. They haven't come to like you, really. And you start to try to get into the subject of faith. That's where in the workplace, especially the place like New York, it could really, really be taken ill, as it were.

But I'll talk more about that afterwards. OK. Politics. Looking at the current political climate So, but I'll talk more about that afterwards. Okay, politics. Looking at the current political climate and the church's role in that, does it contribute to the attraction or distraction from Jesus himself and therefore Christianity? The way the press, the way most people think about it, it's a big problem for talking to people about faith in New York City. By the way, it helps if you're not white. Otherwise, if you're

not white and you're New York City, you're probably, if you talk about your faith, you're probably not going to be as quickly seen as part of the problem as simple as that. Okay? Just to let you know. Because the press has done a wonderful job of saying white evangelicals put Donald Trump into the presidency. So there's, as you know, 40 to 42% of the population that that's fine. I'm glad he's a president. But there's obviously more people, a majority that are not real happy with him. And so because the press has said that, white evangelicals put Donald Trump in, then if you are white evangelical, yeah.

Or if they perceive you being an evangelical, I don't think using that word around the city is all that great idea. Those of you who have been redeemer over the years know that I hardly ever use the word. Nevertheless, if they perceive you as being a conservative Christian in some way, yeah, it's a problem. So, how you deal with that, I don't know. I do think that if you, the question was just, is it a problem, yes it is.

I do think if you are Asian or African-American or, or if you're Hispanic, it's a little less of a problem. And maybe you need to actually speak up right now at a time to say, you know what, all born-again Christians aren't white actually. And the most important thing I think for people that put it this way, evangelicals, meaning people who believe in the new birth, you gotta be born-again,

you don't get into heaven through your good works and just going to church. People that have a high view of the Bible and that sort of thing. A friend of mine says, around the world right now, there are literally hundreds of millions of these people. And they are as different as mammals. All mammals are mammals, right? But if you look at a house cat and think that's going to tell you something about an elephant,

it's not going to tell you much. And there's a tendency to think that all the people who believe you have to be born again and the Bible is true and you need to believe in the blood of Jesus Christ and all that. That they're all the same politically it is not true. The world, there's a billion of those people around the world and they come in all shapes and sizes when it comes to culture and politics. And that's the best, that's my best way of talking about it with people right now. To say, you just, if you think you can dismiss these doctrines because there's a certain group

of people right now that hold those doctrines that you don't like politically, you have to really, that's very ethnocentric. It's very American-centric. Most of the people in the world who believe these doctrines are not white and they're not male, by the way. I think, actually Rebecca's gonna be talking about that later. So, I won't say anything about that. Okay. I'm loving sharing the gospel with people,

especially family who have been offended by you or the gospel before any suggestions there. You mean you've got something to live down? Is that the idea? It sounds like that, yes. Well then just shut up. That wasn't irony. That wasn't ironic. I think I've known plenty of people who, in fact, this is actually fairly typical, as a younger Christian. If you're enthusiastic and you're really excited about what you've found in Christ, I think an awful lot of us, a pretty high percentage of us,

do a really terrible job of talking about our faith in the early days. We can be very over-icellous, pretty clueless, and especially in our family. And I actually do remember when I was a college student, and I was a fairly new Christian as a college student, it was, I forget, and I was a fairly new Christian as a college student, I forget, we had a syndrome. We very often, if a kid became a Christian at college and they got

real excited, we said, now, first Thanksgiving, first Christmas when they went home, I said, don't hardly talk about it at all, because unless you give us a little time to work on you, you're going to screw it up and you're're gonna have your whole family hating Jesus Christ. And even if they go to church, they'll stop going to church immediately because of you. Because it was so typical of them. And if actually they did do it, they went home and they told everybody they're going to hell

and they said, wonder who would be a Christian. You know, I love being a Christian. And you're going to hell. And seriously, they often did that. Generally, at that point, we just said, look, you just need to be quiet now. Just need to be quiet. It's not, you know, there's, their destiny is not

in your hands anyway. It's between them and God. And so just lay off and don't act like you're their savior. Jesus is their savior. So basically, I wasn't kidding when I said shut up. No irony at all. Okay, so we're getting some questions about parenting in light of the headwinds. What shifts do Christians need to make to raise children in the new culture with the missionary mindset? Well, promise them they'll get their first cell phone when they turn 37.

And on, if really good behavior, maybe 36. You know, and we're not getting that, you know, that's a boy, that's a whole big subject. The problem is, it was the woman, by the way, recently died who was a very prominent psychologist, psychiatrist, child psychologist, I think. And she talked about the fact that every decade, the last four or five decades, kids' peers are becoming more and more important

and they're family less important to their being shaped. And part of it is because they can be talking to their peers through social media incessantly all the time, in a way that wasn't true. So even like 20 years ago, they could really only talk to their peers like on a phone or if they came to their home and now they can be talking constantly.

So what happens is the values of the peer group is much more shaping than what they're getting at home or with their parents. And I do think all I can just tell you is I think you really have to look at that, even though that can be, you can have a tremendous head budding. You can really be budding heads over that.

