BlogPosted by Andy Sun, January 11, 2009 23:02So this is how it goes down: Something happens to you. Someone cusses you out. Friend turns on you. Bad mouthed by others. Family member taken ill. If, like me, you are vastly ego-centric, (and a Christ follower), you think, "God, why is this happening to me?"
Generally I get annoyed by the person, frustrated by the situation, depressed by being unable to help, and ready to say my 50 quids worth...
I've been reading the message recently... Got to Isaiah 53. The suffering servant. If you want evidence for Jesus, look 400 years before He was born. Wow. anyhows, we read how Jesus was bruised and torn for our sins.
Then there is this line, dropped in from a south paw. I didn't see it coming until it had me against the ropes.
I mean, how could it be "God's will to crush Him"? Cheese Stalk (Steve Chalke) touched on this and got mullered by the Christian press by suggesting "sadistic dad" syndrome... well, at least to some eyes, 2000 years after the event. Times have changed.
We also know that "Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered." Pain is part of the human condition, and for those who pray dangerous prayers.... like, "God, I want to know you more", or, "Help me see with your eyes/love my family more (Thanks, Evan Almighty)/feel what you feel/take my life and let it be..." will most probably be on the receiving end.
God will knock the rough edges off. Funny, He chooses to use people and the "discipline of circumstances" to do exactly that.
And guess where our attention goes (or mine at least):
To the person. The people. The situation.
We may even hate them. Wish harm. Want out. Pray that God step in.
But what did you pray?
God's will is often to crush us. Paul writes that if we share in Jesus' sufferings, we will share in His glory. Bring on the pain! (Please, Lord, I said it tongue in cheek!)
BlogPosted by Andy Mon, December 01, 2008 10:10So can we really call it "Good News"?
depends what we are talking about. Paul the apostle says that if christians only have hope for this life, then we are to be pitied above everyone else... by implication (i.e. we have hope for eternal life) we are to be envied because we are sure of where we are going after our physical death... Randomly, Cryogenics scientists (peeps who freeze humans/animals so in the future when technology has advanced?? they can be brought back to life) do not believe their "clients" are dead when pronounced "legally dead" by a doctor/paramedic. instead, they refer to them as "deanimated", or "legally dead". They hope they will be "reanimated" sometime in the future. Tell me, even if they get the organs going again, who is going to breathe life into them??
I digress.
So the gospel is that Jesus died to take the sins of the world and make peace with God for us, that "whoever believes in Him shall not perish but live forever" (john 3:16)... Right??
I ain't gonna disagree, but I am going to add, because there is more!! All the stuff Jesus talked about - being holy like God is holy, loving enemies, walking the walk free from giving in to temptation, free from anxiety and fear - it wasn't just to guilt trip us, but can be our daily lived experience!! And Jesus said we (His followers) will do greater things than He was doing. Have you? Jesus raised 3 people from the dead over a 3 year period. Healed EVERYONE THAT CAME TO HIM! sure, many weren't healed, but they didn't come to Him to be healed. He even healed just 3 people remotely (yet we have made that model of prayer our norm... Jesus didn't, and we wonder why so few people are healed when we get out our trusty 10 page of A4 prayer list!)
The key? simple trust. like a child trusts that the next meal will be provided. Break it down:
1. Trust that Jesus lives the life in and thru me... it aint my effort anymore!
2. Trust that Jesus will do and be what He said He would do and be (read Matt-john again!)
3. Trust that Jesus never pushed people away. People walked away by their own choices.
So can we really call it "Good News"? How about Exceptional, Awe-inspiring, Tremendous, Earth-shattering, Sensational, Red-hot, Off-the-hizzook, Blingbling, Top-notch, Premier....
BlogPosted by Andy Sun, October 19, 2008 10:01So this last tuesday I actually saw (more accurately, experienced) how Christianity works in practice in terms of being a new creation...
If what Jesus talks about:
"When the Son sets you free, you are completely free" (john 8)
"You will do even greater things than I have done..."
etc. doesn't work in practice, then I don't want to buy into following Him. Sorry, but that means that He is a liar. and a big one at that. however, this tuesday confirmed that these are not just empty thoughts spoken by empty words.
If any one reading this has ever experienced temptation or fear, you will know that it can sometimes have a very physical feeling attached to it. Fear seems to "clamp" around your heart making you unable to cry out for help, whisper a prayer or make any well-thought out response. Temptation grows like a burden until you give in, and then the burden is satisfied. I love CS Lewis' take on it in Mere Christianity... if you haven't read it, do it!
So I feel an increasing pressure as I'm getting on with other tasks that need to be done. Finally, when I think I can't ignore it anymore, a sentence - more like a lightning bolt - enters my sphere of reckoning...
"I am dead."
That's it? Yep.
"I am dead." I say the words as a whisper, scared to let them out of my mind. "I am dead." More confident this time. It is dawning on me that I am a dead man. "For I died with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." Wooah.... where's that from? Galatians 2 v 20 to save you time...
Truth is traversing the most treacherous terrain known to humankind: the mountain path from head to heart. I speak to the thoughts pressing down on me, threatening to wreak havoc on my day: "I am dead. You are not speaking to me, because dead men do not and cannot hear. These lies/fears/temptations are falling on the ears of Jesus... and He has (quote) been tempted in every way like us yet was without sin. He has (quote) defeated sin and death. He is the perfect man, the summation of everything that is right... all that I want to be."
