Several weeks ago, I remember sitting in an HR conference during the afternoon key note message. The speaker was a petite woman with blond hair and a BIG voice…a big voice that offended a lot of people (that’s another story for another time), but she had a good message. The one that really stuck with me was “BE RELEVANT!”
I was reminded of being relevant during last week’s church message in which we discussed the value of relevance and effectiveness.
Of course, we can’t talk about relevance or effectiveness without talking about how relevant GOD is. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, relevant means having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand. In a word, relevant means applicable.
So, the question then is this, is God’s message still RELEVANT today? Consider the following statements:
- The stories in the Bible are moral and historical lessons we can learn from but that’s about it.
- Considering how long ago the Bible was written…and how it was written by being passed down (or even mandated by kings), how do we know if any of it is true?
- Things were different back then – how am I supposed to apply any of that to my circumstances today?
Have you heard any of those types of statements before? I have personally thought them over the years as I’ve debated my own faith, and I know there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people that question God’s existence, God’s relevancy and God’s effectiveness given our circumstances today.
Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
Was Jesus relevant to to us when he walked the earth teaching and healing people? Absolutely…and he’s just as relevant today. In fact, God has a way of making his message relevant to the times – whether it’s a burning bush, a natural disaster, a miracle birth or shared from one blogger to another. God uses whatever is relevant to communicate his message so that he is not only incredibly relevant but he is incredibly effective…he is not afraid to shake things up or afraid to be cutting edge.
Speaking of cutting edge, I actually think that it is the church that sometimes struggles to spread the word in a fresh and relevant way. I think it goes back to what I talked about last week (Contagious!) with regard to the image of the church…and the perception of Christians. Following last week’s post, a friend (thanks Pam) recommended that I read the book UN-Christian by David Kinnaman. It arrived in the mail this morning, so I’m going to dive a little deeper into “what a new generation really things about Christianity…and why it matters.”
So, as I start reading, I challenge you to think about the ways GOD has been relevant in your life. Do you live your life in a way that brings relevancy to the word…and are you sharing it?
