Archives for November 2016

So he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. And for your sakes I’m glad I wasn’t there, for now you will really believe. Come, let’s go see him.” – John 11:14-15

Healing the sick throws the body of Christ into more turmoil than most other doctrines. At the moment, we are sensing the Lord is calling us to go out and heal more people in his name, and he is building our faith to do so. That’s quite a challenge for someone with a reformed background.

This is a beautiful story, and we must read it several times to uncover its richness. Listen and see Jesus’ interaction with his audience, and wonder. Why did he weep, why did he feel such anger?

It is a Messianic miracle, as Jews ascribed to the belief that a Spirit remained in the body for 3 days, and so thereafter only God could call someone back from the dead; it was also a mirror of what was shortly to come in his own life – who would call him back?  Right at the end, as throughout John’s Gospel, there is a beautiful prayer where Jesus again emphasises his unity with the Father. We may have read it a hundred times, but it is full of loveliness and character. God interacting with humanity, even in death, preparing his Son whom he loves.

But friends, behind this is a challenge to us believers. It is undeniable that as believers we are called to heal the sick and display the power of God, for then the unbelieving world will know the truth and as our Lord says here, “really believe.”

Last weekend we spent our Sunday with a few such people. These are people who struggle desperately. Addictions seem to hold them in complete bondage, or mental illness, depression, drugs, gambling. Most walk on a knife edge, never quite knowing what tomorrow holds. They live in physical darkness – literally, in little apartments in a housing block, with no light and a few fag-end cigarettes for company.

One such couple – Trevor and Jane shall we call them, have been in union for a long time. He is an alcoholic who abuses marijuana, but sadly such a deadly combination abuses him back. She sits quietly waiting for him to settle, while we try to pray with him. She, a schizophrenic who is so medicated as to be almost non-compus mentis, occasionally provides us with a glimpse of the devil who resides in her. I don’t think we have seen them both in a ‘normal’ state since we met them.

Yet into this world God has called our little gathering, and we are meeting many others along the way. It is an unsettling world to be honest, far removed from the comfort of white middle-class Australia, even dangerous at times. A few weeks ago, a daughter who was so sick of the blackness, stabbed her mother almost to death in their apartment.

So what do we do? We pray, we hold Discovery Bible studies we just join with them. Yet we think the Lord wants to do much more. He wants to set them free, once and for all.

You see friends, for too long our faith has been defined by the 4 walls of a church, away from the mad and hurting world. For too long, we have mixed only with like-minded believers, who themselves have been healed and cleaned up (or were never sick in the first place). For too long we have sat and listened, and been fattened and fed and in the process have become too inactive. But you can read your Bible upside down, or back to front and you will find that this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Neither is it the Gospel of the China church, or the Indonesian church, or the Syrian church or the Iranian church; it is not the church of active, healthy Christians who believe that a large part of the Gospel is the power of God on display. Is Bible Study not important? Of course it is vital to saturate ourselves with the Word. Is gathering together important? Absolutely.

But Jesus tells us through all four Gospels, that people will believe because of the miraculous. Paul reiterates that theme constantly, while building on the foundation setup by Christ. The other apostles all say the same thing; the China church was built on the astonishment of ordinary people, to the miraculous power of God. Millions of Muslims are coming to Christ through such displays. We must believe that he wants to continue to do that today, in your lives and in mine. He is not the blockage friends, we are.

So, Jesus calls us, our tiny group to brace ourselves for war. He wants us to walk as light into the darkness and make the lame to walk, the blind to see and to set the captives free. We must have the faith to do it in his name.

Does it raise lots of questions, yes of course. Is it much, much more unpredictable than living Jesus out through the four walls, absolutely. But, it is what he wants, I am convinced. His conviction in us will not go away.

We’ll keep you updated. In the meantime though, what about you? Let us each of us, take him at his word and do what he tells us.

“Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam (Siloam means sent). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing” – John 9:7

Have you ever wondered the extent to which Jesus mingled with the poor, the uneducated or the disheveled? It seems not a single miracle was carried out amongst the elite of his day. Did he find the poor more interesting as well?

