Dear Church of the Open Bible,
My son had yogurt and oatmeal for supper last night. I got home by the time he was mostly through his meal, but he just wasn’t feeling up for mini pizzas and salad. Thirty minutes later, his stomach wasn’t feeling good and we had a conversation out on our backyard deck. It went like this.
“I think it’s important,” I said, “for you to eat what we’re all eating for supper.”
He replied, “So what you’re saying is that yogurt and oatmeal isn’t healthy.”
“No,” I said, “I’m just saying that I think it’s good for you to have a better balanced diet.”
He responded again, “So what you’re saying is that I can’t have breakfast food for supper.”
That is a sample of what our conversation was like for around five minutes.
Without getting into a debate on dietary needs and deficiencies, his continuous non-sequiturs, prefaced by “So what you’re saying…” made it extremely difficult to be clear about what I was trying to say.
We have all been in conversations like this, and on both ends. But as I’ve grown older, I’d like to think I’m getting better at noticing what’s going on. I have also come to appreciate clarity and how hard it can be sometimes to be clear. In the housing market, realtors have the motto, “Location, location, location.” In a confused world, believers have the motto, “Clarity, clarity, clarity.” We need to be clear on what matters and what doesn’t. We need to be clear about our need and God’s provision. We need to be clear about why we do what we do.
There are many things that we need to be clear about, but the main thing is the gospel. So at the outset of a new ministry year let us at least be clear about that. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died in our place to make us right with God and rose from the dead to establish His kingdom, by which He will rule all things.
May we be clear about the good news we receive by God’s grace and proclaim to others!
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. - 1 Corinthians 15:1-5