I love getting emails like the one below. It's from a dear sister in Christ with whom I am church planting. Her honesty is refreshingly challenging. I blog it here to provoke you to be as earnest...


So often I want people to think 'oh she's a nice person' so that in some screwed up theological sense they might link that to Christianity and maybe give it a thought, but that's SO wrong. I know it is, so why do I keep on doing it?!? To truly love my friends, is to give them the gospel - to live it out and to not shy away from speaking it boldly, faithfully and COMPLETELY into their lives - not selecting the nice bits, about peace and comfort and love, but magnifying them and making them even more astonishing by proclaiming them hand in hand with the 'akward bits' - the judgement, sin and hell bits. Please pray that I'd do that more and more. I guess the more the gospel penetrates every part of our lives, the more it grips us and enthralls us and delights us and provokes us to love God more and our sinful selves less, the more the reality of heaven and hell and the eternity of our friends will move us to action, to speak the truth in love, but to speak it faithfully, as ambassadors of Christ, for HIS fame and HIS glory and not for OUR reputation and ego. I fail with this every day, so please pray that I, and all of us, would be passionate, zealous gospel ministers, creative in hospitality and love, but with hearts that seek to serve God and draw people to HIM and not to us.