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What an unbelieving world finds unbelievable

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The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today
Is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.  – Brennan Manning, ex-Alcoholic Catholic Priest

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. – Titus

There’s a new friend in my life, a business man. Highly intelligent with a first-class honours in Maths, we have been discussing some projects together. Along the way, we have had several discussions about God, Jesus and the main purpose of life. As an agnostic, he is intrigued that someone would seemingly be so open about their faith. Apparently, I don’t appear so naïve that I should put my faith in the God of the Bible. How can that be?

I suggested to my friend, that he might like to read CS Lewis on one of his next trips. As one academic to another, he would at the least find Lewis entertaining. To my surprise, my friend took me up on the idea, downloaded the CS Lewis classics and read them on a recent flight to China. It certainly did get him thinking, what if it’s all right? This week at coffee, he talked about what he had discovered in his brief journey towards Christ. One thing he realised was that eventually, not everyone has all the answers – Christianity contains a strong element of faith, a hope unseen. There is only so much we can see and experience from outside the boat, we actually have to get in to experience it all.

So then, where to from here?

Well, here’s the real stumbling block..surely, my friend said, if all that was true, how do we possibly see the pathetic reality of so many Christians lives? If we believe in a God who not only saves us, but also will judge us, either we should fall on our faces in deep gratitude, or tremble in fear enough to change our ways. Yet, the journey seems replete with bent Catholic priests, charismaniacs who worship mamon more even than the world, and day to day believers whose lives reflect no differently from those around them.

This week, I have heard stories of youth pastors at a large well known church, sleeping with their youth group, others suffering chronic depression and eating disorders, along with a well known worship leader who is a closet lesbian. My friend – the clever one, has a business partner in his practice, who is gay. Fairly common fare today, except this man left his wife some years ago, took up with a man and managed to get himself onto the governing board of the Uniting Church.

You see, for a person beginning to explore the person of Jesus Christ, it can be difficult to distinguish between the true light, and the rotting remnants of a bygone era of a ‘Christian country.’ As you read the New Testament, one of the outstanding hallmarks, is the purity of the church, and the very genuine fear of a Holy God. Little of that enough, is found in our version of Christianity.

Things have to change, for surely God is more aware of the problem than I am.

Eventually, if my friend reads enough of Lewis, he will come to the bit where Lewis expounds that God invariably has to change people – societies even, by taking them through a great deal of pain. Purity and persecution are common bedfellows in the New Testament, and in any place today where the church is thriving.

We need to watch out. It is certainly coming our way.

The Beauty of the Discovery Bible Study

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The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. – Mark 11 (please read the rest of the story)

There’s something about a person reading the Bible for themselves. That is, as opposed to having someone else reading it to them. There is a difference.

This last week, we were invited to run church at the Northcott Housing Commission on Saturday evening, before cooking a bbq. We have been a few times. The expectation was established from the beginning; we were there to teach, and we had an audience. Imagine then, the surprise when we announced, “tonight we would like to do something a little different…”

Tonight, there would be no preacher or teacher, other than Christ through his Spirit, ever present. Tonight, everyone would read, everyone discuss and everyone have an opportunity to layout what the passage means to them. From a few simple questions – ‘what does this passage tell us about Jesus’ or ‘what example does this give us to follow?’ people began to share what the passage spoke to them.

Want to know what was the best thing about it all? The change in people’s demeanour.

From the outset, doubt was replaced by a lighting up of people’s face as they realised they could contribute. For years, all we have been taught to do – ever, is listen to somebody else, a priest perhaps. They read the Bible, and then tell us what it says and what we should think about it. Have you ever watched someone who isn’t used to reading the Bible, a believer or non-believer, actually read it out loud? Their physical features change, as their Spirit radiates.

By the end of the evening, people weren’t asleep, they were wide awake, discussing, sharing thinking. At the end, all of us were challenged by this one question, “who will we share this with this week?” We went around the table, and each of us had to nominate somebody we would share the Fig Tree story with this week. Next week, when we come back again, we will all be held accountable for sharing the Gospel. Have we been obedient? A Gospel not just of knowledge, but of obedience.

This is the third Discovery Group I’ve been part of this week. All the groups have been small, ad hoc, in a local setting. All we need is a Bible, prayer, and the Holy Spirit. At least half the people have not been believers. Picture that, agnostics, Muslims, uncertain’s – all of them discovering Christ by reading the Bible.

There is a paradigm shift happening around the World. Discovery Bible studies everywhere are transforming the way people discover Christ. Are they everything? No. Are we to worship them, or make a doctrine out of them? No, of course not. Years ago, when I grew up, it went something like this; we invite someone to church, they get saved by saying a prayer, and then they go through a disciple making programme to become a disciple. They learn mostly information, doctrine, what we believe.

Today, as shown up largely in developing countries it goes more like this; believers, that is ordinary people like you and me, are walking into a community and beginning to show others how to discover Jesus through a Discovery Bible Study. As they begin to discover Jesus, so along the journey they become a disciple and perhaps eventually get saved. Learning obedience from the outset, they then go out and begin to reproduce the model, looking for others in their community or another community, who will become, and then make disciples. We never take people out of their community, but rather take Christ into it.

So Jesus is taken into a community, where he can be discovered by all, without the need of anyone – a priest, one that is ordained, a theologian, anybody except someone willing to obey the simple command of Christ, Go and make disciples.

How beautiful, how unpretentious Christ is. We should follow him.

 

Repent and Be Free

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All of life is repentance – Martin Luther, reformed

Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” – Jesus, reformer

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. – God, Father of Israel

We have been praying at length about seeing more of God’s power on the streets, in the form of signs, wonders and healing. He hasn’t yet answered….or has he?

