caged tiger

Well, well, it appears Tiger has been caught out. Mr. ‘Squeaky Clean’ isn’t so spotless after all. Today Tiger released a public statement after several days of media frenzy over his car crash and rumours of adultery. He came clean and confessed to the world his personal failings. And the world lapped it up.

I have felt sick this week. At Tiger’s moral lapse? More at the disgusting drooling of the world’s media (and, yes, their audiences) over the opportunity to publicly and irreparably tear a man apart and drag his life and family through the mud. A generation always eager to label itself compassionate and non judgemental crowing in delight at being able to drag a good reputation down to our level. As soon as his minor accident happened, unsubstantiated rumours were flying round everywhere for days and didn’t let up. Perhaps you’ve been someone who’s shaken your head at him this week, or other high profile names exposed over the years – I know I have in the past, making cyncial quips to family and friends about their hypocrisy. Sickness at what I’ve seen on tele this week is really sickness at the mirror of my own attitudes held up high. Because, how would you like it if all your failings and dark secrets were trawled across the news as cheap and cynical entertainment for the masses? If the depths of your heart and your past were laid bare, would you do any better? Would you be perfectly comfortable with that?

The fact is, the Bible says clearly that all our sin and wickedness is exposed…before God. His eyes see straight through us, to the very depths of our souls. Nothing in our past is buried and forgotten from him. And far from crude banter and mockery, God’s response to the selfishness, pride, deceit, lust, greed, envy etc in our hearts is burning anger and judgement.

But there is good news. God doesn’t gloat over our brokenness like we do over each other. Jesus came into our world to show us who God is – and did so by a profound act of love – taking all our guilt and shame on himself who didn’t deserve it, bearing punishment that wasn’t his, so we could be free and reconciled to God. Removing our sin as far from God’s sight as the east is from the west. Because of the cross, if our trust is in Christ, God sees everything bleak and horrible in us and yet doesn’t recoil in horror or crush us in disgust. We can be reconciled to God not by moral superiority, but through simply clinging in trust to Jesus’ death for us, which leads us to change. That’ s good news for Tiger, for me and for you, if we only accept it.

And if you’re a Christian reading this, let’s show to the world a little more of the grace God has shown to us in Jesus. In so many ways the church is losing it.  Jesus was known to get very angry – at people who didn’t believe they were sinners and gloated over others. None of this excuses sin. But the warm, tender and powerful grace of Christ Jesus is the only answer to it – not only the penalty for sin we deserve, but also it’s power over our lives. We need to take hold of that for ourselves and show it to others.

facing feelings

Feelings don’t just happen, leaving you powerless to resist them, no matter what people say. You choose either to feed or starve a feeling. No one is swept away by feelings with no choice but to follow. Every feeling or potential feeling, whether appropriate or inappropriate, positive or negative, can and will be fed and strengthened, or starved, in any context, whether it’s a feeling toward a circumstance, a situation, yourself, a person or God.

What choices are you making, what thoughts are you allowing to stay in your mind, what situations are you letting yourself be found in that are feeding the feelings you have (or what aren’t you doing that starves the feeling)? And is it the choice you should be making?

reaching Dawkins with the love of Christ…?

What did Jesus do?

The Greatest Story Ever Told.

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!
Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself…

…He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:25-27,44-47)

I want to write about something I’m really passionate about. When you find out what fires me up, you may realise the deal is sealed as to how much of a nerd I am, but there you are, I believe it’s of immense importance and will stand by that conviction.

Can we know the truth about God? Can we make sense of the whole Bible, what it actually means, all the weird stories? How, when there are so many different opinions of what differnt parts mean?

What can be overlooked in trying to figure all this out is what the Bible itself actually says about what it’s all about. How did Jesus himself understand the whole Old Testament scriptures?

Jesus is pretty clear that the whole Old Testament is about himself. All of it.  Every  story of violent Kings and wild eyed prophets, every obscure Law, every Psalm. Christians the world over (hopefully) believe the Bible to be God’s Word to us, and forever relevant to our lives. But what do you do, then, with a man spending the weekend in the gut of a whale; or an 80 yr old man on top of a desert mountain, stone tablets in hand, standing between a fiery, terrifying God and a trembling, terrified people; or a shepherd boy killing a freakish giant of a man with a sling and stone? For 2000 yrs Christians have grappled with the relevance of such stories and what application they should have to our lives.

When we forget about how central the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is to everything, everything else in the Bible becomes murky. Our natures constantly want to put us at the centre of things. All the stories of the Bible become about us and are moral lessons for our lives. Within no time at all the focus of our lives shift from what God has done for us to what we do for God. And that is happening the world over.

