The Goodnews IS.....

"Christians tend to think that people don’t become Christians because they aren’t willing to give up the bad things in their lives. But I think the real reason that people don’t become Christians is that it’s just too good to be true. We can’t trust things that are too good to be true. It makes us anxious. We find ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the too-good-to-be-true thing to disappear. Or it might feel like we haven’t really heard the punch line yet. People are waiting for the “but” that comes after “God loves you.” They know it is there.

When I was on the staff of a local church, people would hear that it was a safe place. They would come hear ... the sermon, and they would sit there and cry because it sounded too good to be true. Some people would look ahead in the biblical text from which the pastor was preaching to find the “but.” This sounds good, but wait until he gets down here to this part. Then the other shoe will drop. People anticipate that the rest of the story will be Bad News. It couldn’t be just Good News. That would be so totally foreign to what I have experienced in life so far. But that is exactly what the Good News is"

- Jeff VanVonderen