“Don’t know” and the big decision

My favourite moment in Gervais and Merchant’s ‘The Office’ is when larger-than-life accountant Keith is given an appraisal. He is asked to fill in a form indicating how he was doing in various areas of his job, each question with a series of options including ‘don’t know’. Inevitably each time he says ‘don’t know’, and then when he pushed to give a different answer, he can’t remember the options – the comical timing is genius (and it works better in sit-com then in writing!). 

I think ‘don’t knows’ are too convenient, especially when it comes to ‘the big decision’ that Jesus confronts every person with. He puts the decision in terms of choosing two roads to walk up (or drive up to bring it into the 20th century, or hover-board up to bring it into the late 21st century – the method of transport isn’t important!). He says there is a wide road – it is a road that we most naturally slip into – the boundaries on what to believe or how to behave are pretty lax. It’s not that anything goes, it’s just that its easy to justify doing something wrong, it’s easy to tell yourself that it doesn’t matter what you believe – it is a road of ‘don’t knows’…

Then there is another road Jesus says…it’s a narrow road…the boundaries on what is right and wrong have been determined (they are those things down the side of a motorway – google not working). The barriers (google now working) on what to believe have been set by God. It’s unpopular, it’s unfashionable, it limits choice, and requires commitment – and as a result people aren’t too keen to drive that road (a bit like the A14). 

Two choices. There is no third road. You and I are already on one or the other. 

Then he says two other things. He says the gate (Dartford toll?)  to the narrow road is himself. You get on the road by accepting Jesus as your saviour, and the one who you will live for (this choice doesn’t cost £1.50 like a rip-off toll, it’s free). To use another analogy, it’s like handing the keys of your car over to someone else whose better at driving than you are – realising you can’t save yourself, but need someone else to come in and save you….

…And he says that the narrow road leads to life, and the other to destruction. Some take this as the whole heaven/hell thing, which I guess is part of it, but I think it’s simpler than that…it’s saying the natural consequence of living for yourself rather than Jesus, of believing in something that’s worth dying for rather than having nothing to live for, of behaving as if there are no boundaries is destruction – you will end up in a mess – your life won’t be all that God intends it to be – you will miss out on so much – and if you’re not careful (or decisive) you will miss out on God, and since all good and beautiful and joyful come from him, an eternity without him will be one messy, painful, and scaryend. 

I know when I behave like a toilet, when I lack conviction, when I live for myself, when I take hold the keys of my life-car it is a bad place to be in…but when I daily push myself towards Jesus, who has died for me, and loves me, and wants me to walk in his ways, things are much better – life feels more full and more wonderful. 

Two choices. No third option. Which road are you on?  

 

keith_int

Creation Care

What does praying have to do with choosing free-range chickens at Tescos? What does singing in church have to do with cycling to work? What does reading your Bible have to do with turning off the lights when you’re not using them?

The answer is worship. Each of these things can be part of our way of demonstrating love for God. I often think of worship in terms of what I do to spend time with God. I’ve been challenged this week however about the importance of looking after creation because “God intends our care of creation to reflect our love for the Creator”. If you asked me to look after your house for a week whilst you were on holiday, and you came back only to find that I had trashed the place, you would conclude that I didn’t like you very much. Either that or I was just wasn’t a very good friend. Similarly, how we treat God’s house, which he’s lent us for a bit to look after, says something about how we feel about God. To love him is to look after his home.

This is particularly important at the moment because of the crisis we are in at the moment. Over-population, animal mistreatment, wasteful living, holes in the ozone, and lack of fossil fuels – whether we like it or not, things are gonna change. The lifestyle we have enjoyed is not sustainable.

The problem is that change is so hard. I certainly feel torn by what is convenient and easy, and what is right – disposable nappies vs. reusable ones. Holidays in the UK vs. holidays abroad (to save an enormous amount of fuel used by flights). Driving vs. cycling. ‘Looking up where food has come from and whether it has been ethically produced’ vs. ‘chuck it in the trolley’.

Singing is church is easy. Spending a bit of time in prayer each morning is doable. Spending that little extra to get fairtraded tea or free range chickens feels hard. Spending an extra 30 minutes a day washing nappies feels hard. Writing letters to MP’s or shops to stop unethical trading feels like effort.

So, i’m gonna make changes. I just need to work out how this is gonna happen practically so that this is a sustainable simple way of living rather than a fleeting idea. Step 1 – put out the recycling for tomorrow.

Recommended reading: Dave Bookless, Planetwise.

‘Preachers, keep yourself from idols’ – Derek Tidball – A book review

I began preaching at the age of 16 following some encouragement from my youth leader to “give it a go”. I was full of enthusiasm and passion, but with very little understanding or indeed character. As a result I made many mistakes. Today, having been preaching for 11 years, I am all too aware that every time I step up to preach I make other mistakes: I cultivate wrong attitudes, bad habits, and incorrect approaches. The problem is that at the moment I am largely unaware of what I am doing wrong.