The Bible is not a collection of stories and poems to illustrate the stories of our lives. It’s not centred on what we do.  It’s one BIG unfolding story of what God has done and is doing in a fallen world for his glory, a story that catches our lives up into it. And it’s all about Jesus. Jesus crucified and risen as Lord.

Take the story of David and Goliath. It involves you. Yes, when you read it, you need to think about who you would be in the story if you were alive back then. But whatever you do, don’t imagine for a second that you’d be David. Don’t imagine that this story is about how you can conquer the giants in your life by something you have in yourself (the 5 stones of whatever random qualities you think up).That story is the story of God’s people facing an enemy too great for them, until God’s anointed King (a shepherd, and unlikely looking King) comes and defeats the enemy they could never beat themselves. And unless you’re Jewish (and I’m not) don’t think then that you’d be in the army of Israel. The enemy of God and his people were the nations of the world who in their rebellion turned against God. All of us would be in the ranks of the Philistines, facing the pointy ends of Israelite swords. End of story…until the true and final King of God’s people turns up to die on a cross – to defeat the enemy – but not just to wipe us out. To defeat our sin and death and call us into God’s people, so we would no longer be his enemies if we put our trust in him. Realise that, and be thankful for his grace to you.

We can’t just apply the Old Testament directly to our lives because the cross changes things. The cross changes everything. And that’s good news. And though the cross of Jesus calls for a response in our lives, that can never be to return to the Old Testament way. That’s what we’ve been saved from.

There’s a lot more I could say on this, that I need to. Of absolute importance though is that at the heart of everything in the old Testament is a promise looking forward to our deliverance at the cross. And everything in the New Testament looks back to the cross and forward to Christ’s return. And everything we do in our lives must be shaped around that incredible good news.

By Grace alone through Faith alone in Christ alone.

Thoughts?

the greatest joy

Was reading Philippians 4 today. Great book, Philippians. More than any other letter I reckon you can see Paul’s love for Christ Jesus. For him, it doesn’t matter what happens in this life, whether he be poor or rich, locked up in prison or free, alive or beheaded. None of it matters so long as he has the Lord Jesus Christ and can glorify him with his life.

In ch3. he says that everything else in life, everything he once might’ve boasted about in himself is rubbish, literally a pile of turd in comparison to the riches of knowing and being found righteous in Christ. And so it’s that final goal of being perfect in Jesus that he pursues, nothing else.

Hi overflowing joy shines a glaring spotlight on my own life. I can’t say that Christ Jesus is my greatest joy, that nothing else matters to me, I’d happily give away everything else, so long as Jesus is glorified in my life.  I, as with the Philippians, it seems, am always turning my heart after things of this world for my joy. In the end, I don’t trust him.

But in ch 4 I see a way forward.

‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again i will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’.

John Calvin called prayer ‘the chief exercise of faith’. I agree with him. Prayer is the foundational response to God’s grace – our foundational response to his Word to us is to speak back to him in utter dependence. Prayer is all about not relying on yourself but casting yourself on God. It’s not ‘doing something’ for God, but admitting that in everything we can’t do anything for ourselves. To go through your day without prayer is to do things without consciously depending on God in all of it. And I can be, very often, very guilty of that. I often struggle to really pray, certainly as Paul talks of it here.

The reason? I don’t trust him with my joy, forgetting the incredible love he’s shown me on the cross, and so when I am anxious or struggling, I don’t turn to him, but anywhere, everywhere else. So I don’t bring everything to him in prayer, either for myself or others.

One thing Paul mentions here that is really easy to overlook is that while we’re to bring every request, every anxiety to God in prayer, we’re to do it with thanksgiving. God in Christ Jesus has already shown such amazing love and given us everything, that his peace rests on us and guards our hearts and minds when we bring our anxieties and struggles to him, fully thanking him for the amazing blessings he’s already poured on us. Then, we won’t depend on getting the answer we want for our joy – rather knowing that God has loved us so much and has everything in his hands, we will leave our desires with him in trust.

What Paul goes on to say next is also really important:

‘Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’

And what does Paul have in mind other than Christ Jesus himself? That is clear from everything he says in this whole letter. When I set my thoughts on the stuff in life I really long for, my heart follows. And so I idolise and entrust my heart to poo. What if the beauty, the loveliness, the worthiness of my Lord who humbled himself to death on a cross for us, only to be raised and exalted in victory, was on my mind during the day? What if I made that conscious decision? What if I was wonder struck by the grace of God? What if I persisted in praying for that to be the case, since I can’t produce such a response for myself? Then perhaps I would see myself turning less and less to the world and more and more setting my heart on Christ. So be it.

roots and all

I’m starting to get ready to move. There’s a phase of my life – a very important and precious one – that is drawing to a close. And a new one beginning. I’m just putting it out there, on this unread blog out into the electronic ether, that what I’ve been planning to do for so long is now coming up, and I’m starting to feel it.