In that moment, the physical feeling I had growing inside, disapated as suddenly as it had appeared. I had experienced a mini-death, but life was the final score.
BlogPosted by Andy Thu, September 25, 2008 09:43Death is one of those "no-go" taboo subjects, but it is something that I am getting increasingly familiar with. In a good way. I was talking with someone who has a whole load of things from the past that are painful and ugly. As we shared, that line from an old hymn came into my head (I can't even remember the hymn, but I know it's old!) "the vilest offender who truely believes..." (that's as far as it goes for me!) OK, so "to have self esteem," a friend says, "you need a self that you can esteem." agreed. What if you are that vilest offender? what if you can't find a self to esteem??
Much of my preaching to date has had an element of counselling in it. an encouragement to find self worth and "see yourself as God sees you." I've got a sneaky suspicion that, without Christ, God sees us and sees the brokenness, ugliness, vileness of our sins. Thank God that "while we were still sinners Christ died for us". So, what if I can't esteem my self?
Can I esteem Christ? Well, Yes... He was the perfect man - flawless in every way. Human, just without sinful responses, grudges, bitterness or selfishness. The book John wrote in the Bible talks about our relationship with Christ (John 14-16) and Ephesians really busts it out. I can't esteem myself, but I can esteem Christ... and I am "in" Christ, and He is in me. Extravagant, sublime news!
So the more I die to my self, and the more I allow Christ in me to be seen, the more my identity is found in His. God looks at me and sees Christ. So then, just as we share in Christ's death, we share in His life... Get in!!
BlogPosted by Andy Tue, July 15, 2008 13:27So every year the BBQ rounds up the youth clubs. It is free to all, complete with food, footy and fun! This year we went for the ol' bouncy castles and Sumo suits - Zang.
Anyhows, British summer time means get yer brolleys out! 5-day forcast said friday would be heavy showers. On the day, it started bright, but the forcast said heavy rain in the afternoon / evening. Great. But Nes & I agreed to go for it, believing that God would answer our prayers for a dry evening.
So I'm pulling seats out of Betty, getting her ready to pick up BBQ's and tables for the event, and I'm praying, seeking, petitioning, calling on and desperate for God to impact the event and make it happen. 5pm the heavens answered with rain. The BBQ's were out and warming up (lids down, of course), tables were out, and we (well, Luke & I played footy regardless) were all huddled in Betty, waiting for it to pass.
Not sure how many phone calls we received asking if it was still on, but every time we said, "yep!" sometimes saying, "we've prayed and God will do His thing..."
One phone call was from Alec, our prayer team leader, who asks if it is still on. Ruth takes the phone, "come on, yer wuss! and keep praying!" Hard for a Scot to hear that, but his reply was, "I'm coming on the end of a rainbow..."
6pm rolls up, and while rain still falls, the cloud is starting to break. People are arriving.
Guess what? yep, script written a long time ago. Rainbow. bright. Full. Then a second. arc - ing the sky like some bridge engineered by a fashion designer. Our eyes traced it to it's source - Would you believe, it fell in our field, right at the gate way.
And who should drive in through the rainbow, but Alec, scripted from start to end. And for over 1 and a half hours, the weather held. Sure, turnout was far lower than we catered for, but everyone there had fun...
Just another building block for the life of faith, encouraging us to step out, lean more comprehensively on God, and see Him demonstrate His power.
BlogPosted by Andy Fri, May 30, 2008 14:27Fascinating how God's provision works... If I had no faith in a provider God; a kind of, what-goes-around and make-your-own-destiny type faith, I would say that what happens is not so much chance (as dawkins rightly says, how we are here, if by chance, is extremely unlikely) but a culminative of many individual occurences. This makes me think of a football team being promoted to the premiership. Take Wigan in recent years. After 5 games, they were sitting high in the table. That generates plenty of talk, but no-one honestly believes that they will be in the top 4 by Christmas, let alone the end of the season. Chance occurances (in this case, wins) all within a short time frame. Long term, people expect things to "pan out", so those who seem to be lucky now will go through a lean spell.
This week has seen several events that I could put down to a lucky spell. a culminative of events that have been favourable. But as I come from a faith in a provider God perspective, I can't use that terminology. It would not honour God, as I have stated God to be a provider God. Calling God's provision a culminative of favourable events would not be seen as honouring God.
So we decided to step beyond our financial means to buying a mini bus, with a youth-alpha trip to Torquay this weekend, a cinema trip with The Friday Club tonight, and things like Soul Survivor in August. Every time we hire a minibus, we get an invoice that hurts. So we decided to expand our ministry options. Shared the idea with a couple of peeps. 2 people said they would chip in financially if we did.
We had put an offer in for a minibus on tuesday (3.5K, which would have meant borrowing off the mortgage), only for me to return home and throw on Ebay... (Do I believe God can use the internet?? even Ebay??) I searched within 20 miles of home, and there was a 17 seater (the other was 15) for 620 quid. It had 1hour left! I won it for £700. Got it in for an MOT Friday morning, needing it for 4pm. Ian texted... "Pray it all goes well in the end"... It failed the MOT. Didn't think it could be done til monday. Nes gently explained we really needed it. He got on the phone. all said and done, 2pm got a phone call - done! £175 inc. MOT!!
Let's go to Torquay!! oh, and that's not all. We put it down the prayer chain too... others have contributed (insurance is a killer!!!) more than we would have imagined...
What goes around comes around? well, I am a nice guy...