Last weekend we had Ronny Heyboer to stay in our house; Ronny founded an orphanage, Living Waters in the middle of the jungles of Borneo, starting with 30 young girls that he and his wife rescued, who lived in his house. Today, 20-odd years later, Living Waters is a 1000-acre complex, with schools, clinic, hospital and room to double its capacity. It has been built on the prayers of Ronny and his support, and the Lord has provided every single cent they have ever needed. Ronny has not a single possession of his own, save for his everyday living items. Above the entrance to Living Waters is a sign saying, ‘Beware, you are entering a Miracle Zone.’ They’re not kidding.

Such were the stories told on the first night in our house by Ronny, that those who came to listen quickly texted friends, neighbours and family to come to the next night. The following night was packed. Non-believers were open mouthed as they heard story after story of God opening the heavens and visiting earth in power. Yes, it still happens today.

The simple and obvious fact is, that Jesus and poverty go hand in hand, and they always have. We in the West like to replace ‘poor’ with ‘poor in Spirit’ but that is to save us from embarrassment because we are so rich. In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, he says outright, ‘blessed are the poor.’

We talked at length with Ronny about this; our riches in one sense, are a real blessing from the Lord as we enjoy a rich life here in the West and it is a life the rest of the world does not have (however, that seems to be changing as we rapidly dispense with God in our society, but that is another story). But at the same time, we have sacrificed much of what God wants to give us in life because of this. The reason we rarely see the miraculous in our everyday lives, is simply because of our own self-sufficiency. We are easily healed, we rarely need money and we have food in abundance. The real problem though, is that we don’t really see the need for God either.

Ask any believer who has a close relationship with the Lord, and they will tell you it was when God removed so much of these things in their life, that their faith was sharpened. Those were the times when we were on our knees, crying out to the Lord. We felt and experienced his presence. It seems desperation draws us to God.

So we have a conundrum; the church so desperately wants a God to be more visible in the world through us, yet we have so much in our lives that blocks this from happening, what are we to do?

Firstly, Paul warns us throughout his letters, of the perils of being rich, for riches have ‘pierced the heart of many believers, causing them to fall away.’ Jesus warns us of the same as well in many of his parables. The simple fact is friends, that we need to shed our lives of much of what we have, if we are to begin to see the power of God at work in us, and the world around us. It seems apparent to me in the Scriptures, that God and money are not easy bed-fellows, and God does not easily contend with our over-satisfied lives.

Secondly though, we have an ungodly tendency to only mix with those of the same ilk. When was the last time you saw a tramp, or an alcoholic sitting in the pew alongside you? But, our ilk is getting smaller in churches, and soon, unless we begin to go out, we shall have nobody sharing our pews. The riches and comforts of this world mean that fewer ‘middle class’ are coming to church or have any interest in God at all.

In our week to week walks on the streets of Sydney, it is most often the poor, the sick, the addicted or the abandoned who willingly accept our offer of prayer or Gospel sharing. Many times we have asked the Lord, where are the others, but he sends us those. So much so that we have an opportunity now to penetrate an entire community that has been largely abandoned by mainstream society. They are poor, often hopeless and they need to be set free. We are expectant.

On reflection, we feel we are right where the Lord wants us. We believe that he will do the miraculous for his Glory, as well as our good. He will transform people’s lives, as he always has.

As an example, this week on Melbourne Cup day, as all the world got dressed up for a horse race, we sat on the street with a homeless young man; he was even slightly out of his mind. As the world pursued it’s ‘thing’ we talked, prayed and invited him to ‘receive Christ’ as John invites us to do, earlier in this Gospel. He willingly did so. A poor man, who had begun the journey of being rich in Jesus.

Such a contrast, the world glamourous and dressed up, we on our knees. Friends, it is the contrast of the Gospel and we need to ask ourselves with the Lord, which one he prefers? He has given us an example, it makes us uncomfortable, yet we cannot escape it. The poor are usually his mission field.

Come he says, I will make you fishers of men – only he gets to decide which men that will be. Will we accept his choice? If we do, I feel the blind might start to see again.