There is sadness and anticipation. Loss and gain. One day I will pack up what few meagre belongings I have and can take with me into a beat up and probably dangerous old camry and drive alone for Sydney, away from everyone i have known and loved for a decade, no, for my whole life. For good.

So much of my life has been a plan for the future. Or rather, a dream of the future. ‘Plan’ carries the connotation of having been working it out, steps, processes. Organisation and focus. In just a couple of months I take another step away from where I’ve been towards where I’m going.

‘A couple of months!’ you say (or would, if you, or anyone, actually read this blog) ‘that’s ages away!’ Not in my head.

Would it seem strange for me to say that since coming to this church I love I have been planning (dreaming) of moving away? When I stepped through the doors for the first time I was simply looking for a  transitional church before I moved away at the end of the year. But one thing led to another, things kept changing, and I could never find a reason to walk away from a church family who loved me and caused me to grow so much… and 8 years later I’m now trying to plan to pack up my bedroom withing the next couple of weeks (I don’t know what you call those guys who clean up bomb wreckage, but now I know how they feel).

I am leaving my family. I have moved around a fair bit as a kid, but they always moved with me (or I with them). But now I am driving in the opposite direction from them. About 12 hours in the opposite direction.

Something has changed in me. My whole life I’ve felt like I’ve had no roots, and been very happy with that. My ideal life was owning only what I could stuff into my backpack and the clothes on my back, with the open road in front of me and no itinerary or set destination. No matter where I’ve been, I have spent most of my life longing to be somewhere else. Painfully longing. Now I realise I have laid down roots, just in time for them to be torn up.

…And yet…I long to move to. It is time for me. My life was never going to be spent in Lismore. The city is in my blood, no matter how much I’ve grown to love the country. No, more… Moore will, I feel, be a great time. Time to grow. I have grown so much here, but in so many ways feel like I’m yet to fly the nest. It would be better for me to jump out now and fall, flapping my baby wings uselessly, hitting the ground and splattering myself all over the ground.

I like picture language.

…And I have not lost that longing totally. In fact, it still rests deep in my heart.

The satisfaction of my heart can and must only be found in Christ Jesus my Lord. May my roots go deep into him.

Jesus, All About Fluff.

People may have seen the recent ‘Jesus, All About Life’ campaign that Australian churches have been a part of in recent months. I think it’s been much more noticeable in say, Sydney than in rural areas like where I live, especially in terms of billboard ads etc, but has received a bit of air time in the media too. I have to say, that I’ve found the whole thing pretty disappointing. I want to say that humbly acknowledging my own failure to present Christ to this world, and in prayer for the JAAL campaign and organisers. I don’t want this blog to become simply cynical Ryan pointing out things that are bad, but I do want to talk about stuff that I think’s important and relevant and generate discussion – assuming anyone out there in this whole world is ever reading this – I will write about things I like too.

Our church signed up to JAAL – mainly having a link on their website to ours, and I was pretty hopeful I gotta say. An interesting open letter was emailed by a couple of concerned Christians to every church associated with JAAL. I confess I haven’t yet finished reading it – I’ve read about halfway, it was fairly long. You can read it here. See what you think. I think what they say is really good. Perhaps they misread the intentions of the JAAL organisers, or maybe they’re on the money. Still thinking bout that and I need to finish reading it of course. Personally I just think JAAL was such a wasted opportunity.

And hey, firstly, the good. The intention was there. The willingness to use the media, the technology and resource of our age to communicate to so many people, so underused by the church. And I’m not against the plan to, instead of preaching the gospel directly, make noise about Jesus to generate interest, then leave the rest up to actual local churches and Christians to speak the truth to people. There’s a great danger in that, that you leave the way open to churches not centred on Jesus to speak crap about him, but that’s always going to happen. Solid gospel focused churches need to take every opportunity to speak the truth even while others speak garbage in Jesus’ name.  So hopefully good has come out of the JAAL campaign as Christians take hold of any interest generated by the Jesus noise to speak the truth of God’s saving grace.

