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Glorious George

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Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours – Mark 11:24

This is what the Lord says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;

ask for the ancient paths,

ask where the good way is, and walk in it,

and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’. – Jeremiah 6:16

 

Some of you may have read the story recently, of a little aboriginal boy who drowned. Laid out on the floor, it was another group of young children who suggested they ask Jesus to heal him, and sure enough, Jesus did. The young boy, to all intents dead, rose spluttering from the ground completely healed. Childlike faith.

So much for those who insist, ‘God doesn’t do anything like that anymore, that was only for the New Testament times.’ Surely a bigger question is, why don’t we see more of it today in our little community (wherever that may be)? Why don’t we see dozens of converts, or people pulled up from wheel chairs in the middle of busy shopping malls? I am determined to find the answer, because I believe that God truly does want to display his power to the world, in my corner.

I’m reading George Mueller’s autobiography at the moment, and Glorious George provides some big clues. He of course, lived with the supernatural every day of his life; he saw God as his rich, benevolent Father only too willing to lavish his goodness and riches on anyone who took him at his word. Mueller was frequently given things to pray for by the Spirit, and spent the next few weeks, months or even years praying them into being. He lived by the verse in Mark above and never doubted God would answer his prayers. Here’s an example.

George came down the stairs of his orphanage, where 300 5-6 year olds were seated for breakfast. The only problem was, there was no food in the house at all. So George gathered all of his beloved orphans around him and told them, ‘how wonderful it is that we get to see what God our Father is going to do for us today, how he is going to provide for our every need.’ He then prayed a simple prayer to his heavenly Father in front of the children. No sooner had he finished than a knock at the door announced the baker, who told everyone the Lord had awoken him at 3am that morning and told him to bake enough bread to feed 300 orphans. A moment later, the milkman arrived, announcing his cart had broken down outside and the only way he could lift up back up, was to remove all the milk from it – would they help him unload it, and they could have it?

I could go on, in fact I might. At the end of his life, George was asked if there was anybody he had prayed for, who hadn’t yet come to Christ. His response was nobody, and then he hesitated and replied there was one young man he was still praying for, but he fully expected to see him repent. At Mueller’s funeral, the young man in question knelt at his graveside and gave his life to Christ. As you can imagine, the stories are endless.

Which of course, all begs the question, if then, why not now? Why don’t we experience God’s favour each and every day of our lives like George Mueller did – was he just a one-off?

The short answer is, as Jesus points out, we don’t believe in God as he did. Of this I am convinced; my faith in my God is not the same as George’s faith. That is correct, in spite of the theological remonstrations you will have, it is based on me. Not that I will ever do one miracle alone, but will I believe that God will? Do I believe he wants to? Of that there is no doubt in my mind.

We could of course, talk of prayer, but that is obvious and an outworking of his faith. He prayed for hours even days, because of his faith in Christ.

So then, let me leave us all with something. On p74 of his autobiography, Glorious George tells us that his main reason – that’s right, his main reason for founding his orphanages that eventually looked after over 10,000 children was to show everyone that God is faithful and answers our prayer. He can be trusted.

Like the boy’s father on his knees before the Christ, we say, “yes Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief.”

In my lifetime

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We look back upon history and what do we see?

Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counterrevolutions, wealth accumulating and then disbursed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of the “rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.”

In one lifetime I have seen my own  countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that “God who’s made them mighty would make them mightier yet.”

I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last for a thousand years; an Italian clown announce he would restart the calendar to begin with his own assumption of power; a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the western world as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Asoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius.

I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of military weaponry more powerful than all the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind.

England now part of an island off the coast of Europe and threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.

Hitler and Mussolini dead and remembered only in infamy.

Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped to found and dominate for some three decades.

America haunted by fears of running out of the precious fluid that keeps the motorways roaring and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam and of the great victories of the Don Quixotes of the media when they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one, because of whom, by whom, in whom and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace: The person of Jesus Christ. I present him as the way, the truth, and the life.

-Malcolm Muggeridge, 1980

Something Beautiful for God

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Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. – Romans 8:35

When Malcolm Muggeridge went to Calcutta to film Mother Theresa, he recounts how he was constantly amazed by her presence. There was a special place known as the ‘House of the Dying” where the Mother would frequently come to minister to those who were dying. This old brick kiln was home to the very poorest of the poor from the streets of Calcutta, the lame, the crippled and diseased, and there in the coolness, Mother would hold and bathe each one as they slowly died. She wanted to give them a place of dignity, and as she held each in her arms, she would say she looked at each and saw the face of Jesus.

Muggeridge was trying to film in this building, but there was no electricity or power and they couldn’t get the lighting right no matter how hard they tried. On one of the last days, he was in there again and everything was set, but still the light was not good enough to film. Then, quietly and unassuming, Mother walked in and began to minister to each of those lying there. Muggeridge tells the story of how a mysterious glow followed Mother as she moved from one person to the next, holding each in her arms, bathing them to cool their fever; in a final attempt at filming, they were able to get the only footage of her in the House of the Dying, because of the light that went with her on that day.

The love of God through Christ is the essence of the whole Gospel story, and sometimes I wish we would just bring our entire focus to bear on that. The books of Romans is so rich in this regard yet so simple, where Paul constantly brings everything back to this one thing; we are made righteous with God, because of his love for us through Jesus Christ. In a world that seems to be coming every increasingly dark, surely this love is all that we have. I believe Paul thought that.

