Most of us know the feeling of reading something online and having a reaction rise up before we've even finished the sentence. The culture celebrates something we know doesn't line up with God's heart, and we're angry about it. That reaction isn't always wrong. But anger on its own has never brought anyone home.
Pastor Kap Chatfield's message from Ezekiel 2 and 3 pointed at something harder. God handed Ezekiel a message for people who had already made up their minds, and sent him anyway. The assignment was never to win the argument. It was to be faithful enough to tell them.
Eat the Scroll
Before Ezekiel said anything to anyone, God told him to eat the scroll. Ezekiel 3 says it tasted as sweet as honey.
That picture matters. God wasn't asking him to pass along information he hadn't absorbed himself. The message had to go into him before it could come out of him, and God's instruction in verse 10 was to let the words sink deep into his own heart first and listen to them carefully for himself.
We tend to skip that part. We want to have something ready when a conversation comes up, but we haven't spent any time letting the answer do its work on us. Questions about marriage, identity, suffering, or what happens after we die deserve more than something we half-remember from a podcast.
This isn't a call to have everything settled before you open your mouth. It's a call to do the work of knowing what you believe and why you believe it. Pastor Kap put it plainly: "You can't feed others what you haven't tasted."
The place to start is usually simpler than we expect. Open your Bible. Write down the question you can't answer yet. Bring it to your Group and work through it with people who want the same thing you do.
Go to the People
Knowing what we believe is only half of the assignment. Ezekiel still had to go.
That's the uncomfortable part, because the hardest room is rarely a room full of strangers. It's the dinner table. It's the people who remember who we used to be, whose opinion of us we can feel in the back of our minds before we say a word.
Following Jesus has always meant moving toward people anyway.
It's usually smaller than we picture, too. It can be answering a question honestly instead of changing the subject. It can be saying out loud what God has done in your life this year. It can be opening Scripture with your family on a weeknight, even if the first few times feel awkward.
You don't need to be impressive.
The man Jesus healed in John 9 couldn't answer a single question the religious leaders put to him. All he knew was what had happened. He had been blind, and now he could see. That was enough, and your story is enough too. You can tell someone who you were, what Jesus has done, and who you're becoming because of Him.
Don't Be Afraid
Fear is what keeps most of us quiet. Not doubt. Fear of being misunderstood, or dismissed, or quietly filed away as the religious one at work.
But rejection and failure are not the same thing. Faithfulness means telling the truth in love and leaving the response to God.
Pastor Kap knows that from the other side of it. Before he followed Jesus, people were willing to tell him things he didn't want to hear, and one of those conversations turned into weeks of questions about faith. When he was finally asked whether he wanted to give his life to Jesus, he said no.
The conversations stayed with him anyway.
On March 11, 2013, driving to the gym by himself, he surrendered his life to Jesus. He described it simply: "I went into that car one way. I came out of that car completely new." None of the people who spoke truth into his life got to decide when that would happen. Their part was to be faithful. God handled the rest.
Truth and Love Belong Together
We don't have to choose between standing on what's true and keeping a soft heart toward people. The harder and better assignment is both at the same time.
The goal was never to prove anyone wrong. It's to point them toward the One who is right, and that starts with letting God's Word do its work in us before we try to hand it to anyone else. Then we move toward people instead of staying inside the circles where everyone already agrees. And when fear shows up, we remember that the outcome was never ours to manage.
Think of one person who doesn't really know what your faith means to you. You don't need a plan or a script. Pray for them this week, stay awake to the opening when it comes, and be willing to say something when it does.
Eat the Word. Go to the people. Don't be afraid. Then trust God with the rest.
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