Seeing and believing

On Wednesday night I went to my house group (a Bible study group that meets in someone's house). As we were looking at John 9 it struck me how easy it easy to get everything totally wrong. Let me explain.

The Jewish Pharisees were so sure their rules of religion were right that when God showed up among them, they discounted him - and worse, opposed him. His work amongst people did not fit into their ideas about what kind of activities could be carried out on the Sabbath - and some held this against him, seeing his new way as undermining what they "knew" to be God's way.

Their desperation with the situation and growing hatred of Jesus is apparent, yet He is the one they must wake up and see is God.

The contrast in the chapter is of course with the man whom Jesus has freed from blindness, who answers their questions plainly and as best he can. His words start to point out the Pharisees' spiritual blindness!

There's a whole lot here to learn about how we must relate to God: humbly, coming to Him for salvation. The gospel comes and it offers a message which is bitter to someone who is confident in their own righteousness. It points us to the ways we have all failed God's standards because it's the inward thoughts and intentions of the heart towards God and others which matter most.

The sweet good news of salvation comes though God's free gift. He initiates rescue, and the Pharisee or the self-righteous can't do a thing to save themselves - we all must only accept this gift by accepting the great Saviour Jesus and coming under his rule. He achieves our salvation by the cross - we merely throw ourselves at his feet and receive this work of grace into our lives.

May I never NEVER never forget this Lord of love and his gift of grace. As I see what He has done, my desire increases for Him. And so I try hard to follow Him in my life.

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The sequel to thoughts like this is living this out in reality. Sadly in reality, my desire for and love of God is far too weak. At times I will serve God forgetting that I rely on him and, as Tim Keller describes in his excellent book The Prodigal God, I'll try to control God by doing things I think should please him. And I'll get frustrated when things go wrong.

There's much work still to be done on my heart. I need to tell myself that I need Jesus. Above all else. I need Him as He is my only salvation.

Another thing that spins out of this is how we show this message to others. How do we show people that while being good is important, it's the inner life towards God and others that matters the most? How do we model grace (as Ed Moll recently described it in a talk at my church)? How do we show the love of God instead of dishing out approval or disapproval based on outward behaviour, like the Pharisees would have done? How do we show that God accepts us when we have broken all the rules - when I have broken all the rules? Can we be as accepting of others as He is, and yet, of course, never saying that evil behaviour is right in any way.

I think the way I relate to others rarely shows this. I'm sure that people around me still get the impression that the way I relate to them will depend on their behaviour towards me - this will determine whether I give my approval. Surely God's way is far better! I should love and keep loving whether I approve or not, whether I am treated well or not! I should be patient, generous, giving, listening, bearing with others, when it's far too easy to fit in with the expected culture which shows either that it does not care about a person and their lifestyle, or that the lifestyle ought to be of a certain standard in order for me to pay attention to the the person in question.

If anyone has done some further thinking about how to model grace in relationships, let me know!

New Word Alive 2010 - solid teaching as God worked on our hearts

At New Word Alive, as well as taking video interviews, worshiping God in meetings with around 4000 other people, and enjoying the amazing scenery, there was significant time for some great teaching from gifted teachers. Over the next couple of days I will post on some of the sessions and what lines of thought particularly affected me.

1) Hugh Palmer stirred us to action by preaching through 1 Thessalonians. Let’s follow the authentic model of being a worker in God's kingdom that we see in Paul and the Thessalonians. Are we a people of repentance who turn from idols to the living God? Is it plain to others that we have done that? DO we love Him and have great joy in Him? God’s kind of ministry means having great patience with others. It means there is a need to tell the truth, and to not be afraid of that. It is a burden of care, as we don’t want people to drift away from God in the church. It can be scary, making us vulnerable, as we share our lives.

Also the fact that Jesus is returning should change how we view death, and also life – we live in light of that future day which will show up how we have used our time, that future day of light, when the future will belong to God and to us who believe in him – we ought to remind each other of this day as believers!

2) Jerry Bridges spoke on holiness and I got to the last 2 sessions: Saw how we need the gospel every day to survive as a Christian, and that being made like Christ in our lives is plainly an amazing thing.

Working at texts like Ephesians 4:17-32 he raised our view of what it means to become godly. There’s no wrong in God at all, and there is fruitfulness, peace, joy, and selflessness and much more – and we are called to be like Him in everything. We saw something of what it means to cut out the evil in our malicious thoughts, our tendency to assume people are doing bad stuff – and we saw how our harsh or misplaced words can grieve God – yes, he cares about the details of what we say as well. May I make this a major area to pray over!

