For the one whose nephew asks the honest question and gets the defensive answer.
Peter tells believers to be ready always to give an answer to every man who asks, and the thing he says to be ready with is narrower and warmer than almost anybody remembers.
He doesn't say be ready to explain your circumstances. He doesn't say be ready to justify your position, account for your history, or defend the last four years of your life to whoever happens to raise the subject.
Those are the answers you have spent four years getting ready. You've a version of each of them prepared, worked over, improved on across four years, and not one of them is what the verse asks you to have ready.
He says be ready to give the reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.
Your nephew is seventeen. He's sitting on your porch step with a drink he hasn't opened yet, and he has just asked you why you still pray if you don't go anywhere on a Sunday.
You gave him about ninety seconds on how complicated it all is. He said fair enough, opened the drink, and the conversation moved on to his car and what the clutch is doing.
Peter told you to be ready with the reason for your hope, and that is the one thing you have never been short of. The written word names hope as the subject, and the Spirit is the one who keeps it alive in you.
He Asked You a Hope Question
Read his question again, because the shape of it is not what you answered.
Why do you still pray. That is a question about what is keeping you going. It is a boy noticing that his uncle has lost the structure and kept the practice, and wanting to know what holds the practice up.
He wasn't asking about the leadership. He wasn't asking for a chronology of the falling out, and he certainly wasn't inviting you to justify yourself to a seventeen year old sitting on a step with a drink.
Seventeen year olds don't ask for justifications. They ask direct questions, take the answer at face value, and move on to the next thing, which in this case was a clutch.
He asked about hope, which is exactly the subject Peter told you to have an answer ready for, and you gave him ninety seconds about complications instead.
He asked you about hope and you answered him about complications. The written word points the answer at the hope in you, and the Spirit is the one who put it there.
Be Ready Always to Give an Answer
Here is the verse, and every clause in it narrows the job rather than enlarging it.
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:1 Peter 3:15 (KJV)
A reason of the hope that is in you. The subject is your hope. The question being anticipated is why you still have it, and the answer required is a reason rather than a defense.
With meekness and fear. Gently, and with reverence. That is the opposite of the braced tone you used on the step, which your nephew heard and read correctly as a warning not to go further.
Peter wrote that to scattered believers who were being asked about their faith by neighbors who often meant them harm, and it carries over to a porch step where nobody means you any harm at all.
The answer you owe is a reason for hope rather than a defense of your position. The written word sets the subject, and the Spirit gives the meekness it asks for.
The Reason Is Not Complicated
Work out what you would actually have said, because you have never once tried.
Why do you still pray. Because God has been real to you for thirty years and didn't stop being real on the day the building stopped. Because you have been heard, more than once, in situations you could never have got yourself out of. Because you would not know how to stop.
That's perhaps forty words. It's entirely true, it's the reason for the hope that's in you, and none of it requires a single sentence about the congregation you left.
Read it back and notice what isn't in it. No names, no incident, no account of who did what in which year. The reason for your hope turns out to have almost nothing to do with the building, which is the discovery sitting underneath this whole question.
You have been assuming that any honest answer must start with the history. It does not. The history explains your absence, and he did not ask about your absence. He asked what keeps you praying.
Your reason is forty words long and none of them are about the building. The written word asks only for that reason, and the Spirit has been supplying the evidence for it for thirty years.
I Am Not Telling You the History Is Off Limits
Be careful, because this is not an instruction to hide anything from the boy.
If he asks about what happened, tell him. Tell him honestly and without bitterness, and he'll be better for having heard an adult describe a hard experience without running anybody down. That conversation may well be coming, and it will probably arrive in a car rather than on a step.
When it does, he won't need it to be tidy. Seventeen year olds have excellent instruments for detecting an account that has been smoothed, and a rough honest one will serve him far better.
Nor am I saying ninety seconds was a disaster. He is seventeen. He took it in his stride, and he came back and sat on your step again the following week, which is the only review that matters.
What I want off you is the assumption. Not the honesty. Not the care about telling him the truth.
He Came Back the Following Week
Here is the turn, and it is in what happened seven days later rather than on the step.
He came back. Sat in the same place, opened a drink, talked about his car, stayed about an hour. A seventeen year old who had been warned off a subject does not return to the person who warned him, and he returned.
Which means your ninety seconds did no damage at all. He heard a man being awkward about something difficult, which is something he's watched adults do before. He filed it and came back for the company.
The door is open. It was open before, it is open now, and the question he asked will come round again, probably in the car, probably when you are not braced for it.
He came back the following week, which tells you the door never closed. The written word asks for readiness rather than perfection, and the Spirit has kept the boy coming round.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
You aren't claiming this on your own account. Christ has made His home in you, and you stand inside Him, which turns speaking it back to God into agreement rather than invention. What He does about the rest is His.
Say it through once, slowly.
Peter told me to be ready with the reason for my hope, and that is the one thing I have never been short of. Scripture says that I am to give an answer to every man who asks a reason of the hope that is in me, with meekness and fear, which is a reason rather than a defense. The Spirit has kept that hope alive in me for thirty years. I am not owed to anybody as a history. My nephew asked what keeps me praying and came back to the same step seven days later, which tells me nothing closed. I leave the rest with God and answer the boy plainly.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
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1 Peter 3:15
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