Last week we heard of a young pastor who went to visit a lady with schizophrenia. Terribly abused as a young adult, she took to drugs and in the process developed the disease. Many who came to visit her in the name of the Lord pronounced healing over her, but she was never set free. This young pastor walked into her slum-like apartment and told her she needed to repent of the bitterness which she held against people, and her subsequent choices. Filled with fury, she threw him out the door. But his words had roughened her spirit, such that the Holy Spirit now had something to hold onto, and he began to convict her of sin. The minister’s words wouldn’t leave her, and over the period of a year she brought the various people who had abused her, some of which were her own family before God, and repented of her anger against them. She repented of her lifestyle.

After a year, she was off drugs and completely healed. Shortly after, she headed overseas and became a missionary where she serves God in absolute freedom. Unusual?

We have noticed similar things in our own work here. While Jesus calls us always to look after the poor, the widowed and the maligned as well as to heal the sick, are there limitations when we ask God for his intervention? For example, in the Housing Commission where we work to share the Gospel, there are many who are willing to accept charity while happily gambling, drinking and smoking their lives away. Many are in desperate need of deliverance, yet there seems much they could do to change their lives. What are we to do?

So often when Jesus healed, he spoke of the forgiveness of sin, and after healing warned people not to return to their sin. The two it seems are interconnected. Is our Gospel too soft, are we too afraid in our liberal society to speak the hard truth into somebody’s life that they need to turn away from their sin before God will deal with them? Perhaps as importantly, who will God deal with ultimately if we don’t (speak) and then they don’t (repent)?

We know many believers who work in local people’s lives, cleaning up their filthy apartments, washing, feeding them and so on. They do it because they try to serve Christ, and it is a good thing. I am wondering though, if God has answered our prayer and spoken to us, ‘preach repentance first.’ That’s not to say of course, that everyone who is sick is so because of some obvious sin in their lives, often it can be because of terrible wounding from the past, or simply that we all live in a fallen world where sickness happens.

But, we have been praying at length about seeing the power of God in this area, and God has pointed us through many instances to the need for repentance first. Virtually the entire message of the Old Testament can be summarised by God speaking to the Israelites, ‘if you will turn to me and leave your sin, I will heal you and your land.’

Of course, God being our loving Father hasn’t left it there either. ‘What about your own lives?’ he has asked us. We have become so aware that if we want to preach repentance and see deliverance and healing on the streets, then we had better clean up our own act as well. It has brought us to our knees before a Holy God who is a consuming fire.

I would have to conclude, after praying deeply into this for much of this year. The reason we don’t see much healing and deliverance around our neighbourhoods today, is because of a lack of Holiness in our own lives first. Come, let us get on our knees and pray, repent. God longs to move in our lives and those around us, but it seems we need to examine ourselves before him first.

 

We need Saving.

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We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world – John’s Gospel

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing – The prophet Zephaniah

A good friend of ours, someone our age died recently. We mourn with his wife, with his family. The speed at which he was taken took our breath away, and I found the nature of death very confronting. I managed to see my friend in the last few days, and as ever his humour was high. We quipped about a few things and talked openly about life in the presence of God. I got to pray with him and his wife.

Since then, I have been amongst a great deal of people it seems, who are bent on self-destruction; consuming drugs at an alarming rate, prone to violence or just generally careless about life itself. Just last night, a woman stepped from the shadows and asked if I would walk her across the road. Likely younger than me, she had an amputated arm, and had already suffered a stroke, and what I thought would be a 5 minute jaunt turned into a half hour mission. Along the way, she spoke of violence, drugs and alcoholism, with 2 children taken away into foster care. When we got there, she lit up a fag as I prayed for her. What struck me though, was the bravado, arrogance even about the way she lived. A life rapidly careering towards death. She is not alone, or even unusual, we know many people who exist in the same vacuous, vacant state. Death will come fast for many.

As I have been pondering about this, I reflected on the immense variance Jesus makes in the entire equation. He is all the difference.

The church at large, has shifted it’s focus far too much toward what is happening in this life; we discuss maybe too much, the kingdom here, the community here, Jesus solving our problems in the here and now. Yet, far and away the greatest achievement of Christ, was his conquering of death.

This world needs saving above all else; I’m not that convinced the condition of the world is ever going to change, even in our Christian communities. From the Old Testament, through to the early passages of the Gospels though, Jesus is announced to us as the one who will save us. In particular he will save us from our sins, which means he will save us from the terrible judgement of God that is coming upon the world. God promises those who believe, an eternity in his presence.

The difference in outcome between the death of my friend, whose hope was set on salvation through Christ, and the woman I met last night, whose hatred of all that was good is immense. She faces total separation of God for all eternity, whereas my friend is merely changing address. He will be more alive than ever.

This means two things. Firstly, it means the Gospel message is hard nosed and raw. It demands action on our behalf to come to God on our knees and ask for his forgiveness. There is absolutely nothing passive in the Gospel, nothing at all. It cost God everything, and the alternatives are unbearable, beyond imagination. We have softened it, watered it down at our peril. In spite of this, the message has not changed, it starts with repentance.

Secondly, it demands that all those who say they believe, us, must do something about it. We cannot take our salvation and pack it away tidily in a suitcase. In our lives, it demands action. I have heard so many, witnessed far too many who do so little with the Gospel in their lives. I am saved, why should I worry?

Friends, if that is your Gospel then it is no Gospel. It is not the Gospel Jesus lived. Every day that goes by, without our having advanced the cause of Christ – you and me, is a day in which the Devil and all darkness has scored.

Even if people do not respond, our job is to make sure they hear from us – everyday, at all times and all the time, that Jesus came to save us from our sins. We do not know where our witness will end in someone else’s life.

Strangely God seems to be willing to take the risk that we will be good messengers of his message – that is, Salvation is found in no one else. Let’s get to it.

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