Episode 14a -- Gospel Fluency with Jeff Vanderstelt | Part 1

Having gospel conversations with people can often feel awkward. Why is that? Isn't this the greatest news ever!? Shouldn't we be excited to share the good news of Jesus Christ? Well...yes. We should be excited about that! And most of us know that. But that still doesn't negate the fact that, for most of us, sharing the gospel with people is hard. It feels awkward. And it often times feels forced. So what do we do about that? How do we make these conversations feel more natural, rather than forced? Well...one thing that might help is learning how to speak the gospel over every aspect of our lives. In this video, Josh and Ryan speak with Jeff Vanderstelt about his book, Gospel Fluency. In this brief (but AWESOME) book, Jeff argues that sharing the gospel often feels awkward for us because we haven't learned to speak the gospel into the everyday stuff of life - we haven't learned how to apply the good news to EVERY aspect of our lives. So in order to become more confident sharing the gospel with others, we first need to learn how to speak the gospel over ourselves (in other words, we need to develop fluency). In short, we need to constantly (daily) stir up our affections for Jesus. And we need to help other believers stir up their affections for Jesus. The more we do this for ourselves and for others, the more natural all of this (speaking/sharing the gospel) will become. —— Interested in learning more about Gospel Fluency? Check out Jeff's book below. This book, along with the workbook, has been instrumental for several of us in the SFC network: Gospel Fluency: Speaking the Truths of Jesus into the Everyday Stuff of Life https://www.crossway.org/books/gospel... —— We all would like to be "well-versed" in the gospel. We all would like for these gospel truths to just flow out of us. But, for many of us, that just feels difficult. As Jeff noted in this episode, developing gospel fluency takes practice. You need to practice speaking these truths over yourself (in any/every situation), and you need to surround yourself with people who love Jesus and want to talk about Him. In short, practice makes better. Does this concept of "gospel fluency" make sense to you? Did hearing the examples Jeff gave, of how to apply these gospel truths to the everyday stuff of life, make this a little more clear (make this more tangible/practical)? How can you go about developing gospel fluency? What "practices" and/or "rhythms" could you begin implementing this week? Let us know what you think in the COMMENTS BELOW.