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Marcus Honeysett's Blog
Just off to the 2010 Pastoral Refreshment Conference - The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength.
Will anyone reading this take a minute to pray for a mighty sense of God moving and anointing. We want him to leading people further into his lavish grace, for the nurture of their hearts, the blessing of their churches and the worldwide spread of the Kingdom of God.
In our home group we are reading John Ortberg's book "The Life You've Always Wanted". A good and helpful read. Yesterday I read the bit about Hank - a man who acted Christian, was always grumpy, said he wasn't, and complained about everything. Especially the volume of worship music at his church, over which he called the health and safety executive. Ortberg says:
Hank could not effectively love his wife or his children or people outside his family. He was easily irritated...whatever capacity he once might have had for joy or wonder or gratitude atrophied. He critiqued and judged and complained, and his soul got a little smaller each year.
I read that and some faces I know instantly spring to mind. Miserable Christians exist, even though it ought to be an oxymoron. But its what Ortberg says next that challenges me:
even more troubling than [Hank's] lack of change was the fact that nobody was surprised by it...The church staff did have some expectations. We expected that Hank would affirm certain religious beliefs. We expected that eh would attend services, read the Bible, support the church financially, pray regularly and avoid certain sins. But here's what we didn't expect: we didn't expect that he would progressively become the way Jesus would be if he were in Hank's place. We didn't expect that each year would find him a more compassionate, joyful, gracious, winsome personality. We didn't anticipate that he was on the way to becoming a source of delight and courtesy who overflowed with rivers of living water. So we were not shocked when it didn't happen. We would have been surprised if it did!
Ouch! If I don't expect the miserable Christians I know to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, what does that say about Jesus, and about my understanding of getting changed by the gospel? But more importantly, if I justify in my own mind that they are never going to change anyway then I can validate never having to do the uncomfortable thing of challenging them to change, urging and exhorting them to live in grace or confronting them with their lack of delight and courtesy.
If, on the other hand, I believe that Jesus can and does do that in people's lives, I have no choice but to urge and exhort and challenge and encourage change. I have to believe that people who are as miserable as sin can be changed by the power of God. I believe in a transformational gospel and a transformational Holy Spirit.
Church leaders ought to have a holy dissatisfaction with people remaining in their grottiness. We mustn't write it off as merely temperamental or unchangeable. We mustn't think that God wants them to remain in their state. We mustn't think that its really OK or at least not serious enough to ever get on to the agenda to do something about it. We mustn't think that it doesn't affect the rest of the church negatively and we mustn't think that challenging it with the love of God isn't our responsibility.
Praying this for the grotty Christians I know today. Will you pray for me that I keep remembering it? After all, if God can get through to me in my sin and stupidity (and, yes - grottiness!) and change me, he can get through to anyone.
Excellently thoughtful article on why God allows suffering on the BBC website, here
At least as interesting as the piece are the responses to it. I find one particularly gut-wrenching. It begins:
"As an Anglican, I always had presumed that God is too big, if you like, too omnipotent to even vaguely notice humanity."
Hmmm, dealing with the age old, anguished, questions of suffering and evil by positing that God doesn't care about - or even notice - humanity, and identifying that as "Anglican". Praise God for my many Anglican friends and colleagues who deal with the issue with a good deal more biblical insight and pastoral sensitivity than that.
A musing from yesterday's home group.
Why is it hard to take next steps of faith with God? I can think of three reasons:
1. We like to walk by sight, not by faith. A commitment to walk by faith means opening ourselves up to the possibility that God might want us to something that, as yet, we feel unqualified to do. In fact, that is pretty much the definition of walking by faith. If I can already do it without God in the picture, then it isn't walking by faith, it is walking by sight
2. We like to avoid scary things. Being asked to do something that we currently feel unqualified to do is scary. We naturally default to being within our areas of expertise and comfort, not outside them. Therefore walking by faith is inherently scary because God is in control and we are not. When God told Moses to go to Pharaoh his list of excuses is almost comic. I'm certain when God took nearly all of Gideon's army (and all the weapons!) away, Gideon must have felt quite inclined to not walk by faith. But walking by sight means we win the victory (usually small and inconsequential ones) and we get the glory. God is interested in him winning the victory (big and world-shaking ones) and him winning the glory as he fights for his name and his people. Walking by faith is getting us involved in his purposes. Walking by sight means the most we will ever do is ask God to get involved in our purposes
3. Walking by faith contains the assumption that God speaks today and guides us to do certain things. Either by general understanding from the Bible that his purposes for his people involve us doing everything to spread his fame all over the world. Or an understanding that sometimes he directs much more specifically, even individual believers to individual acts of faith. The person who doesn't believe either of those has no reason to walk by faith because their implicit assumption is that God will not guide them to anything, other than to live godly lives but in totally non-specified ways. If you don't believe in some degree of specific guidance, it is hard to see how you believe in walking by faith either. For that person, the Christian walk consists of doing your best to live a holy life (a good thing!), but nothing more
I suspect that this last category contains a large percentage of Christians in Britain. Trying to live in ways that are morally pleasing to God, but not expecting him to direct them in specific ways, let alone into adventures that are beyond their control. And in the lack of expectation they don't pray for it because secretly they don't really want it. Much better to be in control and never do anything scary. Wanting to walk by sight isn't very godly, isn't very faith-building, will never take strongholds for God or storm the gates of Hell, and leads to mediocre lives whose highest definition of success is "am I comfortable." And that is very sad.
Thankfully it is not true of the members and leaders of our home group.
Pastoral Refreshment Conference