The Answer to the Question

Do you know why you believe what you believe? If someone were to ask you today what you believe, could you tell them why you believe it? Answering, “this is what the church says, so I believe it” isn’t a good answer.” So what's a good answer? Peter the Disciple speaks to this, and that is what we are going to talk about on this Episode of the Grafted Podcast, The answer to the question. 

Changes

How’s it going, everyone! Thanks for tuning in. Before we dive into this episode, I wanted to share some quick updates with you. I’ll be making some changes as the needs arise to help make this podcast better. 

• I have started a new Facebook group for our podcast called The Grafted Podcast. This is to help create a community that we can grow in our faith and learn together. www.facebook.com/groups/thegraftedpodcast

• You can also follow us on Twitter @thegraftedpod.

• Of course, you can also follow along on our website showingtheworld.com/podcast

We will begin a new study in the Book of Romans that will start with the next episode. The Book of Romans is full of rich teaching to help us grow in our faith. I will also be intermingling other topics and studies as they come up to help break up the study a little. 

Missions

A few people have asked if we are still Missionaries, Yes we are. As soon as we raise our full budget we will return to our ministry in Spain. As of this episode, we still need to raise $3200 in monthly financial support and $5000 in our cash budget before we can go back to Spain. If you would like to become a ministry partner that helps sustain our ministry through a one-time gift or a recurring monthly pledge, please go to our website showingtheworld.com/donate-now and click the Donate button to find out how you can become a ministry partner. 

Study

Let's get into the topic of this episode: The Answer to the Question. We are going to be looking at Peter's first letter.

Background of the verse: 

Peter wrote this letter to the believers who were in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. Peter refers to these believers as “Exiles of the Depression” to remind them that, as Christians, they live in a world that is hostile towards Jesus. This was his way of letting them know that they needed to expect opposition and persecution because of their faith. This letter was Peter's way of encouraging them about their eternal inheritance, and the purpose of their earthly lives. 

Today I want to zero in on 1 Peter 3:15. This verse picks upright in the middle of Peter speaking about “Suffering for  the sake of Righteousness.” He talks about not repaying evil for evil, and instead of blessing those who do evil toward you. He mentions that if you want to love life and see good days, to turn away from doing evil, and instead seek peace. 

Verse

1 Peter 3:15 says, “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,”

There are two parts to this verse. 

Put Christ as Lord of your Life

During the time of Peter's writings, because of the persecution of Christians, some people practiced Christianity at home but lived contrary to their faith in the public's eye. This happened so they wouldn’t have to deal with the persecution. Peter spoke against this practice. He taught them to live out their faith by doing good, turning away from evil, and seeking peace. They were not supposed to be afraid of people who came against them, but instead, they needed to focus on Jesus. 

Peter said in verses 13 & 14, “Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled,” This is where verse 15 pick up and the point we just spoke about, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy,” When believers set Jesus as Lord over their lives, seeing Him as being holy and in their hearts, they know that He is in control as the true reigning  King and that eventually, everyone will answer to Him. 

Prepare your answer

Now, this is where I really want to focus the majority of our time. It is the second part of vs 15, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you;” 

When Peter says to “be prepared to make a defense…” he is talking about having an answer to defend your faith. This is defending a personal faith, not defending Jesus. After all, Jesus has already conquered sin, death, Hell, and the grave. He doesn’t need anyone to defend him, what he wants is for believers to defend themselves through being able to give an answer to why we have faith in him. Christians need to give a reasonable account about why we believe what we believe. This doesn’t mean saying something like, “I believe it because the Church believes it.” That's a copout that really doesn’t help and actually turns people away from the possibility of believing. 

Faith is believing on evidence. Hebrews 11 is a full chapter that is devoted to “faith.” Verse one starts off by saying, “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.” This chapter gives 15 examples of how people in the Old Testament earned a good reputation through their faith in God and teaches about how Christians should have that same kind of faith. 

I don’t believe that the people that Peter was talking to were eyewitnesses to the life of Christ. They were not like the 12 Disciples who were there. Instead, they were people who heard about what happened and decided for themselves to follow Christ. Some of them may have been some of the 3000 who accepted Jesus in Jerusalem when Peter preached his first message. Many of these people weren’t there and came to faith through the preaching and teaching of others. This means that they had to have faith in something that they had not personally witnessed. Instead, they believed because of the witness of others, and the evidence that was known through the public event of Jesus' crucifixion. 

