...how he loves

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves.


We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

...a moment

tonight as i listened to some music i felt something stir in my spirit. i have tried to capture that moment in the poem below.

The grace of my Lord is like the tree of the field,

Delicate in its intricacies, yet containing a strength that no storm can break.

Not simply does it reflect the light of His love,

Adding to it with a dimension that the human eye cannot grasp,

But that moves the heart of all broken men to reach for it.

It is a grace that is not to be stopped by iniquity or failure,

Grace that destroys the great obstructions of sin and death,

Taking with it hopelessness that endeavours to remain

Like the tide waters that smash down on beaches daily,

It cannot be held back, refreshing wherever it goes.

Within the dry and thirsty places of our hearts His grace can flood,

Bringing life brand new, bursting old barriers, breaking down past hindrances.

Our minds cannot fathom it’s unsearchable depths,

Our emotions cannot cope with the eruption of joy that springs from a heart watered by the grace of our Master.

Spirits can once more shall soar, feet will walk without growing weary.

And this shall be a new day when our obedience is not drawn out of duty,

But sprung from overflowing grace poured down from the Cross of Christ.

... doesnt look a thing like Jesus

A few years ago in a conversation about church, a friend piped up, “Well, if you look at it Jesus was probably the worst church planter ever!”

Obviously we all stared at him outraged, shocked and a few of us laughed. What a stupid thing to say, Jesus the Saviour of the world author and finisher of our faith was ‘worst’ at church planting.

Sounds really terrible doesn’t it?!

However a couple of weeks ago this comment again arose in conversation. My fiancé’s brother dropped a bomb part way through our snide remark making,

“If you think about it he was actually right.”

Again, the shocked and appalled looks covered our faces, but it turns out it wasn’t the stupidest idea ever considered. Far from it.

If you take a look at the church we have today and then at what happened with Jesus you’d have to agree that the two ideas don’t correlate. Jesus never had a building, a brand, a logo, a mission statement[1], an album, a children’s ministry held somewhere else separately etc. etc. What looked the most like church was the order of the Pharisees, who totally religious inside and out in the way they lived out their lives.

Jesus was not a sensible pastor[2] or church planter[3] as we would see it. He did not have a catch-phrase or tag-line, and very rarely watered down His message to seek converts or keep disciples[4]. At no point did He apply business methods to His message[5] and there wasn’t any singles ministry or youth workers. Plus controversially for the UK church He was overwhelmingly interested in the nation of Israel. The list of differences is actually quite alarming.

So technically speaking from a 21^st century Christian’s viewpoint Jesus was a terrible church planter, he started absolutely nothing that we would consider church. Further than that He would most probably have been kicked out of quite a few churches in the west for one or two other things. He certainly wouldn't be a leader, a consultant, church brand agent, a youth worker, administrator, elder or deacon.

I find that so utterly terrifying!

We look nothing like Jesus.

The western church, part of the body of Christ doesn’t resemble Jesus at all. And probably wouldn't have any space for Him just as a regualr 'lay' member.

I think we might be in trouble folks.

We need to change drastically, dramatically and soon.

---

[1] Luke 4:18 is the closest we get to a mission statement from Jesus, yet it really doesn’t fit the modern use of mission statement because Jesus is recorded as having said it more than once. Neither does He have it written down in three simple points on all His Church literature (?).

[2] John 13:21-27. Surely that’s not good pastoral work.

[3] Luke 10:9-11

[4] John 6:53-66

[5] Luke 9:48 is a good place to start for considering business methods within following Jesus. Business is always about success of self, here Jesus denies that straight out. Therefore maybe we should be a lot more careful in applying the same methods from business into faith. Just because we have a message does not mean we have a product to sell and a company to promote.

erm...i dont think i need to go to church (part 3a)

in the last blog i tried to highlight the fact that when we GO TO church we usually have our starting point as our opinion. any christian who has read any of the new testament can tell that this is not a healthy place to be.

there is however another just as worrying issue for the christian GOING TO church. that is that doing so can become the most important and central focus of life. there is a trend within churches for members to have priorities that are over and above anything else, meetings suddenly take the place of people. schedules and curriculums take prescendence over sympathy or urgency. the instituition becomes that which is built instead of the love amongst the people of that 'church'.

without careful thought 'churches' become businesses with spheres of influence, that go for growth and indulge in marketing and branding their identities. increasingly we see God loving christians who are drawn into assessing their 'churches' growth and their 'churches' giving, in an effort to grow.

it pains me to see this detatchment of the christian from the 'church', it seems that we are now the staff that make the church run...

evangelism is recruiting
tithing is buying shares other
churches are competitors
meetings are the focus
the pastor is the chairman of the board whose decision is final.

isn't it scary to see these things so entrenched in our faith? and it's the simple act of losing track of being the church that does it.

for if we are the church then the priorities change. firstly and most obviously 'church' stops meaning just the community we are apart of and their goals and becomes the body of Jesus on earth. we become the body rather than head.

