God actively showing us how to live!

Just a quick post that I'd like to file under the increasingly random tag of "reflections". Let me know if this sort of blogging informs your own thoughts!

Now in the wake of Easter, I have been able to see God's work pushing me to invest in people the way that Jesus invested in us, wholly and sacrificially. This has been brought home in a number of ways:

1) I've had a new chance to show people I am interested in their lives at work as I have moved to a new, more talkative, team - and God has been fantastic, really providing good times to chat about Him. Pray these continue and that interest in the Lord grows.

2) A news update from the Bulgarian Christian Union movement, BHSS. Here's an extract: "Easter is a great time for witnessing to students! Just before Easter, the BHSS students from the Bible study groups in Sofia, together with other students from Studentski grad (the Student Residential Area) ran a clean-up in front of apartment block No. 21. The students chose the motto: 'Clean up and be forgiven'. It was a great opportunity for the Christian students to share with their non-Christian friends how in a similar way, God ‘cleaned-up’ and forgave us on the Easter day." During the project one leader was allowed to run a lesson about Easter in a pre-school, where the students painted the play areas, and after the project 4 non-Christian students started coming to their regular meetings. It's encouraging that God works through people choosing to go out there, rolling up their sleeves and just going to people with good intentions and words of hope.

3) Talks by Tim Keller at The London Men's Convention which showed us just how incredible our God is. In the Garden before he went to the cross, Jesus was faced with the choice "him or us" by his Father - and right at the point where He was seeing the lowest of human sin, too. He knew that on the cross he would take on all the ugly sin of human rebellion and wickedness - and had no reason to choose "us", to face the whole ordeal and the full wrath of God for us - but he did! One way this applies to the Christian who Jesus has saved is this: When I'm faced with the choice to help others, to go the extra mile, to be with them in their hardship, will I choose God's way or my way, will I choose "myself" or "them"?

4) Serving in church, even merely by deciding to speak up in prayer or in showing interest to others - and, crucially, appreciating when others do this, some of whom I really admire.

5) Working through some of the New Word Alive notes I made (which I have largely yet to blog on!) Go here to listen to some great talks. I will highly recommend Mike Reeves' Justification track, Dan Strange's series on 'Rules of Engagement' with Culture (it has a hard first session but gets a lot better) and the Pastoral Care track, too. The lessons of the latter one in how to care like Jesus are continually demanding lessons, but also confirmed over and over by Scripture, which reminds us of the reality of our hopeful yet often trying situation as wait for the only big day left on God's calendar: the end of the world, the day he judges, righting all wrongs, and bringing believers into a wonderful, fully-realised realm, free from evil, where Jesus is our majestic King. While we wait, we are called to encourage each other in the church (Heb 10:24-5), and this involves hard work, joys and sorrows (eg Heb 13:3), much prayer for and with one another and great dependence on "the God of matchless care" to inform and inspire our caring.

Bulgaria summer camp reunion - and spreading the gospel [the news of Jesus]

Recently I caught up with the team I was part of that went out from the UK to Bulgaria in July. There’s something about shared experiences that can bring you together, isn’t there? Jim and I felt it was only about two weeks since we were together there playing cards and Mafia with the Bulgarians, learning to hurry our hops and steps to keep in time with the dances, eating soups and Shopska salad and bread and noodles, attempting to teach English through the use of animal noises, trying to emphasise the importance of the idea of sin and the fact that Jesus is the only Saviour in the Bible study times, chatting the Americans about Little Britain, and wandering around the mountainous landscape surrounding our hotel on someone’s misguided idea of a “hike”.

For those reading this who pray, do pray for more freedom for Bulgarian students to speak about God on their campuses. The Christian student groups are unable to hold their events in the university or even advertise on campus, which means they really can only reach those they are close to. Having seen the situation first-hand, I would love to see the gospel explode across the country, bringing light to all those who are following dead religion – superstitious ideas not based on the historical gospel – or to those caught in poverty there. Also, the movement would benefit from having a staff worker in the South, where there are no student groups.

Life has moved on for me since the trip. But the students we met are continuing in their journey of deciding where to put their trust. It is great to hear that most students from the camp are now attending churches in their cities in the North. Almost all are still in touch with the Christian student groups. May our generous God do what he has done for me and bring them
all from spiritual death, through his cross of forgiveness, to true and everlasting life!

In the UK, of course the challenge continues to keep on doing the uncomfortable thing and reaching out, and, together with that, to fight complacency in our own hearts and resist the pursuit of comfort that is such a big cause of stress here (just try asking a middle-aged mum whether she is ready for Christmas!) Isn’t it funny how unimportant things can take over without us ever noticing? While we pray for the Bulgarians we should also pray that the church here continues to find ways of getting the gospel out there to non-Christians, and doesn’t settle for merely supporting those within the church. Let’s not lose our sense of mission and the pull on our hearts of Jesus’ command to go to all the world with the gospel (including our work colleagues and old school or uni friends)!