nobrokenreed

Archives for December 2016

Merry Christmas

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We received a Christmas letter this week from some people who are very dear to us. In it, they quipped that their part time hobby these days was going to funerals, which gave us a chuckle.

You pass into a phase in your life where death becomes more visible in daily life, and then the longer you walk through it, the more visible it becomes. Eventually, it walks beside you.

What struck us though, was the authority and assurance that the writer had of their future. I couldn’t help but feel as I read it, that the curtain, far from being brought down on their life, was coming up. They were looking forward to a new beginning. Life was about to start.

It’s such counter thinking in our world, that when you read it, it makes you sit up and think.

This world is in as big a mess as it has been since perhaps the beginning of the second World War. We have run out of answers of how to deal with major crises that threaten us on almost every street corner. Yet here were a couple who for most of their lives had lived humbly before God, serving him with the life he had given them. They had decided that their future was to be entrusted to one who could really be depended on. Not only that, but the death that was facing them at some point, was not the end of it all, but the beginning of everything. They would finally be able to live in the presence of the King and God they had chosen to serve all their lives.

This is all possible because of the person of Jesus Christ. We are told in the Bible, that we are saved into God, because of Jesus Christ. For those of us who believe, we have an inheritance in him that will never wear out. Our future is elsewhere.

Christmas is a worthy celebration of a deserving King and Saviour, despite it having been ransacked by godless people who trivialise everything. But peer behind the glitter and lights, and you will find the most incredible story. God saves us, literally, through his Son and through him, we can have an assurance and hope that one day we will live in his presence for all eternity, and that even death will not be able to hold us.

Our writings have only ever been about one thing, Jesus Christ. As far as we are concerned, what God has done through him for us all, takes our breath away. So, let us leave you with perhaps the greatest words ever written in history, as we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

No other words bring such Hope Eternal.

I bring you good news of great joy, that will be for all people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord – Luke 2:10-11

The Simplicity of the Message this Christmas

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“You don’t realise that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed”. He did not say this on his own; as High Priest at that time, he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation. And not only for that nation, but to bring together and unite all the children of God scattered around the world. – John 11:50-52

There are some gems in Scriptures, especially the Gospels. If we would take the time to saturate ourselves with what God is saying, and listen to his Spirit we would find them. So much in just a few sentences. An indication that grace would be open to the whole world, and as ever, Jesus at the centre of it all. This passage tells us that God has a family, that he has chosen them and intends to save them, and that his Son is the means of this salvation.

Such salvation will not be easy, or effortless even for God, but he will do what is necessary to make sure his family is intact. His family are global, they include us and the great news is he invites those who already belong to go out and find the others. At the moment, the others are lost.

Spreading the Gospel is the easiest and yet most challenging command. Sharing communion, giving, even praying are easier than talking to people about our faith. Nothing has changed since Jesus’ time. Yet, the rewards are out of this world! As we look back on this year coming into Christmas, these are some of our stories. It hasn’t been perfect, and there have been many disappointments and unknowns, but it has been so very worth it and it is good to recap.

Earlier in the year, we prayed for Steve on the beach, Steve the burly surf coach who was flooded with the peace of Christ, Nikki his girlfriend who was touched by the change in him from one simple prayer. It didn’t last long for Steve sadly, but Nikki hasn’t forgotten and we don’t believe the Lord has forgotten her.

We were able to share the Gospel with literally hundreds on the streets of our Sydney village, such as Alana and Mitchell, a young couple who we spent an hour talking to about the love of God and our sin, and how Jesus is the answer to both. We saw real engagement, tears, confession, sadness and yet hope, only the hope that Jesus brings. Nobody else can bring that change, and we are under no illusion as to who it is. We think of the German couple, one whose father was dying back in Germany, without hope. We were able to share that there is a hope, Jesus, and we prayed, saw more tears and more healing.

We prayed for 3 people who were very sick, yet so willing to be prayed for. It was late on a Sunday evening, outside the largest ‘church’ on the street and we had been out for most of the afternoon with little to show. Then my wife saw them, and we spent the next hour praying, sharing, laughing and crying. We walked off the street so uplifted.

Many of these we never saw again, but we know in our hearts that the Lord has not finished with them. They belong to the family of our Father, and we are just part of that. We will see some of them one day.

In the longer term, one of our gathering Ben, has been working with a married couple, let’s call them Peter and Jane. When I met them their marriage was in tatters, there was depression, prescription drugs, anger and hard heartedness. Ben has been seeing them, praying with them and sharing with them almost weekly. Most of the work was done with Peter the husband, and gradually there was change. One night, his wife Jane, who was especially hard hearted towards the Gospel, turned to their children in the car and said, “I think we need more of God in our lives, let’s start going to church.” Peter nearly crashed the car.