But what noise! It sadly sounds more like the mumblings of a religious Teletubbie than any sort of prophetic voice of Christ’s witness on earth. What I mean is, it tries to be so nice. So soft and comfy for people, and it just looks ridiculous. It’s like the sugary residue left behind on lolly wrappers. We have been so intent on being relevant to our culture, but we confuse being relevant with being palatable. We try and make the gospel easy for unbelievers to accept because we don’t believe in the power of God to save the lost. So we make the gospel fluffy and cuddly and then wonder why no one’s interested. Billboards that focus on the miracle of hot chips and birds that look like they’re wearing pants, tv ads which really are professionally done but feel like those sleazy bank and insurance company ads that try to make themselves all warm and fuzzy and into old-time values but aren’t. None of it communicates the noise that Jesus or his church is actually relevant to the real nitty gritty mess and pain of life.

There’s another group I want to mention – and this one I do like. Ever heard of FEVA (Fellowship for Evangelism in the Visual Arts)? Check them out here. FEVA do a few things, but one of the main ones is their ‘outreach posters’ ministry. Much like JAAL, the outreach posters seek to connect with where our culture’s at and generate noise about Jesus and raise interest. Unlike JAAl, the Outreach posters actually raise some good questions about Aussie life and how Jesus fits, and even stir up controversy. Some are better than others, but all try and stir up questions and get people thinking.  Apparently when it came out the ‘Jesus loves Osama’ poster caused a fair bit of a stir round Sydney.

We can connect with culture, we can use the media to make noise about Jesus, we can be culturally relevant and still faithful – in fact we need to do all these things. But presenting Jesus as fluffy and soft, nothing more than the nice guy who gives us nice stuff… does none of it. The world doesn’t like the message of Jesus, but it’s the message of Jesus that saves, and we need to speak it to our culture, rather than water it down so it becomes totally irrelevant.

What do you think?

Death by Theology

Is your church dry and crusty? Left longing for something real and lasting and heartfelt? Are you unable to prevent your eyes glazing over and your heart sagging during the service? Left feeling spiritually dead? Then perhaps your church’s problem is too much theology!

Theology is becoming a dirty word in a lot of Australia’s churches today. Culturally there’s a growing shift to see a focus on truth and doctrine and the Bible as something that kills churches. Death by theology. Christians are reacting against the ‘dry head knowledge’ by searching elsewhere for a real relationship with Jesus. Following the post modern culture, personal, tangible but indefinable experience is more and more seen as the expression of truly knowing God.

And look, I know that theology has got a bad name from old guys with patches on their elbows or socks and sandals sitting round arguing about the Greek alphabet, and I’m not into that at all. And I get that the Christian life needs to be more about knowing correct info about the Bible. But knowledge of God and his gospel is in fact how we enter into the new life of Christ. The Bible never pits heart against head but calls for us to submit our hearts to the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ in trust. And through this trust (faith) we receive grace resulting in  joy and hope and love.

A wonderful gift of God to us through the gospel is that he sends his own Spirit into our hearts to dwell with us. Through him we have a living relationship with God. There’s a lot of stuff people come up with about life in the Spirit, but Jesus told us the work of God’s Spirit – to testify to the Son (John 15:26). This living experience of God is to be directed back to the gospel of Jesus, to know him more through his work on the cross, and to be transformed by that knowledge into the likeness of Jesus ourselves.

I think when we sit under solid Bible teaching and are bored to tears or left feeling empty 1 of 2 things is happening: Either the preacher is speaking in a dull monotone and at the very least not communicating clearly that he is responding from his heart to the truth he’s speaking…

OR

We feel empty because our hearts don’t rejoice at the wonderful news of the gospel…we are idolaters, in love with something else, something in creation that our hearts are truly set on. Whenever I’ve heard or experienced Christian teaching that claims authentic experience of God outside faith in the gospel of Christ, it’s always focused on God giving us something else other than himself, and usually dependent on some contribution from our end. God is the delivery boy of our actual god/s, whatever that might be. But when Psalm 37:4 says ‘Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart’ it doesn’t mean that Delighting in God is the way to make him give you what you really want. Think about it. If you delight yourself in God, what will the desire of your heart be?

In the gospel God has given us the most precious gift, the greatest heart desire of all those who delight in him…himself.

Here’s to knowing real and authentic life with God, through knowing and rejoicing in the gospel of Christ Jesus. Amen.

Confessions of an Idolater

I’ve had my head in Ephesians a fair bit lately, and I’ve been struck by the wonder and beauty of the gospel of Christ. The message of God’s grace to us by sending Jesus to die, the wonderful news of the new life we have in the risen Jesus, and how all this fits into the majestic and eternal plan of God for his glory.