 

That’s why this book is so helpful. Written by someone familiar with the preaching task, and also aware of its pitfalls, ‘Preachers, keep yourself from idols’, is a helpful exploration of the particularly attitudes that readily take the place of God in the pulpit, and as a result take us off track. By reviewing the idols that most preachers are vulnerable to in four headings: the self, the age, the task, and the ministry, Derek gives practical wisdom on how to dodge the idols. But he does so in a way that avoids simply throwing the God-given baby out with the idolatrous bathwater.  He speaks as much about the right biblical place of authority, success, and entertainment, as he does condemn their improper use, and thus presents a good balanced view of the preaching task.

 

The chapters I found most helpful for my own preaching attitudes, were on the idols of immediacy and secularization. Immediacy, he argues, is the desire in preaching “for every sermon we preach to be instantly persuasive and have a direct and instant impact. Furthermore, this impact must be demonstrable in measurable ways”, so that we end up measuring our effectiveness in terms of the response we get to an appeal, the number who come forward for prayer, or who seek counsel afterwards. There is of course a place for calling for a response, but we have to understand that in the context of our instant age. Becoming a follower of Christ is a decisive event, but our spiritual and moral re-education is a long, patient process, like the growth of a child into adulthood. Tidball at times is very honest about his own struggle with the temptation of immediacy: “it is probably largely self-inflicted, but I feel the pressure every week to bow down at the shrine of immediacy and use my gifts and whatever eloquence I have to provoke a measurable response. The pressure is generated by the old sin of pride and it builds up a head of steam as a result of the damaging desire to compare myself to others, rather than being content with the unique ministry I have through Christ”.

 

In ‘Secularization’, Tidball has us wrestling with the idols of the age, namely, pluralism, relativism, and securalization in the church. We are tempted in each of these to bow down to the prevailing worldview rather than the authority of Scripture. The ideology of Pluralism means that because there is perceived in our society to be no such thing as ‘Absolute Truth’, only several equally valuable ‘truths’, we turn our convictions into mere opinions. Thus we react either by succumbing to the ideology and watering down the exclusive claims of the Gospel, or we become even more dogmatic and unreasoning in our approach to other views. Similarly, in handling relativism, the belief that lifestyle choice is an individual preference and cannot be deemed right or wrong, preachers are tempted to endorse the latest public opinion, or else have a kneejerk reaction that simply isolates people as makes them seem arrogant. Our approach, Tidball argues should be like the Apostle Paul who implored, persuaded, and urged, rather than compromising or condemning. We need to be courageous and humble at the same time.

 

This is a book that helps those engaged in preaching to reflect on their own motivations and attitudes when it comes to the task, and also to reflect on the world they live in. It highlights the ways preachers can be distracted from Christ, but also gives helpful ways that preachers can continue to keep Him central in their ministry.

 

Part 1: The Cross Anticipated

There’s not a lot I know about the whole dating game. Just ask my wife. On our first date together I bought her a baguette and then stole her gloves (in fairness there were romantic elements as well). But one thing I remember reading in a book was that there are two key ingredients to a successful date – anticipation and spontaneity. Firstly you need to let them know something about the evening in order to get them excited. Secondly, you can’t tell them everything that’s going to happen, you need to leave room for surprise to keep them guessing. God knows a thing or two about wooing people to himself. We see this in the cross of Jesus, an event that was never plan B, but always part of God’s plan of saving people. What we see is that he leaves us clues in the Old Testament, little signs of the what’s going to happen on the big day, but equally when it finally happened, there was a sense of “wow, I never thought it would happen like that!” We see it clearly in passages like Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Leviticus 16, and indeed in many others, but who would have guessed that it would be God Himself who would suffer on a cross, who would have imagined that by doing so it would deal with sin of the world and the effects of the fall. Who would have dreamed that it would restore the relationship with God that we were destined for. The passage I preached on a couple of weeks ago was Genesis 22. A ancient story designed to help the people of Israel understand concepts like fearing God and trusting him through the tests of life. But what we see quite clearly is the fingerprints of the salvation strategist, pointing us to what he would do in the future. Check it out for yourself. What we see here is:

1. The Sacrifice of the Father: Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son to God as a test of obedience. He is being asked to show whether he trusts God, and whether he loves his child more than the one who had blessed him with a child in the first place. God, as you might expect doesn’t ask Abraham to go through with it. But God the Father did not allow the same let off for himself. He gave up his Son, Jesus Christ, for us.

