Archives for July 2018

 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8, Paul

MC Hammer wrote a song in 1990, ‘Can’t Touch This’ about his rise to stardom from poor, black, rural America. I heard it again this week. Hammer, apparently a believer, hit the heights in the ‘90s and accrued enormous wealth, such that his eyes must have been circling considering where he came from. I wonder how his faith lasted with so much entanglement?

This morning at 7am, we woke up to baptise Maelle, our lovely Swiss student, who decided earlier this week to make Jesus her Lord. Sally and Tom introduced Maelle to Jesus through a simple diagram, and then went through some Bible verses with her. We answered some of her questions, and told her again how much God loved her. She responded almost immediately in the affirmative, that she wanted Jesus as Lord. All we did was our job, Jesus does the miraculous.

Can’t touch this?

For Maelle, the promise of never being separated from the love of Christ, now and throughout all eternity.  Such a promise, almost incomprehensible, the divine loving the human. In our explanation, we talk of brokenness, as we often do when we share the Gospel. Rarely does anybody have any difficult comprehending this part. Lives torn apart by goodness only knows, hearts seared with pain from smashed relationships. After brokenness, we move to God’s perfect design for us; how on earth did we get from that to brokenness? Quite simply, we do things our own way. Few seem to miss any of this when we share it. Surely someone, God, loves them?

Then, we come to God’s solution for it all, the love of Christ. Christ showed us how the Father wants us to live, to relate back to him. For the first time in history, God became Father to all people, if they would only accept him. He went further, of course, he stood in the dock and received all the punishment due for us. With every step, Maelle seemed to want to hear the final story, as if there was an ache that needed to be healed somewhere inside, as the Spirit convicted.

Can’t touch this?

For us, leading people to Christ and making disciples is the most fulfilling thing on the planet. We have so much in our lives, but to be frank, nothing comes close. All the riches of this world are incomparable against the beauty of seeing God’s greatest miracle in a life, that of rebirthing someone to a new life through his Son.

So we encourage everyone, everywhere to be obedient to Christ. A big part of our lives in making disciples, is to take ordinary people and tell them that God has a job for them to do; to go out and do the same in their community. This is not the domain of the clergy, or priests or just those with special training or status, no, we are all called to this task. It is so hard for existing believers to grasp this, but much less for new ones.

This week and into the coming months, if you read this please pray for Maelle. God is starting to really move in our little world here, and we have quite a few in our Discovery Group who are close to coming to Christ, or better understanding him. We would like to see and pray for multiplication.

Imagine what he can do with one young person in a small Swiss village, committed to his ways.

Can’t touch that, can you.

 

“If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who died believing in Christ are lost! And, if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” – Paul, 1 Corinthians

Some years ago, when we first moved back to Sydney, the Lord clearly challenged us to go out into the harvest to get more workers. That is, as opposed to going to find other believers to join us in the work. To be frank, we didn’t really listen, until recently.

Some months ago, he challenged us to take on renting the local Community Centre, even if there was just the 2 of us, and see what he would do. We were slow to respond, again. This time though, the Lord has really prodded us to take him at his word, and finally we have been obedient in both aspects. Sad isn’t it, that we take so long to take Jesus at his word. Did he really say that to me?

The Community Centre is right in the centre of where we live, and it is a hub of activity. You can rent a hall, or a room. On a Sunday afternoon, we go out on the streets telling people about Christ, and then run a Discovery Group in the Centre. We have tea and cake and a very interactive Bible study, a Discovery Bible Study. Everyone who comes along is from our meetings on the streets. It is growing, the network seems to be spreading as God keeps putting people across our path. Recently, he has put another couple across our path who share a similar vision to ours, to take Christ to the marketplace and make disciples. Good job, as it takes effort to follow people up.

Today, the Centre cleaner, Nakib, came past and we invited him to come and have some cake. Nakib is from Bangladesh. He sat down, took some cake and we said that we were discussing Jesus. Nakib is a Muslim, it seems quite devout. Within 2 minutes of his sitting with us, he poured out his story – an abusive father who left the family when he was just 2 years old, his father recently lured his brother and he back to Australia after nearly 2 decades of absence. Selling all they had, they have come to study, and looked forward to seeing their father after such a long absence. The horror that unfolded subsequently was painful; he stole from them, abused them, had been living here illegally, and left them penniless, barely able to live.

We quietly listened, and then gently explained the true nature of the Father heart of God. That God loves them, loves all of us, and at great cost to himself, did not spare his Son to save us from eternal separation. We drew a little diagram, the 3 Circles, to help Nakib more easily understand a simple Gospel message. Then we prayed, took his number and told him to come back next week, or call us during the week if he and his brother needed food. We hope he does both. We shall see.