Jesus is in charge not us.
it's his timetable not ours.
we are all under his leadership.
following him means that we are united together not competitive.
it's people as priorities.
meetings as a means not an end.

ultimately the more we are the church the more we realise those responsibilities that our 'churches' handled are ours personally. helping the poverty stricken, caring for the unloved, mending the hurting, helping the widow and the single mum all these things become our task.
us via Jesus' life inside us.

it's cutting out the middle man.

we usually blame our 'church' for failing or our the 'churches' leaders for not listening to us.

try that when you know in your heart you are the church and Jesus is the leader.

erm...i dont think i need to go to church (part 2)

' We do not GO TO church, we ARE the church. '

now to explain myself. the part 1 was clearly an attempt at shock and awe, you may have felt it was shockingly awful. but you're back and that's something im gonna try and reward with an explanation:

going to somewhere and being something are two very different things.

example.

going to finland and being a finn.

in the summer of 2007 i went to live in the great city of Helsinki in finland. i spent 11 months and 4 days in the country and loved it. almost as soon as i had spent a few hours with my friends there i could say quite honestly that the place felt like home. by the end of my time there i spoke some finnish, had sat naked in saunas (finnish tradition), eaten salmiaki (finnish liquorice) and stayed in a finnish summer cottage. i did all that i to become as finnish as I could. my friends there i now count as family, yet after all that time, i still feel different from them.

because as much as i went there and did my best to be finnish, i'm not.

it was something i had to try and do.

i had to put effort into it.

i needed to squash my natural reactions, language and thought patterns at least a hundred times a day. it wasn't me, even though i changed and experienced amazing finnish things, i still was as an englishman in helsinki.

you see being church means that all your values, ideals, hopes and dreams are in line naturally with Christ. it means that the grace of Christ's sacrifice has transformed you into something other, " ...I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." you aren't ‘chris’ you are ‘a body carrying Jesus around inside you’. It means you are Jesus, as in his views opinions, desires , hopes are yours. things that you cannot separate from yourself

if i was finnish, i wouldn't have been in chris in Helsinki who tried to be finnish, i would have been krisu helsingissa,

“ moi! ma oon krisu!”.


you see going to church means that you ‘spend time in a group or building with your views, opinions and attitudes’. it works most of the time, and most enjoy it when they've found a place that suits their opinions. they learn and grow a little. others find that things start to disagree with their views and leave.

because it's still them in church.

you're pretending.

just like me in finland desperately trying to learn finnish. i would practise sentences over and over again just so that i could go to the supermarket. even then i stuttered and was mis-understood more times than i care to mention.

yet the moment i sat down with my finnish friends and wanted to communicate something wonderful, the words "se on ihana" flowed easily and with the integrity of a finn.

for a brief moment our differences didn't matter, we were the same.

no longer chris the englishman with his finnish friends, but chris and his friends.

wouldn't it be incredible it if all the world saw was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

rather than...

chris going to church, dave going to church, hannah going to church etc.

suffering...

In few discussions with some people the issues of God and suffering have crept up. It is a particuarly difficult subject to tackle, and in fact possible one of the most important for us each to try and get a handle on.

It can effect and affect all areas of our lives, in a maajority of cases these may be too insignificant for us to notice. However I believe they will have big reprecussions in our prayers, our practise of justice, mission and critically in our relationship with God as our Father.

What I wanted to do was address the main question of my recent discussion. So that perhaps a dialogue might be opened for values, principles and faith, to be stretched and examined. The main point was, Does God allow suffering for Christians or is it all the Enemies schemes?

Let that written below become my opening response.

(If you have a blog please join in, you could comment or perhaps write some thing on your own blog.)

I firmly believe that God does allow suffering, the Bible is full of men and women who though close to God experienced trials and difficulties. Job, Daniel's friends, Peter, Paul, David, Moses to name just a view. If we believe God to be all-powerful as well as all-good then at somepoint these situations must have be given the nod by God for them to take place and He did so. If he doesn't allow suffering then we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that Satan is more powerful than God, which is clearly a false thought. Evil cannot exist by itself or in the supremacy because it cannot be none as evil without us having first experienced good.
God uses the persecution of His church to spread His gospel (Acts 8:1,4), uses hardships to train us (1 Peter 4:19).
In fact in the greatest triumph of God's plan. Satan thinks he has tortured, mocked and killed the son of God. Yet God knows better, He has allowed the suffering and used it to declare His ultimate victory, redemption for mankind.

So what do you think? Should we suffer, does God allow it? Does He not?

poetry...

I have been trying, for the last few weeks, to write some poetry. Not particuarly good poetry just stuff that helps me express myself.

The writing below is based on a few thoughts I've been mulling over lately about how even though we daily hear of, deal with or are confronted by tragedy we still somehow are surprised when the world produces bad and horrible things. The overwhelming evidence surely should causes us to expect these evils. Somehow though we expect more, we expect good. Why?


PS. It's an under construction piece, it's also my first foray into the world of verse ergo it might suck majorly so I apologise for the lack of meter in it's rhythm and other things that you might expect.


What is this feeling of something good,
This memory of something better.
Of what does my heart know,
That my mind cannot recall

My hopes are stronger than they should be,
My expectations greater than they would be
If this world was all they knew.

Eden's reach it seems, has never lessened
Perfection's edge has never dulled.
It's bright shdows shade my eyes
And by them,
Each new sadness
I meet with pained surprise.

There is One though in whom we may be restored
A life which broke this curse
A death that over-turned this exile

His body, broken.
His blood, poured out.
Humanities hearts, find their home again.

TO BE CONTINUED

Thanks for reading.

Shalom.