3) Here's my friend Dave Anthony on what he was learning during a seminar track I didn't attend:

NWA 2010 - Caring for people in debt or with burdens

It's been a busy week since New Word Alive finished and we all trekked back from Pwhelli, North Wales, to our homes. But it's essential to learn from what God was teaching us during the week, and I hope to post on some of the things I learned in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, here's a second interview to get you thinking. This time, it's Jonny Joslin, who works for Christians Against Poverty. How can we show others the kind of hard practical love Christ showed by coming to earth as a man to meet with us, and to die to save us? How can we give ourselves to others?

Speaking for Jesus

Sometimes in non-Christian circles I say something about my beliefs or even something fairly ordinary about my church that gets me noticed. It can even be that occasionally I am conspicuously not taking part in a certain type of conversation because I am a Christian, and suddenly this gets me noticed – and often on these occasions, because I am not (yet!) naturally the type of person to springboard off that and lead a conversation about faith, something rather bizarre happens: Someone makes a comment which shows me they have just judged me and my faith.

“So you are like this then: [insert some unhelpful stereotype].” “So you were brought up in it then - your parents were quite strict, were they?” (the demeaning idea that I have swallowed everything I've heard uncritically, or blindly followed my family/church teaching and being shackled my whole life by a restrictive rule-book/perspective). Or “My cousin is a Jehovah’s Witness and they don’t let her…” or “My life philosophy is …” or “You believe this (X) too, don’t you?” “Does that mean you can’t do Y? Don’t you ever want to? What’s wrong with it? Do you think we are all scum then? Are we all going to hell then? [laughter]” and so on!

Why does this part, where non-Christians start to make their own huge, uninformed judgements about you, happen at all?

OK, so it’s partly lack of knowledge; they strike out at similar things and get it wrong. Also, in my experience, it can happen because of sincere disagreement with Christianity, but more often it is done out of a desire to voice an opinion about life/relationships with others/God which is supposed to prove me wrong in some way and make the speaker look good and his/her lifestyle seem OK. It’s about fun and self and control. They have rarely even got to the point of considering the facts at this stage. Quite often it also becomes a chance to make jokes at what seems rather bizarre to them to start with and which they are uncomfortable talking about.

Now I can’t believe I’m the only one who has been in one of these uncomfortable situations – finding I miss the chance to speak about my faith and then having someone else speak about theirs (or against mine) in my stead?

So this post, which is already getting quite long, is about taking control in conversations – something I need to encourage myself, and other believers, to do!

First of all, two caveats:

• Listening to what other people think is a way of valuing them and loving them, and questioning them will also give you an idea of where they are coming from. So there is a place for working hard in conversation to find out what is important to those people whom God loves who we are speaking to, as we present to them why we live for Jesus, and what that means. Of course, this doesn’t mean being a wet blanket. We must stand firm in our convictions at this stage and not just blindly agree to everything, but show that, while we are engaging with what they are saying, we think Jesus is real and must follow his way.
• Our sinful natures mean we can want to take control for many wrong reasons. For instance I may want to speak up (or write, like on a blog!) simply out of impatience and to make things better for myself. I might say something, not so spiritually dead people see who Jesus is and what he has done and begin to love him, but so that they see I am right and get on my side in the debate. I might in short want others to agree with me to make things more convenient, and so I can get people off my back. Peter didn’t see it this way when he wrote 1 Peter 3:14-18. We need to know that it is better to be gentle and to love others, and suffer for it like Jesus, than bully others to be “right” and have an easier life. Taking control of conversations must be done for the right reasons.

Having said all this, part of loving people is persuading, explaining, pleading with them and showing them why we believe in the gospel. And the only way others will see why Jesus is worthy of their full attention, their time, their lives, is if we jump in and take the opportunity.

Can I suggest quickly pointing to Jesus? “He is the reason I am a Christian today. I wouldn’t keep living following Him, apart from the fact that I think that when he lived as a man on earth 2000 years ago he showed that he was God /the only way to know God.” Or something along those lines. And with confidence in your voice!

Don’t let them get away with saying the message of the Bible has been changed over the years – they haven’t looked into it if they say this, and you can just firmly inform them that the records we have are accurate and were checked and re-checked when copied out to the next manuscript, and that the oldest ones are used today to give us our modern Bibles. More importantly, point to the fact that the first churches started because people were utterly serious about Jesus rising from the dead and that is our hope today too. If we lived roughly 1970 years ago, we could have seen Jesus die and then be alive after death, we could have touched Him and heard Him, and got to know Him. So, somehow like this, we can feel our way back to the point of talking about Jesus!

The aim of pointing to Jesus is to get our friends to look again, as adults, at what Jesus really did, and to think about why He did it and what this shows about Him, and about God. God really wanted to have us as His children. He sent His Son to die for us.