Whether Nakib does or not, I felt Jesus whisper to me, that this is why he wanted us to act in faith in taking on the Community Centre – because of the opportunities that come in and out the door all the time. He wants us to be there to explain him to others, those who seek answers to the brokenness in their lives.

Here’s the thing that we are learning; what we are doing has eternal consequences, never mind the absolute delight we feel in doing the very real work of the Lord. We walk home past gorgeous cars, magnificent homes and spectacular views. But none of that will last my friends, none of it.

At the same time as writing this, I am reading Revelation. If you have forgotten, Jesus promises that he is coming again, only this time when he does the world will not forget. It says there is an eternity beyond this life, when what we perceive of real value will be obliterated never to be raised again.

As believers, we must raise our sights beyond what is in this life, to what is coming. Christ absolutely commands we do so with everything we have. Further, he tells us that we must continually warn others of what is coming, as well as divulging to them the enormity of God’s love. We must be active, not passive.

Sadly, we meet many believers whose only concern seems to be the things of this world – that is, despite all the warnings that such things eventually lead to nowhere.

We must reconsider Paul’s words above, written to believers. Then we need to adjust and act. Oh, and if you remember, please pray for us.

The reward is out of this world.

And to this people you shall say: ‘Thus says the LORD: Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.’ – God, Jeremiah 21

And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” – Jesus, Luke 19

Every Sunday afternoon, we run a Discovery Group. It consists of a ragamuffin bunch, those who are lost in every sense of the word. Some sleep rough, most are addicted, on the run or with an illness that is difficult to work around. Together we study the Bible (today it was in a café) and ask them who in their lives they can share what we have discovered about God that day. The next time, we ask them if they had obeyed. Believe it or not, the group is growing. We have Spiritual glue in our little corner of Sydney.

In our own journey, as we read both the New and Old Testament simultaneously, we see the high cost of disobedience. We know it too well.

A few decades ago, two reprobate, proud young people came together. Our pre-marriage behaviour finally caught up with us, and we spent the first few years in real pain; I think one of us cried every day in that first year as we came to terms with a life of sin and disobedience. I still remember God giving me a clear picture of him standing to the side of us watching, very much with us but unwilling to take away the consequence of what we had done. We deserved all that we received, yet God in his infinite grace, began to change us through his Son.

For some reason, God decided that we could indeed become useful to him, and the process of change began in our lives. Along the way, we found God infinitely gracious, yet firm in his dealings with us. The pride, the arrogance had to go. The lessons we learned, we now try to communicate to others – mostly, out of sheer gratitude for what Jesus has done in our lives. We look back today, and barely recognise the two who came together all those years ago, such is the transformation through and in Christ.

What did we learn?

Firstly, that God is immensely gracious in his treatment of mankind. Contrary to what most read in the Old Testament, I see a loving Father imploring people to follow his ways, not their own, for their own sake. The punishment that will come is a last resort against a people who will simply not give up their reckless living. God, for the most part, yearns to have people living in obedience to their benefit. We simply will not acknowledge this though, and we reject him out of hand. In our day to day visits to the streets, we face this all the time. They reject God, the Christ, not us. In Jeremiah, we see right up to the very last, God pleading with his own people to obey. They do not, death is imminent.

Secondly, and perhaps contrary to the first, we see in the Gospels, a Jesus who spoke red hot scorching words against sin and condemned those who would not repent. He preached repentance wherever he went, proclaiming much of the time that a person’s entire well being was dependent on their turning from disobedience. Healing was so often accompanied by sins being forgiven, by repentance, a person turning. Where there was repentance, such as with Zacchaeus, Jesus rejoiced and applauded the efforts with promises of much that was to come. The barb in the hook though is always those who stood and scoffed, those who considered their own efforts above all others. In most instances, it was the religious people, those who couldn’t see a way to give up their own righteousness who refused the offer from God.

We see this all the time. So often it is the humble, the broken who seem most willing to acknowledge their lack of standing before God. Whereas the educated, the rich, those who seem to have it altogether, there we find a reluctance to accept what God offers.

What does he offer? He offers a simple choice, life or death. When God spoke those words to the Israelites, this was no pie in the sky ‘getting into heaven’ this was live or die now. Such is the case in our day. We meet many for whom disobedience has exacted an exorbitant price on their lives, just as it did in ours.

But God can transform us, unbelievably, even startling so, he is willing to; for each of us, we can choose to live in obedience – or not. What we cannot choose though, are the consequences that come from that, eternal or otherwise. Life or death, that is the choice.