Peter called every believer to have an active faith, and to be ready to speak out or give an answer for their Hope. Many times this defense was needed when believers would be arrested for their faith to be put on trial. Because believers were promoting good and pursuing peace, the only thing that unbelievers could charge them with was the “Hope” they had. These believers had to be ready to give a reason for their Hope. We can see the type of trial that some of these believers went through in the book of Acts. Specifically, when Paul was put on trial in chapters 22, 24, and 26. When Paul was arrested, there was no reason that they could find other than the Hope that he had. He gave an answer to the people, governor Felix, caesar, and King Agrippa. Each time he shared his answer he spoke about his life before Christ, his encounter with Christ, and his life after Christ, which leads to the hope he had. 

This is what Peter was talking about in this verse. Being ready to always give an answer. Today around the world, there are many places where Christians are persecuted, put on trial, and forced to give an answer. Sometimes this leads to imprisonment, it may lead to torture, and other times it leads to death. I have a friend who is from Iran, and she was arrested, thrown in jail, and tortured for her faith in Christ and for distributing Christian materials to churches in Iran. She had to give an account for her faith in Jesus to the Iranian government which is Muslim. 

At the same time, there are many places around the world that these extremes don’t happen. But people still face hardships at work, school, and other places because of their faith. For a lot of Westerners, this could mean unwanted reputations or biases that can lead to social consequences such as loss of jobs and relationships. The God’s Not Dead films are great examples of this. They are dramatizations based on real-life events. Even in “Safe” areas of the world, Christians must be able to give a reason why they believe what they believe. And saying “I believe because the church believes this” isn’t a good answer. 

But what is the answer?

But what is the answer? Peter gives the gist of the basic answer in 1 Peter 3:18 “Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.” The reason Jesus came was to give his life as a ransom, as a sacrifice, which paid our debt for our defiance towards God. 

The Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:3-4, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Both verses are good examples of giving an answer. But, people tend to want to know more. People love hearing stories, especially true stories, and they want to know about how having faith and hope in Jesus has affected the life of the believer. Your testimony belongs to you, no one can argue with what happened to you, like they might with the bible or theologies. This is your story, and you are the expert on your story. This should give us the confidence to share it.

It’s important to know that believers don’t have to be apologists or theologians to give an answer. Christians must simply know why they have faith. This is where a testimony comes in as part of giving the answer. A testimony is a believer's declaration of what Christ has done for them. This definition comes from my friends and evangelism mentors, Jacob Bock and Kevin Prevost, at On The Red Box. On The Red Box is an evangelism training facility based in Madrid Spain with training centers all over the world. Part of their evangelism training is helping Christians write out their testimony to share the way Paul shared his testimony in the book of Acts. 

Testimonies can be as short or as long as they need to be. This is based on each situation that a testimony may be shared in. Jacob and Kevin teach how to share your testimony in 5 minutes or less for street evangelism, but there are other scenarios where a testimony maybe 30 minutes long. I have my story where I can share it in a time frame of 3 minutes up to a 30+ minute. The amount of time it takes and the exact details I share are based on the situation I’m sharing it in. There are times where its short and to the point where I am vague about my story when I am doing street evangelism, and there are other times where I share detailed parts of my story as they necessary to the person or group I’m speaking to.

My Story

To give an example, I want to share my testimony with you. 

I grew up broken. I was the weird fat kid that very few people wanted to be friends with. The year I turned 7, was the year that broke me. This was the year that both my parents were working all the time, my baby brother was born and seemed like he was getting all the attention, I had an extremely abusive babysitter, and I was diagnosed with one of the worst cases of dyslexia that the state of Oklahoma had seen up to that point. All of this happened in the same year. I remember sitting outside the conference room door where the School board told my mom, “He won't amount to anything. He’ll end up dropping out of school before he turns 16 to become a grease monkey somewhere.” Because of dyslexia, I had to go to special ed and LAB classes. In reality, these classes, just got me bullied and made fun of. All of these things drove me into a life of hate, anger, and distrust. I was truly broken, and an outcast. I ended up turning to art and looking at things that I should not have been looking at as a way to cope with everything that was broken.

