“I Don’t Want to Hear Your Good News!”

Posted on by Chris G Thelen

Imagine if you just heard that you won the Nobel Prize in Literature. You immediately share this good news with friends and family, but they respond: “Oh that isn’t true. That doesn’t really exist. You just want to convert me so someday I’ll get a Noble Prize too.” Imagine the heartbreak when no one believes you won the award. You have no one to share and celebrate the good news.

This is how I feel when I try to share my faith in Jesus with some people in my life. When you have good news you want to share it with others — celebrate it — but you can’t if they don’t want to hear it or reject it. My heart aches because they don’t want any part it.

My faith in Christ is such a large part of my life, yet I cannot share it with so many people I know. It’s not that they don’t know I am a Christian (or religious as some describe me), it’s more that I can’t share the joy, the reassurance I get with having Jesus in my life. They seem more intent on debating than accepting Jesus.

Some might describe my sharing Christ as trying to convert them to Christianity, but I would say that John captured my real intent. He wrote in 1 John 1:3: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ (NIV).” I want them to share the fellowship with other believers in Jesus. I want them to know intimacy with God. I want them to know the peace that comes from knowing Christ.

So it is with the joy of the Lord Jesus. Until those in our life accept Christ and follow him, they cannot share the joy with us; cannot share our experience in walking with Jesus each day. There is something missing in our ability to connect with them. John described this in 1 John 1:4: “We write this to make our joy complete.” My joy is incomplete when I can’t share with them the good news in my life. It’s like having the Nobel Prize in Literature and no one to share the excitement and joy.

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep. – Luke 15:3-6

© 2019 CGThelen

16 thoughts on ““I Don’t Want to Hear Your Good News!””

  2. Thank you for sharing this. Yes, it is disheartening when we want to share Christ with people and they don’t want to hear it. It is even of greater sadness, though, when those who profess faith in Jesus Christ don’t want to hear about him or talk about him unless it is in a religious setting.

    So many who profess faith in Jesus Christ, when they gather together, talk just like the world does about the same things the world does and Jesus is not even in their thoughts let alone on their tongues. And, if you try to engage them in conversation about Jesus they feel uncomfortable with the subject. And, that is very sad indeed, but it a sign of the times in which we now live.

    So, we need to pray for the church to be revived.

    1. To me, the resistance to Jesus is evidence that Satan is at work twisting the good news of Jesus. Everyone has a set of beliefs they express, yet why is Christianity so often slandered? Thanks for the comment. May we continue to pray for changes hearts.

      1. Christianity is often slandered because Satan is at work, as you say, and Christ is who Satan is against, and he is against his gospel, and his followers.

  3. I understand this well…and we must guard our hearts lest these people suck our joy out of us. There’s just no way to connect, no common ground. I’ve always been called “religious”, as though it’s a disease. And I tried explaining that I’m not striving to convert, just wanting to show them the Joy of JESUS–and that God is happy, not angry…but they’re not interested. That’s why the blogs are so useful…we can connect with those who know what we know. May the Lord bless you so Abundantly today!! 🙂 ❤

        1. I pray you will be encouraged by other believers in Jesus. May you find strength in God and a desire to fulfill his purpose for your life. May you see yourself as an image bearer of God, uniquely created for his purpose. May the peace of the Lord fill you to overflowing.

  4. People gladly share joy in experiences they understand and can relate to. Without eyes opened and a heart quickened, they cannot comprehend. 😕 God calls us to be His witnesses; we are called to be obedient. We are His tools, but He is the Master Gardener, planting and reaping.

  6. I agree that there is a special level of pain in my spirit when those closest to me will hear nothing of the Good News. Because I love them deeply, the cost of their rejection of Christ shakes me to the core. And as much as I love them, God loves them infinitely more.
    Our gracious Lord then comforts me as He reminds that they are rejecting Him, not me. This gives me the encouragement to continue to live my life as a disciple of Christ, praying often for their hearts to be softened.
    Blessings,
    Pastor Chuck

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