The Path to Peace and Joy

 

The Path to Peaced and Joy by Dr. Jim Denison In How to Reach the West Again, Timothy Keller perceptively diagnoses our cultural moment and challenges, then he encourages us to take practical steps to build communities that respond redemptively to our collective challenges and serve the common good. He cites Michael Green’s estimate that “80 percent or more of evangelism in the early church was done not by ministers or evangelists, but by ordinary Christians explaining themselves to . . . their network of relatives and close associates.” As Keller notes, “People paid attention to the gospel because someone they knew well, worked with, and perhaps loved, spoke to them about it.” He then urges us to “intentionally adopt ‘missional living'” in our daily lives and relationships. He adds the insight of Alan Noble in Disruptive Witness: people in our day are more open to considering Christianity when reading or watching stories and narratives that witness to Christian insights during times of stress, disappointment, difficulty, or suffering. This is because no other worldview meets human needs as Christianity does. No other faith offers the hope an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Father can. No other movement is empowered by God living in its adherents as Christianity is. Frederick Buechner noted: “Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.” How much “peace and joy” will you experience today?