Mindless Faith

During the past few months I have really started thinking about faith. Just mentioning the fact that I have actually thought about faith, might have some hyper-charismatics up in arms; be that has it may, I have a brain and it thinks.

The assumption for many is, that faith doesn't use thought, it uses, well faith. This in itself is not wrong, but the assumption that this is true for everyone, is. What I have come to realise is this: Some people search for faith with their hearts and some people search for faith with their minds. Even though some people have searched with their hearts and found, doesn't mean that they can't reason it out with their minds. After all, revelation only makes sense with reason.

Why then are we so against reasoning out our faith, searching out the bible for any illogical conclusions it may draw or putting under scrutiny what is peddled to us by two-bit preachers? Are we too scared what we will find, that what we have believed all along may in fact be a lie? Probably, but it isn't it worth finding it out now, rather than when you get turned away at the pearly gates, I think so.

Critical thinking is not encouraged in post-modern Christianity. I say this because, in fact, most of Christianity reflects the world-view of the society it is trying to reach; scepticism and relativity. If we, in fact, thought that there was such a thing as Truth, then maybe we'd be eagerly looking for it and once we've found it, avidly defend it instead of saying something like: "Well I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just putting it out there ..." Being dogmatic has become a harsh-label we put on people, but maybe it's time we become dogmatic about issues surrounding our faith, not willing to compromise them. The Apostle Paul is one of the most uncompromising people to be found in the scriptures, still today we reap the benefits of his unwavering commitment to truth.

So, I used my brain to think further. I asked myself a few simple questions, questions that I think every Christian should settle in their hearts before someone else unsettles them for you, and they will. The first question is why. Why do I believe what I believe? What are the reasons for you putting your faith, future and eternal destiny in the hands of someone who lived over 2000 years ago? Was it an experience that you had? Experiences are good, although their impetus may not last long, they do act as catalysts for our faith. Was it maybe because you are in a community that believes this way and you have never thought of any other way to believe? If this is so, the decision to believe differently could cost you your friends and family, count the cost and continue. Do you believe because, logically, it makes the most sense and you trust your mind in making decisions of such magnitude?

I think (if you'll excuse the pun) it should be a combination of all of the above: We need to experience the love,peace joy and tangible presence that a relationship with God entails. We should be in a loving and caring community of believers that obedience to God promotes. We should think critically of how this all fits in with the real world and then live it out. Why? Because faith is not mindless and neither is it blind. If it were not for faith we wouldn't be able to see things the way God does and if it were not for our minds we would not be able to do anything about it.

Another question that arises is this, after thinking about why I believe what I believe and settling on an answer: What do I do about what I believe? This is a simple question that most Christians never ask themselves because they separate faith from thinking. Most gullible believers think that by enjoying experience after experience they will automatically know what to do with the rest of their lives. Here's the deal: God can't answer the questions about your calling and purpose if you're not asking them! This is not Inception. Yes, God places desires in our heart to desire, but if we don't ask Him for wisdom for the way forward with these dreams and desires,our hearts won't be inclined to to hear an answer from Him. In other words, you need to do what God is telling you to do regarding what you believe, but you can only hear what He is telling you if you're asking the question and listening for an answer.

Faith is not mindless, it interacts very much with our reasoning and logic, however, never let reason get in the way of faith operating in you and through you. Sometimes, we don't understand why things happen, but does that mean we give up on what we believe? Absolutely not. It means that what we can see by faith, we may not yet be able to understand!

Mission Quotes

A collection of quotes I've sourced for a course I am presenting on missions, to the second year class at GraceLife Ministry School. Enjoy and be inspired!

"Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give"   - David Livingstone

"Here am I. Send me."  - Isaiah

"We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first” – Oswald Chambers

"Why wait for a call when you have a command” – Bob Hughes

"Missions exist because worship doesn’t” – John Piper

"Understand the hurt of a culture before you try and minister the solution" - Anon

"The church exists by mission just as fire exists by burning" - Brunner

"Those who have turned the world upside don have come here too" - Anon

"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply" - Hudson Taylor

"People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives ... and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted." — Nate Saint, missionary martyr

"'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world." — William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

On the importance of mission education: "God cannot lead you on the basis of information you do not have" — Ralph Winter, missiologist

Wise Insight

"If I mention I'm a servant of God, some will say they aren't servants, they're friends. If I say I'm a friend of God, some will say they're not friends, they're sons. If I say I'm a son of God, some will say they are not sons, they are part of the bride of Christ. If I say I'm a part of the bride of Christ, some will say they are not, they are a part of the body of Christ on earth. Each point can be successfully argued from scripture. The error is not theological. It is in heart - the inability to recognize and value the lesson another is learning in Christ. The insecure often find their security in having an opinion that differs from others." - Bill Johnson (24/05/2012)

Inspiration:It can be done

    Inspiration, we all need it but not many people know where to get it. We all want to be it, but so few know how to become it. The truth is that inspiration flows from inspiration. It is difficult to conjur up inspiration from something that doesn't give you an insight into the heart behind it's inspiration, or lack thereof.

    Personaly, I'm inspired by people who dedicate themselves to a single task and become the best at this task. This shows a singleness of mind, an indistracted lifestyle and an ilogical quest for success. Success is fulfilling God's call on your life. I think of endurance athletes who challenge the limits of body and mind to achieve something no-one else has ever achieved. This inspires me, not only to train harder, but also to know that IT CAN BE DONE!

    When boiled down, inspiration is nothing more than seeing other people do it, and therEfore knowing that it can be done and seeing no reason why you can't do the same. In art it takes the form of colour, shape and texture combinations, in music the ease of which the melody and the lyrics combine to provide an extreme sensory experience. In life we love to read about rags-to-riches stories, about how people, who started with nothing, became something. It makes us realise that nothing is impossible, that IT CAN BE DONE!

    Jesus is the ultimate inspiration. He loved without expecting love in return, IT CAN BE DONE. He gave without expecting payment in return, IT CAN BE DONE. He did many signs and wonders IT CAN BE DONE. He had joy, peace, patients, kindness and gentleness when dealing with people, IT CAN BE DONE. He did the will of the father, he was absolutely obedient, IT CAN BE DONE. He conquered the grave, so that we can have victory over every situation, so that we can say, "IT CAN BE DONE".

"... because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" - 1 John 4:4

Book Review: "It's All About You, Jesus"

   

    The title says it all. It's all about You, Jesus, takes a fresh look at how often the church misses the main thing. Fawn Parish draws on her years of experience in ministry to make a few interesting points. She does not shy away from shedding light on where the ministries she headed up, or was involved with, made mistakes.

    With this candidness she makes it clear that Christian leaders are people too, people who can make mistakes. The biggest mistake we can make is to organise Jesus out of our lives and meetings. We get so busy organising prayer meetings, church services and worship conferences, but in all the organising, the main thing is often lost. Jesus is often relegated to backstage, while talented people take the spotlight.

    Fawn Parish, in her unique way, describes situations where this has happened, which we can learn from. She also encourages us, that the current generation is a defining generation. Closing the gaps above and below them, wanting everyone involved with the current move of God. God is moving, we can all be a part of it. We can't go wrong if we make it all about Jesus.

StartLiving Rating: 5/10

The Relevant Disciple

  

   Relevant, something every Christian is supposed to be. The dictionary defines relevance as 'having to do with the matter in question'.So, for us as Christians, what is the matter in question, what or who are we supposed to be relevant towards?

   The bible tells as us that we are supposed to be salt and light to the world (Matthew 5:13), that we are in fact supposed to make disciples of every person in this world (Matthew 28:19) and that we are ambassadors of Christ in this world (2 Cor 5:20). It is thus quite obvious from a scriptural perspective, that our relevance should be towards the people of this world. Any, idiot Christian, with half a brain can figure that out, or has at least read it on a bumper sticker.

