Winsome?

I am all for winsomely witnessing, but I don't want to use the concept as a cloak for cowardice. That is hardly what I see in Paul's instruction to Timothy to be "instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and instruction." And then Paul's next words, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine..." (2 Timothy 4:2 - 3). 

There's a pretty thought, people not enduring sound doctrine. 

There is little clamor for sound doctrine today, but there is much clamor for religious entertainment. Maybe the professing-church has surpassed Hollywood?

It just struck me that I may have to change my term "the professing-church", which I use to distinguish from the True Church. Why? Because the broader church doesn't profess much of anything anymore - we are a people without a creed, a people without a confession. Why we don't even confess Jesus. We confess politics, we confess health and wealth, we confess the Baskin - Robbins religious flavor of the month, we confess nationalism, we confess our sports teams, we confess slavery to sin when it is useful to excuse our disobedience. 

Back to winsomely witnessing, I wonder if I can find some winsome witness in the prophets?

A Quote on the OT to Ponder

Here's a quote to ponder:

“The Old Testament is not to the New like the chrysalis, out of which the living “life” has burst, and is now only a lifeless casement; rather is it like the personal appearance of Him, who has in man’s sight ‘no form or comeliness’, but which, when He appeared in His glory, was transfigured, and shone transparently, with a portion of His Majesty which was veiled within it; or so again, that His risen Body, still bore the print of the nails and of the spear, and could be handled, although it was no longer subject to the laws of flesh, but showed itself to be a ‘glorified Body’, and what before seemed the exception and a miracle, when It walked on the water, now appeared as the rule; and Jesus came and went uniformly after the manner of a Spirit, to accustom us to think on His Body as spiritualized, yea, Deified and yet a Body, so should we regard the Old Testament, not as the dead body of our Lord, to be embalmed with honour, and laid with the dead, but as a living and true Body, which it hath pleased God to take, in order to be accessible to us; and wherein alone we can see Him “Full of grace and truth.”  Edward Bouverie Pusey, Lecture 24 (Italics mine).