How comfortable are we?

First i wanted to say that i was encouraged to right this by my friend Jenn Lyle, who is currently in the big New Zealand now, which is cool, the next coolest people i know from that country are a band called flight of the conchords ..... The conversation that led to this was the topic of honestly. I feel that the hardest times to be honest is obviously when it might hurt someone or offend someone or make them uncomfortable, so a lot of times i find myself beating around the bush in order to get some hard truth there. This has become a struggle for me as i continue my march towards the ministry. I had to confront one of my closest comrades the other day about a struggle i saw him having and i tell you nothing breaks my heart more then having to do that, i wish that everything was all sunshine and happy, however it is a war of sorts. A war that we can not just watch it go by, we have to say something about the sin in our lives, which includes my own as well. I feel that on sundays especially we as ministers are going away from the challenging and uncomfortable material that is in the bible. I think this has to do with people nowadays being more and more sensitive as well as us being a post modern culture where we refuse to believe in absolutes. By this i mean that it is hard for us to hear a pastor saying that Christ is the ONLY way or that this or that activity is a SIN no matter what. Those are hard for people to here and we would rather not make it hard on people. Yet we have to, we must challenge people an call us out on our sins or we will never become the type of people Christ wants us to me. The material is sometimes challenging and uncomfortable but we cant hide from it, we also however can not just say things in uncaring manners. There was a time in the early church (around the 1700's) were pastors like Jonathon Edwards and George Whitefield were into preaching about "Fire and Brimstone" scaring people into salvation, threatening them with hell. WE have to be careful as people to do everything in a loving way, calling someone a sinner (which is what we all are) is not the easiest thing to hear. So even though we want to be honest we can do it in a relational way in a way that people will respond positively and listen with a heart willing to change, this comes with accessing the audience and making appropriate claims with how we talk. In any means the truth of Jesus must be talked about, sometimes it will not be comfortable or easy, but it will always be truth.

enjoy.
arod