Since then, there has been dramatic transformation. A wife whose heart is softening all the time through tears and confession, a husband who has learned to love his wife no matter what, and both turning towards a God who wants them as his children. Last week, for the first time in 15 years, Peter left his medication for mental illness on the shelf, and chose to rely on God for healing. It is working.

We could go on. Alcatraz, the local government housing block, where God is using a tiny group of us to push back the dark and introduce the light through simple prayer and Discovery Bible Study. Small chinks of light shine through, such as the story where Frannie told us with a beaming smile that she managed to walk past the pokie machines and not spend her food money on gambling that week. A tiny victory, a child coming towards the Father.

All around the world, God’s children, being introduced to their loving Father, some for the very first time. In most cases, he uses his other children to introduce him, you, me. Such simple work, unpaid except for the unbelievable sensation and sense that we are returning the love back to the Father. What else do you want?

God is being pushed out of this country slowly, soon the churches will be told to close their doors or change their message through political correctness gone mad. Then what? Who will go out searching for the rest of God’s children, to introduce them to his Son such that “to all who believed in him (Jesus), he gave the right to be called the children of God.”

Happy Christmas to you all, it is an incredible story, one that will be retold throughout eternity. But, there is no better time than now to tell it to those around us.

What will we do with Him today?

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Many of the people who were with Mary, believed in Jesus when they saw this happen. But some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. – John 11:45-6

Have you ever thought how you might have responded if you were there? Would you believe if you saw someone raise the dead?

This week I was inter State, and unusually, stayed at the home of someone who I work with. Well into the evening we sat around a table and their wife recounted the story of her bike accident. A car came out of a side street and hit her side on, knocking her across one car, onto the roof of another. She has been in pain ever since, and rarely sleeps. She has tried every ‘healing’ imaginable, and most recently her Physio said to her it was unlikely she would ever improve.

I felt compelled to ask if I could lay hands on her and pray for her, there was a real sense that the Lord wanted to heal her. To my surprise, she declined. People rarely decline prayer, even if they don’t believe, and her response was upsetting. What if that was the only opportunity for the rest of her life, that she had to be introduced to Jesus? A life gone for all eternity.

It got me thinking about each of us, you, me the people we pass in our lives, believer, church-goer, non-believer, agnostic. Each of us have an opportunity to do something with Jesus this day, and only this day. Many of us assume life will go on, that we have tomorrow, next week, or next year to do something, but we only have today. What will we do with him today?

We allow our lives to drift, each of us; days turn into weeks, then months and good intentions don’t ever become action. Jesus is still neglected, yes even by those who believe, me, you. As I watched this family close up, I could see the vacuous existence that I have learned to recognise in so many middle-class families. They have security, success and are by the worlds standards happy, yet there is as CS Lewis tells us, a God-shaped void in their hearts. Something is missing.

A few days later, and I am still deeply saddened at what they had turned down, so convicted are they of their agnosticism and belief in the physical. To decline Jesus, how can that be?

This week our business hit a record month, and it was a monumental milestone. For those of you who know of our personal circumstance over the past decade, the restoration by God has been miraculous and as a family we pinch ourselves. Yet, within that same time, Jesus has become such a reality in our lives, that such accomplishment pales into comparison compared to the sheer joy of knowing him. To know with intimacy, this majestic divine personality is staggering. He is the unseen force in our family and our marriage, through knowing him we know the very God of the universe, and not only that he is prepared to come to our level and work within our limiting dimensions.

He gives us the love, the courage and the boldness to live him out in everyday life. We feel such confidence in him as a person, such that not only do we know him, we can also share him. Because of what he has done for us, our motivation is to take that to others; this giver of life is available to all who know that something is missing, a God who loves, who heals, who cleanses us, frees us, sets our feet on a rock.

Our efforts might be measly by comparison, but strangely such measly efforts are actually pleasing to him. They are pleasing because, in sharing the love of God with others, we are mirroring what Jesus did while on earth. Talking and sharing, usually with simple people, about the love of God. When we do such things, we find fulfilment, satisfaction in a way few ever find.

The woman who rejected the offer of prayer, saddens us. Why do people search everywhere except where they will find the answer? We don’t know, but we do know that the same thing happened to Jesus and yet he still pursued the same work. It happened to Paul, the Apostles and it will continue with us as well; people will reject the message. We must never stop though.

Somewhere along the way, we will uncover the pearl, the person who has never heard but wants to know.

The question for all of us, believer or non-believer is then, what shall we do with him today? There may never be another.

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