Sermon Video: "Always be prepared" - I Peter 3:15

How did you come to have faith in Jesus Christ?  For the majority of Christians, the answer involves the influence of a family member, friend, co-worker, or neighbor, in other words, a personal relationship with someone who was already a Christian.  In I Peter 3:15, we find Peter’s instructions for the preparation necessary for Christians in order to be ready to answer questions about their faith.  For his original audience, the situation involved persecution, for many Christians around the world that holds true today, but for Americans it is often complacency or apathy that stand in the way of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

                For Peter, step one in sharing the Gospel is ensuring that our own hearts and minds are ready.  Our hearts need to recognize that Jesus is Lord, an attitude that influences our priorities and how we live, and we need to prepare our minds by understanding our faith, what it means and how it saved us, for how else can we share that critical information?

                Once our own house is in order, Peter encourages us to be prepared to answer questions, which is the opposite of most approaches to evangelism which focus upon the Christian initiating the conversation.  Peter anticipates these questions because he knows that the hope that Christians have within them will prompt questions from people living in a world without it.  Hope is a rare commodity, and a valuable one, so when Christians live without despair, because they know who holds the future, and they live for tomorrow by investing in others, because they are servants of God, it gets noticed by others.

                When the question is asked, whatever form it ends up taking, how are we to respond?  Peter makes it clear that the sharing of the Gospel must be with gentleness and respect, which seems to be an area that we as Christians have failed often enough to live up to.  How can we ensure that we have the right attitude as we share the Gospel?  Before thinking about how you will respond, try listening to the person asking the question first, when you dignify the person asking the question by taking that question seriously, rather than itching to give a pre-determined response, the results will follow.  We must be prepared, we must be ready, and we must have hope overflowing in our lives so that others will ask us that all important question.

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Sermon Video