I was recently invited to speak at the Free Church Youth Conference at Lendrick Muir
outdoor activity centre. This was my first time at this event, and it was such a pleasure to be
there – what a buzz of excitement and activity with having so many younger people all
together. The topic I was asked to teach on was ‘What About the Bible: Fact of Fairy Tale?’.
This is one of my favourite topics to speak on for two reasons. The first is that it’s a question
that I asked when I was in my teens. I always wondered if the Bible was in fact reliable, or if
it was just some fiction conjured up by the church. I was attracted to Jesus and the Gospel,
but was it all actually true?
One Sunday when I was about 19 years old a pastor at the church at shared a message on
this topic, and shared some of the reasons why we can trust the Bible – it was a pivotal
moment in my faith journey. And so what a privilege it is to me that years later I have the
same opportunity to share about the trustworthiness of the Bible with large groups of
younger folk. I shared at two separate break out sessions, each attracting around 40 people,
and had a time of Q&A at each session. I came away encouraged by the turn out – showing
that this is still a question that concerns people – and by the engagement in the Q&A time,
which really pointed out that this is something important to people and that they want to dig
deeper for themselves and also learn how to share the truth of the Gospel with their friends
and family.
