Glory through weakness: 2 Corinthians 4

Well, we are coming off two weeks of heightened mission where we tried to share the good news of Jesus with lots of people at UNSW.

And you might be here today because you heard about Jesus in the last couple of weeks and you'd like to hear more, and that's fantastic.

We're so glad you're here, and we hope that you, uh, what you hear about Jesus will be as life-changing for you as it has been for us.

But you might not have had such a positive experience of mission.

Maybe you invited some friends and they all said no.

Perhaps you went out on a limb to speak to someone about Jesus and they were not interested.

Or maybe even worse, they were grumpy with you for bringing it up.

Maybe you invited a friend to come along to the Bible talks, and they, they might have laughed at you because the Bible is the last thing that they want to listen to.

Should we have done mission differently? Should we have found more persuasive speakers with more Instagram followers? Would that have made a difference? Uh, should we have put on a Christian band instead of a boring Bible talk? Should we have added incentives so that people might have been more interested in coming along? Free drinks? Free lunch? Free pony rides? Should we, uh, should you have made the invitation sound more interesting? "The speaker used to be a rock star.

No, no, no, he used to be a professional athlete." All right.

You know, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? Uh, should you have done that? Would it have got more people listening to the Bo- the gospel? Or should you have added your own incentives? "Yes, I'll tutor you in physics if you come along to the Bible talk.

Yes, I'll pick you up and drive you to uni if you just come to this talk." How do we not lose heart when people show no interest in Jesus? How do we keep persevering in evangelism after we get knock-backs and rejection? How do we keep doing good gospel ministry when it sometimes feels as though good gospel ministry doesn't always get earth-shattering results? In, uh, this Bible passage that we're looking at today, the Apostle Paul has a lot to teach us about good gospel ministry, about the suffering and the setbacks that accompany good gospel ministry, about the God who works powerfully through good gospel ministry, and about how to keep persevering in good gospel ministry, even when we don't see as many positive responses as we might like.

It's gonna be a good passage for us to dig into this week after mission.