Apatheism in our culture

Four Factors

• Belief in God is contestable
• Belief in God is diverse
• Status of life is comfortable
• Status of life is distracted

Apatheism in our church

The Church in Ephesus…

•Cannot tolerate evil people
•Has a high view of Scripture and no patience for false teaching
•Has forgotten its “first love” and forgotten the early days of faith

The Church in Laodicea…

•Is rich and self-sufficient
•Doesn’t believe that God is needed
•Has a very incorrect view of itself

Apatheism in ourselves

Two considerations…

1) Do we belong to Jesus?

2) Have we forgotten our joy?

“We sing the right lyrics, articulate all the right theological and biblical positions, but our attitudes don't match the glory of the truths we communicate. We can talk all day long about how God created and sustains us, that he is good, faithful, and able to love us sinners. We can explain how he pardons our sins through the greatest sacrifice of love, the death of his Son, and that by faith in his life, death, and resurrection, we are liberated from the penalty and power of sin. We can describe how the Holy Spirit indwells us to reshape us in a mold of virtue, righteousness, and holiness. We can explain that God has vowed to resurrect us into a perfect, forever life, so that we live in a state of hopeful expectation sustained by confidence in God's promise for deliverance at Christ's future return.
But how effective is our witness if we share the gospel as if we're describing IRS tax code? If we aren’t underlining the gospel with joy, aren't we undermining it? Doesn't the way we share the gospel communicate something about it? After all, if these things we believe are true, we should be filled with an unconquerable, imperishable joy. That joy should permeate all aspects of our lives, even amid sorrow, grief, and suffering (John 16:22). So, shouldn't joy fuel our evangelism, showing apatheists that God is far from irrelevant, instead of us just telling them so?...
The kingdom of God expanded through the joy-filled lives of Christians, and today is no different. Joy ought to season our lives and propel us to the lost. Of all the apologetic arguments we can make, none are better than the life of a joy-filled believer. Faith in action, ignited by joy, is a credible display of the gospel. The way we live says a lot about what we believe and how we feel about those beliefs. If the gospel is the message, then we are the medium. So, when it comes to evangelism, the medium must match the message…
When we have a joyless witness in an apathetic culture, the impression we give is that our faith isn't all that important. Even before we’ve said ‘hello,’ we've reinforced our neighbors suspicion that belief in God doesn’t satisfy any more or less than anything they've already experienced.”

(Apatheism, Kyle Breshears, pg 62-63)

So What Can We Do?

1) Examine Yourself
2) Examine Your Church
3) Examine Your Relationships