2. The Submission of the Son – there are some definite parallels between Issac and Jesus. He is described as the ‘only son’, and we are told he carried ‘his own wood’ upon himself as Jesus did. But what is clear is that Isaac wasn’t forced into this situation. Abraham was an ancient old man, whereas Isaac was a teenager – I’d like to see any Grandad wrestle a ‘Hoodie’ onto an alter. Clearly Isaac trusted and submitted to his father in this situation – he wasn’t forced or coerced, he submitted. Similarly, Jesus submitted himself to the Father when, with blood, sweat, and tears he chose the cross. This wasn’t ‘cosmic child abuse’ as has often been branded about, but a wonderful partnership between Father and Son, working together to restore humanity.

3. The Provision of the Lord – At the last minute an angel appears and tells Abraham he doesn’t have to go through with it. Instead Abraham sees a ram in a bush and sacrifices it instead. What we see here for the first time is the principle of substitution, again pointing to the self-substitution of God who went ‘in our place’, and died the death that we should have died. More on this in other weeks.

4. The significance of the place – why did God make Abraham travel for three days to reach the place of sacrifice? Why didn’t he do it in his garden shed? It’s all to do with the place. It was a place called Mount Moriah. You won’t believe where that place is identified as – only the same place that a greater sacrifice would take place a few thousand years later – yep – it’s Jerusalem, the holy city.

Can you see the plan now? Can you see that this was always God’s intention? To come himself in the person of Christ, to be crucified on a cross as a common criminal, and then to come back to life showing himself to be none other than God in flesh. More to come. Thanks to Derek Tidball for the four points.

Atonement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Atonement – a word that probably more associated with Keira Knightley than Jesus Christ these days, and yet a word traditionally used to describe the implications of the death and resurrection of a Jewish Rabbi from Nazareth some 2000 years ago.

At SLBC over the next few weeks, as Easter approaches, we’re gonna be exploring ‘atonement’ in order to get to grips with what the greatest person in history did on the greatest day in history, and understand the difference it makes to our own history – our past, our present, and our future. Having done just some basic reading on the subject, I’ve been again blown away by the wonder of the cross – it is both beautiful and mysterious, and reaches to the depths of our soul.

So, over the next few weeks I’m gonna be blogging the basics after each sermon. Next week – The Cross Anticipated.

Integrity: holding it all together

“The Church is made up of hypocrites” is a phrase I often hear or read – and I take the point.

On one hand I want to totally agree and say of course ‘Amen’ – of course the church is made up of hypocrites – Jesus came for those who realised they weren’t perfect; for those whose characters were out of shape. As Jesus put it – “it’s not the well that need a doctor, but the sick”. Tony Campolo makes the point that saying the church is full of hypocrites is similar to saying “the hospital is full of sick people” – of course it is, that’s what it’s there for! The church is a centre of grace, where sick people (and by that I mean those who realise their sickness, since really we are all sick, sinful, broken human beings) can discover the love of God who frees us, releases us, forgives us, and beings to shape us to become the people he created us to be.

On the other hand, I recognise the failures of myself and many others who are hypocritical and give the church a bad name – we say one thing and we do another; we believe one thing and say another. And indeed something must be done.

The opposite of hypocrisy is integrity. Integrity literally means to ‘be integrated’ – for all the parts of us to be together rather than separate. I heard a great definition of integrity this week. Andy Matheson of Oasis said that integrity is where our mouths, minds, hearts, hands and feet are all joined up, so that what we think is reflected in what we say; what we say is reflected in what do; and what we do is a reflection of what we believe. Hypocrisy is simply disintegration of hands, heart, mouths, and mind.

When I heard this I had two reactions: firstly, a feeling of humility – I am a hypocrite – I say things that I don’t act out, and I act out things that I don’t believe are right. I think we can all say that. Secondly, I have a desire to be integrated, to be joined up so that I am One person, rather than series of disintegrated thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions. You can’t trust or follow someone like that, and leaders, indeed all human beings must be people of integrity.

So, an old prayer to end:

“God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.”

 

Children keep you grounded; the Elderly give you perspective

 

 

 

For the last few years I have worked primarily with young people and children and it’s been an incredible blessing. Children don’t care for pretence or position; they don’t care how much you know; they don’t care how morally good you are, or what you look like. Most of the time they simply want to have fun, and I’ve found spending time with them has kept me grounded.

But in my new role as Pastor, I’ve spent more time with people at the other end of the scale, primarily with older people – and again it’s been a blessing. I went this morning to an elderly home and met a lady who is a long-standing member of the church but now cannot come because of the disabling combination of blindness and dementia. She said very little other than ‘who are you?’ every few minutes, and couldn’t see me, but being with her, and I believe with any of the older generation, has given me perspective. I then met with another lady who had a very active mind, but couldn’t walk well, and again meeting with her was very enjoyable.

