Embracing Faith: Questions, Listening, and God's Presence

What if God is not mainly concerned with you giving the right answer to questions? What if God wants to meet you in your questions? There is a unique presentation of the Gospel based on this idea, and it's changing the world today. [00:00:00]

You can do life today anyway—you can do it with God, you can do it without God, and it's better to do it with God. I am thrilled to be able to talk and for us to be able to learn today from the man who has maybe watched more people look for God and discover how to walk with God than anybody in our generation. [00:00:45]

I realized, although perhaps I wouldn't have put it like this at the time, that the greatest injustice in the world is for people never to have heard about Jesus, and the greatest act of love is to introduce someone to Jesus. So from that moment onwards, I wanted to communicate my faith. [00:06:10]

Alpha is not about us sharing our faith with people outside the church; it's about providing a space where people can explore and find their own faith. In that sense, having people who are Christians who are very keen to share their own faith can be very off-putting for people outside the church. [00:13:48]

In the heart of every individual is a deep well, and the wise person draws it out. That's what you're doing on your podcast; you're trying to draw out from everyone you interview what's in there—the deep well that is in not in my heart but in all the other people that you interview. [00:14:19]

We connect with people through our vulnerabilities. When we say, actually, we've had a tough life, it hasn't all worked out, I've made many mistakes, you get these unbelievable connections in the small group between the people because of the humanity. It's the humanity that we're actually—we're all, none of us are perfect. [00:17:47]

I think all of us are on that journey, whether you're not, whether you're Christian, whether you're not. We share this desire to learn more, to grow in our relationships, our human relationships, grow in our relationship with God. There's something so powerful in that approach where it's not divisive. [00:19:11]

We can give them absolutely the right answer, and you can have evangelized them, but you'll never see them again. Whereas if you listen, they'll come back. If you're genuinely interested in them and listen to them, they'll come back. So, you know, we said to people, if when say who is Jesus, if someone says, well, I don't think Jesus ever existed, they just say how interesting. [00:21:03]

The Apostle Peter says always be ready to give an answer, but do it with gentleness and respect. So respect for every human being. What we find is in that atmosphere, people after a bit relax, and they open up, and they come back because actually people love being in an atmosphere because in the workplace, often people are not really respected or encouraged or loved. [00:23:10]

I first encountered Jesus through reading the New Testament, and it was almost 50 years ago. It'll be 50 years in February. For me, and I know this is not true for everyone, some people say, you know, I encountered Jesus through the sacrament, some people say I encounter Jesus and my wife Pippa would say the main way she encounters Jesus is worship. [00:25:09]

I do this, the Bible in one year, and every day, I have pretty much—I don't think I can't think of a day in my Christian life when I haven't started the day. I don't do it because I feel I should. I do it for the same reason I have breakfast. I'm hungry. I'm just, you know, I have breakfast not because it's a sort of, I feel this is a, I've done so well, well done, you've had breakfast. [00:26:09]

The more I go on in life, the more I think I don't know very much. I know Jesus lived, I know Jesus died for me, I know he was resurrected, but there's so many things I did. People ask me questions about you. Somebody asked me, do my friends at the serpentine, they're all, you know, most of them are not like church girls. [00:30:21]