Thankfully, my parents refused to believe what the school board said, and they pushed me in school. Even with me kicking and screaming at times. I ended up graduating from high school, still not really being able to read. But graduating high school wasn’t good enough, they wanted me to go to college. With all of my horrible testing scores, I ended up at OSU Tech where I was able to study Graphic Design. This was mainly a project-based program. Even with that, there was still a fair amount of reading and tests, so I had to go to disability services to have them read everything to me. Talk about embarrassing. 

My freshman year at college, I was invited to go to a back-to-school party at the beginning of the year. So I went, thinking it was going to be a typical “College” party. You know, the kind you hear about in High School and see on tv. But it wasn’t. Talk about bait and switch. It was the Campus ministry party. There was food, games, and a sermon! YUCK! I wanted to leave and never return. On my way out of the door that night, there was a group of guys playing video games in the front room of the ministry center, they invited me to stay and play games. We ended up playing those games until 3 in the morning. This led me into relationships with people who started showing me what being a Christian was all about. They actually accepted me for who I was… a broken mess of a person. I started going to church with them and got involved with the campus ministry. At the end of freshman year, the campus ministry invited me to go to a campus ministry leadership retreat. I guess I had put on a good enough show for them that they thought I was a Christian. So I went. 

At this retreat, I saw all of these Christians come together to worship God and learn how to serve him better. I remember thinking, “if they only knew how broken I am they wouldn’t have let me come to this.” On the last night of the retreat, I was in a service with hundreds of other college students. A worship leader by the name of Dennis Jernigan shared his testimony. I thought it was interesting because his situation was really similar to mine. He too grew up as a broken mess. It was then that I realized that maybe there actually is something to Christianity, and I couldn’t be good enough to go to heaven on my own.

While everyone was worshiping, I just stood there watching. Then I heard someone say my name. So I looked around, and everyone was worshiping. Again I heard my name, this time I thought one of my friends was messing with me, but they weren't, they were all worshiping. Finally, I heard my name a third time. But this time was different. I heard my name so loudly that it pierced my ears and hit my heart and I heard the voice of God. He said, “Adam, it's time. Get off the bandwagon and come follow me. And I will make you a fisher of men.” I knew then that God didn’t care how broken I was, he just wanted me to say “Yes” to Jesus and follow him. On August 4th, 2004, I gave my life to Jesus believing in him as my Lord God and Savior. 

Almost immediately I started noticing changes in my life, the way I acted, the way I talked, and the way I learned. On May 31st, 2004, I was baptized, and then it was like a light switch was flipped in my brain. God had opened my mind to where I could read and understand the Bible without any help! And by the time my sophomore year rolled around, God continued to heal my mind where I could read all my books, and take all the tests by myself. I no longer had to go to disability services. 

A month later, in June, I found myself in Springfield Missouri attending another college ministry retreat. This time with a changed heart and mind. At this retreat, I felt God calling me to use my talents for ministry.

I ended up finishing my first degree in Graphic Design. And going off to another college to work on a photography degree. It was there on Valentine’s day of 2007 that God filled me with his Holy Spirit and spoke to me again at another college ministry retreat. This time God said, “Go talk to the pastor about where he went to college.” So I did. When the pastor mentioned Central Bible College, God said “that’s where you need to be.” So I left Photography school and moved to Springfield Missouri where I earned a degree in pastoral ministry and the Bible. 

Today, I am a Spirit-filled believer in Christ. Jesus took the brokenness of my life and turned me into a new creation, healed me, and changed my heart. Now I have 2 different degrees, I’m looking to start a master’s degree in the next few years, and am serving as a full-time general appointed Assemblies of God World Missionary who works and teaches at a Christian University. 

Has my life been perfect since accepting Jesus…no. I have still faced many challenges in life since then. But, my life has been radically changed because of faith in Jesus. 

Peter teaches us to always be ready to give an answer to the question. Paul is our example of how to do this by using our own story to share the Gospel.

Assignment

How are you going to answer the question?

1. Take some time to write out your testimony:

   1. What was your life like before Jesus?

   2. How did you encounter Jesus?

   3. How has Jesus changed your life?

2. Over the next week, look for ways to share your testimony:

   1. Who are 3 people you can share it with?

   2. Practice sharing your testimony with yourself in the mirror, or with a friend

   3. What are some creative ways to share your testimony?

   4. If you're willing, share a 3 minute or less video testimony on our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/thegraftedpodcast. 

3. For more resources on sharing your story, go to www.OnTheRedBox.com and check out their free online evangelism training.