nobrokenreed

When the Devil Walked In

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“I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, is a thief and a robber.”

“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill, and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” – John 10: 1, 10

Last week, the devil walked into our gathering. We didn’t notice him at first, but the results are always the same wherever he visits, chaos, confusion and angst.

We must be careful in not denying his existence, even recognising when he shows up. There is a habit in the West of seeing his work as just the result of natural human tendency, but that is never the case. He is real, and he has a purpose.

Jesus mentions the devil on more than one occasion and he had first hand experience of his guile. Paul, in his letters warns us that we too face dark Spiritual forces who are far more powerful and organised than we realise. It is, I often wonder, one of the most under-read and estimated verses in the Bible.

Over years of seeing the Devil work, I have come to realise that he has a primary strategy which is to destroy relationships. Marriage, nation, children-parents and especially those where Jesus is involved. Let us never forget, that because we gave allegiance to him very early on, he now blinds us to the truth of the Gospel.

The origins of the Devil suggest he was once an angel of significant status, and therefore he is powerful. However, there are a few things we should know about him as well:

Firstly, he comes under the authority of God. Like all beings, he appears regularly before his creator to give an account. Along the way, God paints the boundaries, and even the Devil is too wise to overstep those. God determines his limits.

Then, because of this, God uses him to his purpose. The devil constantly believes that he will win and can outwit God, only to find himself thwarted and frustrated. The cross must be the most perfect example of that, where surely Satan had thought he had victory, only to find himself soon after before the throne of Christ, answering to the one over whom he thought he had victory, and being reminded of his future!

Experientially, it seems Satan targets the church primarily. A sleeping church of no effect is not worth his efforts, but get out and start doing things, and you will find yourself in his sights. If that is your calling, to be missional for Christ, then expect attack against family, health, finances and above all relationships. His number one objective is to prevent people from receiving Christ, and confusing new believers who are slowly standing on their feet. He will do all he can to prevent this, and if you are the perpetrator, then you are a target. We need to expect it.

God also uses the devil to shake up his church and to discipline us. As the devil walked in the other night, it has caused all of us involved in our gathering to stop and assess whether what we are doing is what God wants. We see the need for changes, though we also recognise the effectiveness of what we are doing. What is God saying to us, we must ask?

The antidote is prayer, prayer and more prayer. If you find yourself under attack then you must pray. Be warned though, that for whatever reason God does not seem to always pull the devil back. Again, experientially, God seems to prefer to build us up to resist than to always remove the problem. Isn’t that usually the case with our Father? He obviously has an eternal purpose in doing so, in building us up to be more reliant, stronger, more fervent, passionate about his Son and His work. I don’t think we will be scolded for being too passionate about Jesus when we meet him!

So then, a bit about the devil. That’s probably all he warrants. Let’s finish with a few things about Jesus though. The devil answers to him, and will ultimately be judged by Christ. He is not Christ’s equal and opposite, one was created, the other divine. There is a vast chasm between them. Jesus tells us that ‘all authority has been granted him’ by the Father.

As Jesus reminds us here, his purpose is to give us a rich and satisfying life. His love for us knows no bounds and he died to save each of us. For those who know, the work must go on.

But, consider this; the devil is a useful temperature gauge for the state of our faith. Have you seen him around lately?

The Son of Man

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When Jesus heard what had happened, he found the man and asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man answered, “Who is he, sir? I want to believe in him.”
“You have seen him,” Jesus said, “and he is speaking to you!”
“Yes, Lord, I believe!” the man said. And he worshiped Jesus. Then Jesus told him, “I entered this world to render judgment—to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” Some Pharisees who were standing nearby heard him and asked, “Are you saying we’re blind?”
“If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty,” Jesus replied. “But you remain guilty because you claim you can see.” – John 9:35-41

Have you paused recently to stand in awe at the dignity, the splendour of this Jesus? In amongst these passages, which let’s face it we have read so many times before, we gain a picture into the very heart of God.

We see what he loves, even what he hates and how we might respond. The fact that he shows us is miraculous enough. Here, a simple, poor blind man, blind since birth is made to see. It is one of the Messianic miracles, miracles that only the Messiah would be able to do. You see, the Jews thought all disease was directly attributable to sin, but if you were born with such a defect then it became more difficult to lay the blame, and so find the cure. Only God is able to overcome.

After a grilling from the Pharisees, we see Jesus meet up again with this man, still on a high from being healed. No doubt he would have been confused with the response from the “men of God”, yet we see a simple, humble response to this Son of Man – I want to believe he responds, before he worships him.

Is that how we are with Jesus, you, me?

Recently I spoke of a young man whom we met and prayed with on Melbourne Cup day – Manny was his name. Well, I prayed about meeting him again, and we found him in Coles this week. He lives in a big, social housing complex near us. Manny is simple, yet in so many ways there is a piercing sharpness about him. He grasps the Gospel. Manny reminds me of this blind man, with his simplicity but also because somewhere along life’s journey, Jesus has opened the eyes of his heart.

This week we visited Manny and his family; in various degrees, they are at the bottom of life’s heap, ones for whom it may be difficult to say, “it could be worse.” Encounters with mental illness, addictions and just generally struggling to get out from under the crushing of life’s inexorable weight, we still managed to share tea and cake and the word of God. How eager they were to accept prayer, to listen to the Word being read, discussed, shared – who is this Jesus that might be able to help? We felt honoured, humbled. We were invited back even.