But I’ve also been struck by something else. My lack of wonder at the wonder of God. I’ve seen again that what I love most isn’t the most lovable thing. God’s glory displayed in his grace to us isn’t highest on my list of things I rejoice in. The final goal of God’s plan, with us all reconciled to him in perfect love isn’t the thing I hope for in my heart. It’s not what I think about during the day, or what I yearn for. My heart doesn’t break for the things that break God’s heart. I don’t rejoice in what God rejoices in. And the amazing blessings he’s given me in Jesus aren’t what i want most. I am an idolater. Someone who worships what isn’t worthy of worship. Here’s what I read this morning in James:

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full–grown, gives birth to death.
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. (James 1:12-18)

When things don’t go exactly my way, and I don’t receive what I want, I often think that God has withheld from me something good, even something I need. I’m tempted to sin to get the circumstances I want, and I blame God for not just giving them to me. But what i don’t realise is that only good things come from God. And he has given me the greatest and most perfect gift – the Word of truth, the gospel of Jesus, through which we receive eternal life (the crown of life) and belong to God to become like Jesus (firstfruits). And trials, difficult circumstances, James says earlier are given for that very purpose.

So what do I really want?

I see that Christ Jesus isn’t what I want most in my devotional life, or lack of. ‘Devotional life’ can be given a bunch of weird meanings coming out of church history, mystical ideas of being caught up out of the world into God’s presence by things we do. But a true ‘Devotional Life’ means living a life devoted to God in response to what he’s done. Because my whole life with God is caught up in his grace to us in the gospel, I need to devote myself to his gospel, in the word and prayer and fellowship with other believers. And I need to confess that this has been sadly lacking in me. My Bible reading has been slipping, my prayers have always been limp and irregular and overwhelmingly self centred, and my relationships shallow as I keep people distant, not gospel focused at all. And the reason is my heart desires other things more – not things bad in themselves but destroyed and made wicked when made to replace God in my heart.

That’s a confession, and I know where the solution lies. Not in exerting more religious muscle or trying to beat myself into spiritual shape, but in turning again to Christ and drinking deeply of the wonder of his grace, that God’s glory in Christ would be my greatest desire and joy. In clinging to his strength in my  weakness and being overwhelmingly thankful as I see what he’s saved me from and what he’s saved me into by his death on the cross. And all this from his hand, not mine.

By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The Lost Heart

What is the heart of Christianity?

Ask  Christians and hopefully they’ll tell you that it’s the gospel – the message of God’s action to save mankind from the guilt and judgement over us for our rebellion against him by sending Jesus to die as the innocent sacrifice in our place before rising to new life.  According to Christians the death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of not only our lives but the history of the universe.

Or is it?

Over the last few years I’ve been noticing something. It seems that while many churches claim the truths of the gospel are central to their lives on their websites and promo material, the reality is that the good news of Jesus seems to be much more ‘in the background’ than in the centre. Despite claiming a focus on the gospel of grace, so many of  our sermons, our Bible studies, our music, our prayers, our conversations focus on anything but.

And as a result, increasingly when individual Christians are asked what it means to be a Christian, the answers are distinctly Jesus-less.

What’s going on?

I reckon we live with a set of assumptions that sadly aren’t challenged enough. We know we need to believe the gospel to become a Christian, but our poor understanding of our own sinfulness and lack of appreciation for God’s amazing grace to us in Jesus lead us to assume there’s really not much to the gospel after that. In order to find a real and living spirituality we don’t turn to the rich and wondrous act of Christ’s sacrifice for us. It seems like an event of the past, and in order to grow as a Christian we need to move on to ‘deeper’ things, to something more immediate and tangible. Increasingly our Bibles stay closed on the shelf, and we want new words and experiences of God that don’t seem to have anything to do with Christ crucified and risen.

That a truly spiritual life might be found in living in the old old gospel day by day doesn’t occur to so many Christians. I can definitely relate to this in my own life. I remember beginning attending a church when I was at uni and being surprised that every week they taught the gospel. In every sermon the preacher brought it back to Jesus on the cross. Surprised as I was, I quickly appreciated that this church was always thinking of any non Christian who might come to church, making sure that in every talk they included what a newcomer needed to hear (that this was a new concept for me should be alarming enough). But it took a lot longer for me to appreciate the other side – that although the church did preach the gospel for newcomers, that they might hear the saving message of Jesus, it preached this gospel equally for us who already were Christians, week in, week out. It only slowly dawned on me that every week, every day, I need to be reminded again and anew of that old, old story of Jesus on that cross. That the gospel of grace, and only the gospel of grace could spiritually change my life as I surrendered to it each day, lived in it each day.

What do you think? What would it mean for us to live the gospel?