So, here’s 5 reasons to spend time with the elderly generation:

1. Their wisdom far suppasses yours – we can learn from them.
2. They understand what is important in life – community, relationship, and God.
3. They give perspective on your own issues – sitting with a 95 year old lady ready to die and be with God gives you a right view on your problems.
4. You will go to bless them, and will come away blessed.
5. If they are Christians, they will build your faith in God.

So, thank God for the Elderly. We have been created by God for community and for relationship – it keeps us grounded, gives perspective, keeps us alive, and brings vibrancy to life. What a shame that increasingly we live in a society where people keep themselves behind closed doors, or simply spend time with people very similar to themselves. This is why church is so genius (though I would say that wouldn’t I)!

What was amazing about the elderly lady with dementia was that whilst she couldn’t remember the names of her children, or even know where she was, when another man I went with started singing an old hymn, she immediately started singing to us. Locked into her subconscious were these special songs that had once meant so much to her, and she could still recall them. It was a sign to me that even if she had lost her memory, and to an extent her conscious faith, clearly God still had hold of her, and even if hidden, His light was still deep within her.

Wise up.

Why is it that you always have the best ideas after the time when you needed them has passed? On Sunday at SLBC I preached on the wisdom of God, and we looked at how we as human beings have limited wisdom and therefore have a universal need for the stuff, just in the everyday practical matters in life (parenting, managing finances, handling relationships, developing businesses, character etc). But we also looked at how God is able to give us wisdom because He is wisdom and therefore holds the ‘wisdom pot’.

Anyway, I was reflecting on the ways that this wisdom is available to us today, and feel frustrated that I missed out an important step and that was laying down a challenge for each of us for the week. So here are the four points we went through on Sunday, with four challenges at the bottom to all who want to lead a wise life (and therefore ride out the storms of life like a man who builds his house on rock, to paraphrase a wiser man:

1. Wisdom starts with respect for God – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” – Proverbs 1:9 – Any teacher knows it’s useless trying to teach a class unless it begins with respect, and so it is with God – we can’t learn how to be wise unless we first respect the teacher.
2. Wisdom comes from God’s Word – His wisdom, laws, commands, practical advice for wise daily living are in the Bible. Sure, we need to do the homework and look past the cultural differences, but the Bible is pretty clear on many things and what wise living is, and what foolish living is.
3. Wisdom comes when we are anointed by God’s Spirit – James 1 says that if we need wisdom we can ask for it and God will give it. We can be anointed by God with the gift of wisdom for situations.
4. Wisdom comes from spending time with wiser people – Proverbs says “He who walks with the wise grows wise”. When you do life with wiser people, it rubs off.

So the four challenges for this week:
1. Spend a moment each day to remind yourself that God knows everything and you know nothing. It will be make you humbler and more open to being taught.
2. Spend a moment each day reading Scripture and ask God to reveal His practical wisdom to you.
3. Ask God each day for an anointing of wisdom so that you may make wise decisions.
4. Go for coffee with a wiser person.

I just had a mocha frappaccino in Starbucks with a wiser Pastor in Bromley and I feel wiser already! Enjoy the challenge.

God the Artist

I’ve always loved creating things. I remember the first time my Grandpa sat me down as a boy and showed me how to paint a scene using watercolours, and the feeling I had when I hung my creation on my bedroom wall for all to see. I remember the first time I wrote a melody, instantly joining the McCartney’s and Lennon’s of this world as a songwriter. Recently, in an effort to try something new, I wrote 2 chapters of a children’s book (still yet to be finished), and I still remember the exhilaration when I finished the first chapter.

No doubt, many people feel the same after creating something. When you write a poem, compose some music, paint a picture, there is a sense of, “I’ve done this, and it’s an expression of who I am”. I can’t imagine the joy Fleming or Edison must have felt when they created something groundbreaking that would change humanity.

I believe that is a very godly thing to create.

I’m preaching on ‘God the Creator’ in a couple of weeks time, and basing it on the first couple of chapters in the Bible where God creates the world. Old arguments about science and faith have crowded out the beauty of these ancient words, but what I love about these chapters is that God is shown to create, and then when he finally creates human beings as the pinnacle of his creation, he makes them ‘in His own image’. The implications of this are enormous, but one implication is that our creativity as humans is a God-given gift, and a God-given desire that stems right from the heart of God Himself. When we create, we mirror God, and it explains why it feels so good and so right. God is an artist who fashions this world into being, and encourages us to do the same.

My perception is that human beings get down when they don’t create. When they get so bogged down in menial tasks that there is no room for godly self-expression, they lose their sense of self, and of God. So the challenge I set before myself and everyone is to create…

Create melodies and lyrics. Create poems. Create stories for your children. Create pictures and drawing. Create timesheets and schedules. Create fashions and styles. Create new haircuts. Create buildings and bridges. Create those trainsets that people keep in their loft. Create games and books.

Create.

And know the presence of God when you do it.