Another approach is to look at humanity and what we are doing with our lives, the world, and our relationships. The Bible would say we are designed to know God personally, and it is our rebellion from Him that is the root of evil. It’s pretty evident in the world. We can talk about the evil in the news, and our own idolatry, making our wants King and hurting those we love. We can talk about the possibility of being restored in God’s sight, forgiven and set free from the power of addicting sin. We can speak of personal battles won by God’s power*, such as battles of faith in prayer and battles against sin, as God has over time helped us become more like our Lord Jesus. We can speak of our connection to our Maker, our privilege of knowing Him.

Also, when friends try to justify their own anti-God lifestyle in what they are saying, you could try being really blunt and asking what this lifestyle is really getting them. Do they have good relationships? Is there something that has become obsessively important in their lives? Do they know where they are heading in the future, or what their purpose is in the world? Is their lifestyle going to win them any points with God? Do they know what he really thinks about it? What about death? Let them know about heaven and hell, so they are prepared.

I’ve already said I’m not a natural at this. And I know one or two people who I really, really struggle to respond well to. But it is important enough to write about and spend time thinking about, and perhaps this could be a starting point for discussion. Any ideas?

*I heard an example from this excellent talk about a man on death row in the USA who became a Christian and stopped pleading insanity, although it was advised by his lawyers, because he knew it was a lie, and he didn’t want to lie any more! People really do change when God works in them.

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.

"Pause" - a review

Here are my thoughts on an inspiring evening titled “Pause” by the Christian drama and arts group Acts 29. As one Reading student pointed out, it’s a way into evangelism that isn’t purely middle class! (That’s one thing about the arts – they can work on lots of levels.)

OK, so here’s what you need to know about Pause.

The idea? To run an evening of intimate entertainment which does more than entertain – which aims to stir up thought about the deeper issues of life and to provide a conversation starter, through a variety of high quality acts, from an R&B/Soul singer to a hip-hop duo, from impressive, rousing rock to probing poetry to sharp, engaging monologue. I particularly enjoyed the cleverly layered guitarwork, the way you were made to feel at ease during the monologues, "down the pub" style, the classy, funky keyboard-accompanied songs - and the way the poetry brought a sense of place and roused feelings about situations and systems, and yet had the power to get us to think. For instance at one point our enigmatic poet recasts tube passangers as silent beings frozen on their "pillar arms". Where has the life gone out of this picture? It is in the poet, who is there, it seems, actively questioning the situation.

The writers behind the project clearly see the power of great art to raise our eyes from the things of everyday to the Maker of everything, and I can imagine the performance nudging non-Christians to respond to these attitudes and ideas, and to take time to consider where their lives are heading in the middle of all the messages and ideas in our society. All this will provide a chance to speak about our message of hope “in season”.

What makes it good?

Well, on New Word Alive, I learned about the value of shared life experiences in the dialogue between Christians and our largely secular culture. These experiences are made possible because of God, who made us in His image. We have emotions and hopes, because we were built for good things, and we have, like God, the capacity for joy and love - and brilliant thoughts, which we can think “after His thoughts”. He dreamed every creative thing up before we even thought it, as He (specifically Jesus) is the source of everything good (cf Colossians 1:16-17).

"Pause" connected with us as it sought to evoke and reflect on important life experiences and feelings in our culture - helping us relate to the characters involved, and also (sometimes more directly) pointing to the one who designed us to enjoy such experiences. Here’s a quick list of issues which were suggested or came up in the evening:

Our sense of humour about all kinds of things,
peer pressure, and group behaviour,
the way we can’t escape media and information in a non-stop TV world,
the way we hide behind masks, looking good but being broken inside,
the way we often refuse to be vulnerable in front of someone,
the joy that someone’s love can bring us when they make incredible sacrifices for us, and how we treasure them,
the way we build our lives, and the direction for them,
the idea of not being real, or the feeling of being out of place in the world, or the idea that we are just cogs in a vast impersonal machine, and related questions about the value of working,
the way we tell, and love to hear, stories (even tall stories), the way we feel threatened in our society when asked about religious things, unless it is in the pub, or very casually discussed,
and finally, the wonders of creation and expression, demonstrated in music and rhythm and in the way we experiment with sound and words.

Many of these themes and ideas celebrate what is good about mankind, and face us with our huge aspirations in life, filling our horizons with new perspectives, some right, some foolhardy. The acts suggest that we long for authentication, love, friendship, expression, freedom, and to be taken seriously, and that we are frustrated in many ways and have reason for sorrow. More than once I heard a biblical strand of thought suggested, that we should seek God's help, and that His love is there for us if we come to Him - really the only answer to humanity's real problems.

