Am I confident of the Good News?

Confidence is important

When I am not confident of something, I hang back, I dither, I avoid, I keep quiet. When I am in a group and someone starts talking confidently about characters and plots in the lastest Marvel film I begin to withdraw from the conversation and keep my head down, because I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t got a clue! But it’s a different matter when someone starts talking about sport! Suddenly I perk up and start to share stories and talk with confidence about what I know, because I love sport and know enough to pitch in. Sharing our faith can be like that. When we feel close to Jesus and know His Word we feel confident to talk enthusiastically about Him, but when we feel far from Jesus we question what He has done for us and we find ourselves shying away from opportunities to introduce Him to others. 

Paul was confident in the Good News

I don’t get the impression that Paul of Tarsus was a shy kind of guy. In the opening to his letter to Romans he said: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). The GNB translation is “I have complete confidence in the good news”, but that doesn’t quite do the original justice. Why would Paul use the negative version of this? Firstly, it may have been because those who were opposed to the gospel saw it as foolish (1 Cor 1:23) and secondly Paul may well have been tempted to feel ashamed – certainly taking news of the resurrection of an unknown man who had just suffered a Roman execution to Caesar’s empire was no easy task (1 Cor 2:3). Paul didn’t always have the rub of the green as he experienced stonings, shipwrecks and snakebites, but nevertheless Paul was always keen to stress that his confidence was on the good news of Jesus rather than in himself.

Why was Paul so confident in the gospel?

The odd word “gospel” comes from the old Anglo-Saxon term god-spell, meaning “good story” or “good news”. The news that Paul was bringing was of the death and the resurrection of Jesus and His power to save us, heal us and restore us through faith. He had confidence in this news because he knew that it was true, having come face to face with the risen Jesus. He had become convinced of Jesus’ power to save through visions, through scripture, through the church and through prayer. If our news is going to be good, we need to be similarly assured by the reality of our relationship with Jesus that He alone has the power to save (Acts 4:12). 

Are we confident in the Good News?

Our journey to faith will obviously be different to Paul’s, so we all have our own story to share.  However dramatic or unremarkable it may be, we need to be able to communicate without jargon how we know Jesus and what difference He makes to our life. There are many aspects to that, but we are only called to speak of what we know – like the woman at the well announcing “come see a man who told me everything I ever did (John 4:29) and the healed blind man declaring “all I know is that I was blind, and now I can see!” (John 9:25).

How do I know if I am confident in the gospel?

As I said at the start, if you are confident in something you will find yourself talking about it with others. If you are a passionate extrovert like myself the you may well bring it up even without being invited! The key is that you will share your faith simply even when it may risk damaging your reputation because you are confident that the benefit of the good news for them far outweighs the inconvenience to you. The nervousness about sharing may never fully recede but the knowledge that it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes should be sufficient for us to share faith simply.