How to Share Your Faith.
Sermon Video
Sermon Notes
Tips to Sharing Your Faith (http://bit.ly/connectwithnecc)
What in the World: Sharing your Faith Sermon
Are you challenged with sharing your faith with unbelievers? It can be a daunting experience for any believer especially in today’s climate that is absent of absolutes. Our culture is moving further away from trusting in God, and towards placing our hopes in humanity. In this video, I’m going to give you 3 thoughts about God, and 3 events to focus on when you are sharing your faith. From the account of the Apostle Paul sharing with the philosophers of his day the gospel of Jesus Christ, and His crucifixion.
Sermon Notes:
(Recap of Last Week’s Sermon)
How does the average believer get off track?
False philosophies move into ART & Music, then the general culture… and before you know it; it has impacted our theology in the Church.
Man was never intended to be the center of the world.
Paul was run out of Thessalonica, and then the Thessalonians came to Berea and ran him out of there too…
Acts 17:16-32
16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”–because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
→ God is the Creator of all Things
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,[c] 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
→ God is in Control of History (the rising and falling of nations)
26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
→ God has created us to Seek HIM ( long for Him by instincts)27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’[e]
RECAP:
God is the Creator
God is in Control of History
God has created us to seek HIM
3 EVENTS
→ The Days of Ignorance are over29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
→ Judgement is Coming31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness
→ The resurrection of Jesus proves that He is who He says He is by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Closing:
32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
The Church cannot be afraid of being mocked for our faith.
Look over your list of attributes about God… and think about what you wrote that you know about Him… for the next few moments I want you to reflect on How those attributes of God should impact your life.
God is:
Infinite
Self Existing
Immutable
Omnipotent
Omniscient
Omnipresent
Sovereign
Eternal
Holy
Immanent
Transcendent