Without being in relationship with Him, forgiven freely through the death of Jesus, and accepted into His family, our lives our ultimately futile, and fragile, something that can sometimes be sensed in art. The Bible clarifies this, teaching that man is "like breath" without God, quickly fading away, and having no hope - without Him we are not ultimately heading towards great things but towards death, after which we will have no hope to produce or to experience anything good at all: In fact we will reap the rewards for living bad lives, by facing God’s punishment in hell.

Sobering words, but necessary ones: life is meaningless without the hope of a future, and this is reflected in the way the working life can become a drudgery, and things seem to keep going round and round; we were designed for somewhere better (as CS Lewis suggested, cf Ecclesiastes).

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Other reflections: For what is effectively a pre-evangelism event, there was a lot of talent on show, and great production values (good work, team) – and this made me think more broadly about the state of things in the UK. We are so fortunate to have all these resources for an event targeted brilliantly to a certain audience, a certain type of friend, who is up for discussion and who enjoys stimulating art.

But why do we need pre-evangelism in the UK? Part of me tends to think it’s because we are now either too afraid or unimaginative to develop good relationships with those who are not Christians and to speak up to let them know about our wonderful gospel message, and so we want to rely on a packaged resource like this one. Or perhaps we are just too unconcerned for our friends’ eternal future? Whatever, we really need more creative ways to raise questions and starting points to speak about the true and triune God of Christianity, as our society has become increasingly reluctant to discuss Him and increasingly unaware of what the Bible has to say about Him. I’m all for more projects like this one!

Anyone else got any views on Pause?
http://www.myspace.com/pausetour

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)!

How to see other people

After two and a half months of unemployment, I have a job :) - and a new set of people around me. Such a change has helped me to see again what God's instruction to love and serve others will actually mean in practice, and, after last month's overdose of posts on comic books (I guess I have had some time on my hands) I have decided it will be worthwhile to post on some of the lessons I have been learning. I hope it's helpful!

It struck me this morning that being dismissive of someone (ie. a family member or someone at work) is usually just a concealed form of hating them. Or at least the two are linked. It says to them “I would rather you were out of my way”. It suggests that the person not worth your attention is repulsive, someone you can abuse and treat without any compassion or grace whatsoever.

But impatience and hate are not God’s way.

The way of hate forgets that God has given us his powerful Spirit in order to love the unlovable, and to care about others in times of stress and suffering when we wouldn’t naturally do it. I think we would all do well to study Jesus’ words during his time of suffering, in the Garden and on the cross. Not only did he pray for his followers when he was in agonising fear, on the cross he chose to forgive the crowds mocking him. Giving people our love can be tough and costly, but it shows grace.

There’s one more thing that being dismissive of others shows up in us. It shows we have forgotten that every person on the earth was made in the image of God, whether or not they are becoming more like him or less. As such, we should honour that God-given dignity and beauty.

Last year I read something from CS Lewis that said that every person we meet is an eternal person, with an eternal destiny. All our friends and family, and those on our streets and in our offices and schools; every one will have one of the two eternal homes to go to. They will either be in a place of great honour for ever in the renewed world God will rule, enjoying the enormous blessings of knowing our generous God, or they will be cast out, far from love and life, suffering for ever in a place where God punishes their sin. These sobering truths remind us that we are far more than animals – we are responsible creatures, whose decisions have profound effects. We will be held accountable.

And what else can we see from the Bible about other people? They were all designed to find the most joy in life in knowing God in a relationship, and in reflecting his goodness in the world by being like him: loving others and loving the Father, making a positive impact on the society and the world, making the right moral decisions, etc. And they were all designed to rely on God in prayer; some days, when I really know the blessing of talking to God and asking him to for help and strength for every situation, I wonder how I could possibly live without this amazing gift.

In the gospel these things – a relationship with God, reliance on him, joy, changed behaviour – can come to anyone. And they bring real hope and fullness of life, whether that is to a business-obsessed young professional, a struggling council estate family or your most awkward work colleague! All the blessings that God has for believers can come to any one of the people you know through the double-punch package of the gospel and God’s Spirit. Happy days!

So next time you are tempted to sidestep that whining adolescent or talkative pensioner who you don’t think is worth your time – think again about the God who created them to reflect his glory. Think about their eternal destiny. And, perhaps most of all, think about the love shown by Jesus on the cross.

Pic above right: Some Bulgarian students helping a (quite poor) town by renovating the park. I was there and got involved by visiting an inspiring old lady who was ill and lonely and loved the company. These are some examples of how we can love the overlooked in our society. Pray for those pictured to become Christians and for their friends in a country where there has been official opposition to Christian groups.