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As I write this we are right in the middle of the advent season, and so we are in the middle of all the preparations for the different evangelistic events and services we put on - the meal, the carol services, the various end of term celebrations in the different groups. While I am thankful for the opportunity to proclaim the wonder of the incarnation, and full of joy at the numbers of people we see, it is very easy for me to get frustrated. I’m sure I’m not the only one to be astonished, not at the opposition to the gospel message, but at the polite reception it has. Many listen, but just seem to be blind to quite how “good” the good news is, quite how life changing its implications are, quite how awesome the God who calls us to himself is.

The problem of preaching and evangelism in 2019 (and no doubt will be in 2020) is not hostility, but the perception of irrelevance. It appears as if the gospel is simply nowhere near as interesting as Netflix. The demand to bow down to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord sounds nowhere near as urgent as sorting out the pressures of our lives. Our glorious trinitarian God seems nowhere near as awe inspiring as whoever has just been voted as the sports personality of the year.

But - is that all the fault of those around us? It can be very easy to get bitter and frustrated. Equally, it can be easy to take refuge in doctrine, which while true is only half the answer. Yes, people’s hearts are hardened and eyes are blind and ears are deaf to the gospel until the Lord works and produces regeneration. Of course, a significant answer to this frustration is to pray!

However, it would be good to turn the spotlight on ourselves. Might we be part of the reason as to why our friends and neighbours do not see God as awesome and the gospel as life changing? In the way we live and worship do we show that God has really gripped us and transformed us? To put it another way - are we truly worshippers?

Every so often Christian writers and preachers sound the alarm and call us to have a far greater view of God than we have. This is what David Wells wrote 25 years ago -

“It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his salience for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgement no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness”.

The sad truth is that God can appear to be weightless even in the church, even amongst those who claim to trust him.

As part of an attempt to address this, or at least to try and make sure this can’t be said of us, on Sunday mornings this term we are going to hear sermons on the character of God. More precisely - on his majesty, and in particular, how he is altogether different from us. 

It is my prayer that this will increase our trust in him, fill us with awe, and lead us to repent of any small views of him we might have, as well as any ways we are trying to lessen the gap between him as our creator as us as his creatures by wrongly trying to be like him. Although we will be dealing with some theological concepts, there could not be anything more practical than who our God is, and it should increase our worship of him.