This week, for the first time in a while just my wife and I wandered out onto the streets, following a strong call to go out and minister his love to a world devoid of any light. We asked if he would come with us. There we met Val, a woman whose job it was to minister and care for the elderly and the dying, a woman who was struggling to come to terms with what she dealt with every day. We knew we had been called out just for Val, and we sat and ministered Christ to her for an afternoon. It was fabulous.

When you get to the pointy end of life, the question of death is always present and nobody has an answer outside of Jesus Christ. We see it and hear it time and again, we have so many answers to all of our questions in life, apart from the very one that matters, ‘is this all there is?’

Val asked us what we could share, how could she come to terms with so much ‘dying’, death seemed to overwhelm her. She spoke of God, but didn’t know of Jesus, the one who died in our place, so that death doesn’t have to consume us.  We were able to introduce him to her, and she listened, we could see the expression; could this be the answer to my seeking?

Jesus is a thing of beauty to behold, and sharing him with others is us doing something beautiful for God. As we were walking home after speaking with Val, we were ourselves overwhelmed at the sheer number of those who don’t know Jesus, or increasingly, have never heard of him. So few of us, so many of them.

We will continue to see Val, we sensed she wanted more – more of us? – not really, she wanted an answer to her life, one that provided a real solution to the problem of life when it ended. Jesus is her answer.

Guess what comes next;

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Make sure you tell someone this week.

The Mechanics Challenge

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So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it. For the message God delivered through angels has always stood firm, and every violation of the law and every act of disobedience was punished. So what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak? – Hebrews 2

A good mate of mine runs a mobile mechanic business. I’ve watched him grow it over the years, such that it is now has a few dozen mobile mechanics, driving hither and thither around the country each day. Like all good businesses, there is people and process, systems and method that each day make the wheels turn. It’s got to be reasonably harmonious to work.

But, here’s the rub. His mechanics have to achieve a certain workload each week, for them to be able to stay on. The business provides them all the tools, systems and leads for them to achieve their weekly targets, but they have to do the work. If they don’t, well there’s a waiting list. You see, there are quite a few people now in the business who have families and mortgages, and everyone has to keep on track to make sure the business can feed everyone.

It’s simple really isn’t it. Around the world today, millions upon millions will wake up and get out of bed, go to work, to meet certain requirements in our lives. For some, such as sports people who play at peak levels, the requirements can be very arduous indeed. All of us have expectations, demands on our lives.

Which brings us rather nicely to a Holy God.

It is the Holiness side of God’s character that demands from us, and very few people in the world want to face that prospect, believers included. Yet it is there, and will not go away. But in the book of Hebrews, it says also that Jesus is God, both God and man, and that means he too, has certain demands on us, especially as believers. Salvation is not the end of the story, it is the beginning.

I don’t want to get into a big works debate here, but to say simply this as believers we are not saved by works, but for good works. James would take that a step further, and say if there was no evidence of good works, then perhaps we should be looking hard at our faith in Christ. So, why then do most believers think that once they are saved, nothing further is required. Maybe nothing further is from the truth.

So, another very good friend of mine sent me an email a few weeks ago, that I have been thinking about ever since, and I wanted to share it with you. There’s a mission organisation in a large developing nation that runs a programme for church planters. This mission has only locals doing the work, and it is a tough gig, comparable to any peak sports performance requirement. Each missionary is trained for a year, at a cost of several times the national average salary (which though, is peanuts to most of us) and then they are cut free.

They also, like the mechanics, have a mandate and it is this. Every year, they must commit to planting two churches, consisting of 10 new converts each, and then train those converts to repeat the business. To do that, they are likely going to have to talk to 600 non-believers about their faith. As you might expect, the cost of doing that is high indeed. There will be persecution and hardship.

If they don’t? Well, believe it or not, there is queue of others a mile long waiting to do the same. All they lack is funds.

They have the entire resources of heaven behind them, because friends, this is the work that is top of God’s mind every single day. We get to co-partner with him, if we choose to do so.

So, as a small gathering here, we are looking at setting ourselves a similar challenge. A new church of 10 new converts just from our village. We will do the work, but we expect Jesus to turn up. He has given us the method, the systems and most of all himself through the Holy Spirit to make sure we achieve that goal. Surely the odds are in our favour.

You see friends, Jesus has made certain demands on our time and life, and he has given us clear commands. There is an expectation. Years of soft-peddling the Gospel in the West has led most to believe that they can accept Jesus into their hearts and then carry on living as they always have, but nowhere in the Gospel does it say that. It just about says the contrary.

So, after Easter, let each of us ask the question, what are we going to do to obey him? In your local community, wherever you are, commit prayerfully to such a goal of going out and finding ten new converts and bringing them together, teaching them to do the same.

In doing so, it would seem you will be right at the very heart of what Jesus wants to do in this world before he comes again. How good is that?

 

PS for anyone who is interested, the mission organisation are also interested in a small team who will give, pray and even consider visiting those church planters; if they had the funding right now, they could double at least, the current number of church planters in that country. Email me if this moves you, and we can perhaps do something.

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