But, there is another side to their story as well, as there is here in this passage, and we best pay heed to what it says for the consequence are deadly. It says that there is a human arrogance wrapped in religion that is so insidious, it actually prevents others from coming to God. The very One who is able to solve life’s riddles, to relieve the pressure, is shut out by the very ones who loudly proclaim their own righteousness before others. If only you can be like me, they tell us. Here, Jesus proclaims them guilty.

As we learned, this family had come under a similar ‘named’ preacher, one who also proclaimed their own righteousness. He tells all before him that his own righteousness led to his success, and if they could only emulate him, their lives would change. The consequence? Simple math told the family that as they were not even in the same cosmos as the preacher, they must be guilty beyond all measure, unsalvageable even by God. “You’re a sinner since birth,” and they walk away believing the “men of God.”

Pray with us that this same carpenter who pronounced the blind to see, would set this family free. We feel certain that he wants to, and not just them, others as well – many, many others desperate for freedom. It will take time though, for them to believe that their guilt, their shame can ever be assuaged, yet we know of one who removes it as far as the East is from the West. They must get to know him, to realise his love for them. Such love is the only antidote to such human ugliness.

Have you looked into the face of this Jesus recently, have we listened to him, nodded our affirmation and then quietly gone about his business and shared him with another? Friends, he is a treasure too good to bury and we never know whom he might put our way. A blind person needing to see perhaps?

Let us hasten while the light is here, for darkness may soon be upon us.

Blessed are the Poor (full stop)

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“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.

 

Unity

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”I do nothing on my own, but say only what the Father has taught me. And the one who sent me is with me – he has not deserted me. For I always do what pleases him.” – John 8: 28-9

The more you get into Christianity, the more you recognise its uniqueness. At the moment I’m reading through John’s Gospel and Matthew’s Gospel simultaneously, and with that comes wonderful insight into the wide character and nature of Jesus Christ.

One of the overarching themes, is the unity between Christ and his Father. They were, as they had always been, inseparable. The power, the love, the miraculous that Jesus displayed were as a direct result of that connection.

This relationship was not merely a Sunday relationship, one reserved for the moments when he attended religious ceremony, no this occurred moment by moment, step by step every day of his earthly life. What does that say about us? Well, later in John’s message, we see Jesus inviting us to emulate the same relationship with him, that he had with his Father.

With that possibility comes tremendous freedom in life, the allowance to go about our daily business, whatever that might be, while listening to and being guided by the Spirit each moment.

Unity in Christ amongst believers also makes for an incredibly rich existence in community. Each week in a gathering there are surprises. We don’t know what the Lord has been doing in each others lives that week, but stories abound, all to do with individual or collective responses to the leading of the Spirit. In spite of our differences, it makes us a collective joined by love too. Such a community, bound up by the love of Christ is a real attraction for the world outside. So, we are beginning to ‘export’ this community in Christ around to start other communities, centred around him. It is, after all, what he told us to do.

The hardest thing, as we speak of this Jesus to others, is to get people to see past him as a religion. One wonders, do the letters of John read like a religion? Does Paul’s enthusiasm for what he was doing, sound like our modern day church? For so long, we have been taught that God is what we do on Sundays, and possibly on Wednesdays and it has been so ingrained in every aspect of society, that it is a hard habit to break. When we speak of reaching unbelievers to church-Christians, the response is always, ‘invite them to church.’

It is this very thing that in our experience, blocks more people from coming into the riches of unity with Christ, than anything else. To the question we frequently ask, ‘do you understand who Jesus is?’ comes the typical response, ‘I used to go to church.’ It is the hardest thing to get past and in almost every instance, we walk away empty-handed, deeply saddened.

Yesterday, as we were bbqing down on the streets with some Brazillian friends, a drunk walked up to my wife and offered her the last of his bread rolls. So the conversation began. He told us that he was taking his friend out, who was a chronic alcoholic, friendless and unloved, for a day trip. It was something he frequently did, yet nobody knew of it. My wife replied that actually somebody did know of what he did, and that person was Jesus. In a tirade that then lasted 10 mins, he began to tells us of his appalling experience at Church, and told us repeatedly how he had turned his back on religion. Eventually, we managed to softly get the message through about Jesus, who he was and what was on offer. He left blessing us and thanking us, but still not really understanding.

So then, two things. Firstly, ‘the Kingdom of God is within us’, means that from the moment we accept Christ and put our faith in him, he dwells within us. Through his Spirit, we can have day to day, moment by moment interaction with him. This is what Jesus wants, and this is what eternal life is. If you think eternal life is a far-off place that we will one day go to, then think again. Eternal life is a unity with God in his Kingdom, and it is an existence that begins now. We can have the same day by day unity with Christ, as he tells us he has with his Father in these passages – believe me, that is what he wants above everything else. The place where that happens is not as relevant as his presence.

Surely then, this is very different to what we are taught; that God is still accessible only through a priest, and we can live an unnatural life, one day a week, pretending to be what we aren’t. It’s not what Christ tells us.

Secondly, a King Dom is where a King has his domain, or dominion. Jesus does not currently have dominion over this world, Satan does – the question is, does he have dominion over you? Are you responding to his kingship day by day, as any servant of the king would do or are we going through the motions, living an existence that doesn’t match up? He sees straight through us, but more importantly he knows that is not where our best interests lie. What is your desire then?

A day is surely coming when he is going to set up his King Dom, and those who want no part of it, will be removed from it. Theirs will be another kingdom, so contrasted to his it is unimaginable. Going to church will not save you either.

In his Kingdom, unity with him will be an every moment affair, he will communicate with us clearly such that we understand and do his will as it is all we will want to do. He wants us though, to practice now, and he wants us to tell others about the good news of his Kingdom.

Are we listening, are we ready?

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