   The problem does not so much lie in the who, but rather in the how. You see, the church has adopted the attitude of being relevant as becoming what the world is, in order to reach the world. We see this play out in many churches in the Western culture, where churches pander to the desires of the church goers; giving them the music they want to sing, the sermons they want to hear and the coffee they want to drink.

The difficulty in becoming this kind of 'relevant' is that you in fact become exactly like the culture you want to reach. Eventually no difference can be found between the church and the culture it's trying to reach. The salt has lost it's saltiness.

   Instead of becoming like the world, the church should instead model what the culture is yearning to become. You see, the kids at your high school do the dumb things they do because they are crying out for something that they don't have. The teenage girl sleeping around is looking for acceptance; the grown man drinking himself to death is looking for peace and the young women doing drugs is trying to numb the pain. How can we reach out to a culture if we become like them?

   To be relevant we must have answers to the questions that the culture is screaming out to us: "Why is my dad beating me?", "Why do I feel the way I feel?", "What is my purpose in life?", "Who am I?", "Where am I going?". To be relevant we must have effective answers to these questions, answers that are based on truth, that have the power to pull people out of their hopeless situations.

   As Christians, we owe it to the world to be relevant. If we just hang around with other Christians all day talking Christianese and attending Chris Tomlin concerts, we miss the fact that there is a world crying out for help, a world going to hell.

   Jesus was relevant. He answered the questions that the culture of His day was asking. Jesus was so relevant, in fact, that those answers are still relevant to the questions every culture on earth is asking today. You see, the human condition stays the same. As much as we think we are different to people who lived two thousand years ago, we're not. We still want to know where we go when we die, why we do what we do and if the moon is made out of cheese. Friends, if we want to be relevant, if we want to answer the questions our unsaved friends are asking, we must present to them Jesus. Jesus plus nothing.

   The apostle Paul was adamant about one thing in Acts 20:24 that he would continue on, no matter how bad things got, whether he was imprisoned, beaten or stoned, he would not stop professing the 'gospel of the grace of God'. Jesus is grace, Jesus is good news, Jesus is the gospel, Jesus is the hope to the hopeless, Jesus is our reason for living and breathing. It is all about Jesus.He is our Life, our Truth, our Light, our Saviour, our Healer, our Provider, our Peace, our Righteousness, and our Victory.

   We can have as many self-help seminars, as many 10-step programs in our churches, as many outreaches, soup kitchens or summer camps as we want, but we will never be relevant if we don't point people to Jesus. If we don't point people to the Answer to all their problems, these problems will never be answered. A major problem in the body of Christ today is, that many Christians and Christians leaders don't truly believe that Jesus is enough. They may believe certain elements of what Jesus represented, but don't fully believe and teach that what Jesus accomplished on the cross was enough and that we just have to put faith in this finished work.

   Jesus is the answer to the questions the world is asking. You are relevant if you have Jesus, you become effective when you preach Jesus, plus nothing. Believe it it's true.

We Delight to Praise

    

     "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointment consummations. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with (the perfect hearer died a year ago). This is so even when our expressions are inadequate, as of course they usually are.

     But how if one could really and fully praise even such things things to perfection - utterly "get out" in poetry or music or paint the upsurge of appreciation which almost bursts you? Then indeed the object would be fully appreciated and our delight would have attained perfect development. The worthier the object, the more intense the delight would be.  If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to "appreciate" that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude.

     It is along these lines that I find it easiest to understand the Christian doctrine that "Heaven" is a state in which angels now, and men hereafter, are perpetually employed in praising God. This does not mean, as it can so dismally suggest, that it is like "being in church". For our "services" both in their conduct and in our power to participate, are merely attempts at worship; never fully successful, often 99.9 per cent failures, sometimes total failures. We are not riders but pupils in the riding school; for most us the falls and bruises, the aching muscles and the severity of exercise, far outweigh those few moments in which we were, to our astonishment, actually galloping without terror and without disaster.

     To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose to ourselves to be in perfect love with God - drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in an effortless and perfect expression, our joy no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable to the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever". But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him."

C.S Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms, Chapter 9