00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 50 two of the inspired Stewardship podcast. I'm Julie. Tough alone. I challenge you to invest in yourself and others. Develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, talent and treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to communicate and build relationships is vital. And one inspirational way to develop that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mater not promising easy time. We're not promised an easy life, were just promised the ability and the time and the chance toe live out a life to live out a life in faith,
00:00:56 to live out a life with God at the center and put ourselves to one side and think of ourselves not as less but to think of ourselves less often. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired Searchie podcast will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact it had a spiritual foundation episode about impacting the world.
00:01:42 I talk with you about why the term living the Gospel is a contradiction and still an awesome thing. Why,
00:01:50 instead of living the gospel, it's about having ah, gospel at the center of your life and how this expression needs to beam or than just about doing good.
00:02:02 You know, people will often talk about living the gospel. There's a famous quote that says, Preach the gospel at all times that,
00:02:12 if necessary, use words. Or sometimes you'll hear it say, if win necessary, use words or where necessary,
00:02:20 use words. And it's usually attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, who was a very famous early Christian friar.
00:02:31 The problem is that, as best we can tell, he never actually said that, and in this idea of living out the gospel of showing the gospel with your words and your actions and never talking about what you believe or what the gospel means to you or your own testimony or any of the other things about the message of the Bible is something that a lot of people will say today and the truth is,
00:03:02 living out the gospel is both at one sense a great and awesome thing and in another sense, a complete misunderstanding of what that means.
00:03:12 You're the gospel means the good news and spreading the good news. It is inherently a verbal event, and yet at the same time,
00:03:22 if all we ever do is talk about things and never live them out well, that certainly is not sufficient either.
00:03:31 We often try toe to talk about these things as if they're in either, or we can either spread the gospel with our words,
00:03:38 or we can spread the gospel with our deeds. But the truth is, it's another one of those cases where both of these are true.
00:03:48 Both of these are things that we are supposed to do. We are supposed toe walk the walk and actually do the things that we say.
00:03:58 Toe others is important to us. People should be able to see in our actions the actions of Christ.
00:04:07 But the truth is, they also should be able to hear it in the things that we say. Often,
00:04:12 doing the deeds is a way to invite the conversation that allows you to then use the words. The truth is that I think in the real world these these sorts of expressions,
00:04:27 what they're trying to get at is the idea of putting the gospel at the center of your life toe act out in the things you say and the things you do.
00:04:38 What you believe and that I agree, is a key and important principle. But oftentimes what happens instead is people will say,
00:04:48 Well, I live the gospel. Therefore, I don't have to talk about it. Therefore I don't have to share.
00:04:55 And what's more, they often really don't mean they live out the gospel. They simply mean they do good things for other people and don't get me wrong.
00:05:03 Doing good things for other people is awesome, and often it's, ah, large part of living out the gospel.
00:05:10 It's a large part of doing the things that you're called to do is a Christian. But doing good is not enough.
00:05:18 You also have to know why you're doing it. You have toe put that message at the center of your life,
00:05:24 and this is something that I've struggled with a lot over the years, how to balance trying to help others trying to do good and also putting my Christian beliefs at the center of my life.
00:05:38 And I'll tell you the truth, I don't always get it right. In fact, I often get it very,
00:05:42 very wrong. There were times that I don't help others when I really should have. And then there are other times where I'm so worried about helping others for what really boils down to selfish reasons that I'd really am not walking the walk and living out a good example of the Christian life.
00:06:01 In both of those cases, it's wrong. And there are other times that I used the excuse of the work that I do as a reason to not talk about the gospel that I live in.
00:06:11 A talk about what I believe. It's one reason that in this podcast, I really work to include messages that make it clear that this is what I believe,
00:06:23 because I think it's important to share in words as well as in deeds what we believe. So the next time you hear someone saying or you say yourself,
00:06:34 Hey, I'm living out the gospel, take a step back and think about what you really mean by that?
00:06:39 Are you simply talking about doing good deeds or you simply talking about helping other people? Well, then call it that.
00:06:46 Call it. I'm helpful. Call it. I serve. Others call it. I helped take care of others any of those things and you can even say And the reason I feel called to do that is because of my faith,
00:06:59 because of my belief, because of the way I look at the world because of how I was raised as a Christian.
00:07:07 And in fact, saying that out loud is a little bit more valuable in terms of starting a conversation about what does that mean?
00:07:15 Why as a Christian, are you doing those things? Why are you not taking the easy path? But you're doing something that's a little harder because,
00:07:24 you know, I think a lot of times as Christians, we missed a canned think that were promised an easy road,
00:07:31 and we're not We're not promised an easy time. We're not promised an easy life. We're just promised the ability and the time and the chance toe live out a life toe,
00:07:44 live out a life and faith toe, live out a life with God at the center and to put ourselves toe one side and think of ourselves not as less but to think of ourselves less often.
00:07:59 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:08:11 we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:08:22 If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Go overto facebook dot com slash inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there until next time investor time,
00:08:51 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world