But it is true that you can't just be agnostic about it or not care who they're hanging out with. And it's not just hanging out physically, it's who they're talking to all the time. I think that's a very big part. The other thing is what I would call Christians do not, they will teach their kids doctrine. They'll say, you know, the trinity, God created us and you're teaching doctrine. They'll say, you know, the trinity, God created us and you're teaching doctrine. But at the same time, the world is catacizing your children, the world is teaching your children things. And the world is, I actually mentioned some of them, let me give you, let

me give you five or six. One is, you have to be true to yourself. You have to decide who you are and you have to be true to yourself. You have to decide who you are and you have to be true to yourself. No one has the right to tell anyone else what is right or wrong for him or her. You have to decide what your truth is and live it. Now, both those things are slightly different than Jesus Christ saying, you have to lose yourself to find yourself, you have to deny yourself

and take a bit across and follow me. And it's just a little difference. So what you have to do is you actually need to identify the messages your kids are getting in the songs they're hearing in the commercials, in the movies and the stories, and that sort of thing. And you need to actually connect them to doctrine and say, so if we were teaching about this, and this is saying this,

so what's the problem? Do you see any problem there? You have to do what Deuteronomy 6 says you're supposed to do, which is walk with your children constantly in kind of informal discourse, constantly talking about, can you analyze the worldview of that commercial we just saw? I know it can drive your kids crazy, especially once they get, they'll be with you okay until somewhere around the age of 13 when they, you know, you, you, I'm not saying kids have different temperaments, some kids would find that overbearing, but you really do have to make sure that you're deconstructing the messages the kids are getting, rather than just letting those

messages come in unmediated, un, un, uh, filtered, and then think by taking the kids to youth group and church on a Sunday, that enough to offset it it's not. So what about starting a spiritual conversation with friends when no one shows any interest or asks questions? I'll get to that. Honestly I will. Okay and the answer the answer is, my answer always has been, don't force it. There are people, however, who've got temperaments that can do that win some Lee and just bring it up. And you know who some of you are, Susan the court of, but the rest of us,

they're, seriously, there are people who've got temperaments that they can do it and there's people who, I think most people can't. But I'll tell you why, when is the year there are openings? But we'll talk about that later. OK. OK, another question. How can I keep myself from being discouraged

if I keep inviting non-Christian friends to church and sharing Christ, then they keep declining? Well, listen, I think part of what I'm trying to say about the headwinds, I think 30 years ago when we started Redeemer, the headwinds were not there as much, and I think it was easier to get somebody to come along to church, and I think there's decreasing number of people who will just come to church if you invite them.

I think you need to be and, by the way, you need to be in a... Also, there's decreasing numbers of people who you can just start a conversation up with Christianity and they say, oh that's interesting, I love talking about religion, let's talk about it. And that what that means is people have vastly longer incubation arcCs. It's a much more organic, it has to be much more relational, much more listening, much more than you talk. It's got to be slower and more loving and more relational unless I've got an event to take you to.

So if they're not responding to it, then start way further back. Just develop relationships. What we'll be talking a little bit about that too? Okay, so we only have a few more minutes remaining, so we're gonna take one last question. Less than 8% of the Redeemer community feel comfortable sharing their faith. What do we do if we don't feel broken-hearted

for those who don't know the joy of Jesus? Now, retarded again, Kelly, that sound like two questions snuck into one. Okay. Sneaky person. Less than 8% of the Redeemer community feel comfortable sharing their faith. What do we do if we don't feel broken-hearted for those who don't know the joy of Jesus? Well, maybe I'm being unfair to you.

The two, I understand why somebody says, I don't feel comfortable sharing my faith because I'm afraid I'm gonna get questions I don't know how to answer. And I think that your local church, I don't know which of the Redeemer churches you go to or you may go to some other church, is the church has got, if you want to be, let's just call it, Missional Living. If you want to be much more engaged in Missional

Living, your church needs to support you. And that doesn't, that means not necessarily deputize you and just say, now go out and share the faith this week and come back and talk about it. You need to have somebody who will help you grow in your understanding of things, where you could be in a group of people that talk about the questions you get, and you share and you sharpen each other

in your discussion so you feel better about that. So there does need, tonight is an excertation. I don't think most of you are just going to say, all by yourself, without any help from your church or without any help from other believers, I'm just going to get more missional. I just not going to happen. The church has got to support you in that.

Now, the broken part, or the broken part where he said, I just don't know where, that's kind of getting close to the idea of what John Stott said, which is if you find that your heart is not moved enough to take the risk, it's not filled enough with a desire to see people find the faith and they you're just, Stott says it's the poverty of your spiritual experience. And I was trying to say that in the end, a lack of desire, a lack of willingness, a lack of courage, a lack of willingness to stick your neck out probably does come from a cold heart. So those are two questions.

I think the church has to help you a lot in the one of helping you feel more like I can converse about this in an intelligent way. But you have to do something about the heart thing. Sorry, the church can't get in there. Your heart is only you have access to that and God. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We pray that it challenged you and encouraged you. You can find more resources from Tim Keller at gospelandlife.com.

Just subscribe to the Gospel and Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. This talk was recorded in 2019. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. you