Accessible

P 3324 Part-time Christianity doesn’t work.

/ DVH

Ephesians 3:4-13 MSG.“As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of Him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board. This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.

And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, Who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels! All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in Him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!”

What a great teacher this man is! Paul really encouraged me with this passage, he puts everyone on equal footing and includes the people who-haven’t-met-Him-yet, as well as each other. There are no rock-stars in Paul’s theology. Jesus Christ is all in all and He is everything! It’s such pure brilliant revelation. This man of God definitely found his heavenly-calling – it was to help everyone he met find God and understand His Ways. Then he says something that just blows me away. “I couldn’t have done what I do without His help. I wasn’t equipped to do this job.”

Paul was brilliantly equipped to preach the gospel to the Jews, he knew the law inside and out. Yet God sent Peter – the fisherman – whose only qualification was that He loved Jesus – to the Jews … and Paul went off to the Gentiles. Do you see that? Neither man was well-equipped to “argue God’s case” to the people they were sent to. God’s qualifying feature is WE CAN’T DO IT.  So if you know you can’t do it, then you are half-way there! The other half is knowing the Holy Spirit and His ways, personally. 

If you feel like you are a failure because you may have done dreadful things, but you have the revelation that God is redeeming you, day by day, then you are equipped. That’s called humility BTW! Paul consented to the murder of Christians, and that horrible thing became one of his greatest assets. It helped to keep this man humble. Everywhere he went, people knew what he had done. He even had problems with the Lord’s disciples because they knew his reputation for murder! 

Don’t let the past dictate your future. Our God is brilliant at do-overs and He does them so well, they stop being do-overs and become new beginnings.  Please don’t give up on yourself when you fail either, go to Jesus and begin again. I tell myself daily: “Just one more time. I need to get up one time more than I fall down!” He’s the God of second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth chances etc. He won’t give up on you, so don’t you give up on your faith in His goodness.

Paul knew he was ill-equipped for the job God gave him, but His faith in God’s goodness was bigger than the things that happened to him along the way. Having a big faith IN GOD matters. The trouble is, most of us scrounge about trying to make our faith bigger. Set your EYES on our big God! Did you know that there are 3,600 types mosquitos in this world, and there are over 25,000 -35,500 kinds of fish, and 90 species of whales. Does our Father sound limited to you? 

The only thing that can limit God is sitting right above your shoulders. That 28-35 cm bit of skull, brain and flesh, can distort our thinking and deprive us of our part in Jesus’ plan for our lives. That’s why the bible says: ‘renew your mind’ … it needs renewing!  Have you ever caught yourself thinking something and then you suddenly realise you still have a childish view of reality? We all do it. Things happen and we get stuck. Our brains are definitely not perfect. 

But His love is. That’s the bit to remember. That’s what kept Paul going through so many trials and tribulations. Plus the wonder and joy that he discovered as the Holy Spirit revealed God’s plans for mankind. This greatly admired and learned man found out he knew nothing, and he accepted his ignorance with great joy, because it meant he could rely upon our God even more! We have nothing to contribute but ourselves and a total surrender to Him, daily. Part-time Christianity doesn’t work! Bye. 👋

P 2232 How to witness.

/ DVH

When we go out to give away bibles etc. hubby often finds that people weep – even grown men and women. Then they get embarrassed about crying and say things like: “I don’t know why I’m crying.”  Here’s how we explain that to them: “Oh that’s Jesus. He’s just crazy in love with all of us. He came here 2000 years ago, and personally fell in love with mankind. Then people killed Him… but He didn’t stay dead. Now He lives inside me. He sent me here to show you His love and bless you, and the thing is, I just can’t stop Him – He loves us all so much, He can’t help Himself. He is always reaching out to people.”

I am not trying to give you some sort of a formula, instead I want to encourage you to put something that resembles this into your own words – as He leads you. Just allow the Holy Spirit to give you a way to talk about things like this, that is natural to you. I’ve only written the above words today, because so many Christians only speak Christian-ese. 

That’s the language in the church that we all understand, and use. It has words like faith, joy, grace, saved, redemption, salvation, sanctification, propitiation … in it. However, those words have complex meanings and they sound old-fashioned and out of touch with this world we live in. For most people the way we think in church is like a foreign language, filled with unmanageable incomprehensible concepts. Faith doesn’t make sense to people who don’t have any. 

And Jesus Christ sometimes isn’t an actual person to them, He’s an historical figure. So when He reaches out and touches someone through you, it is good to explain to them that it is not you – it’s Him. We understand a lot of what we’ve been taught as normal, but it is not normal to the people we meet in the street. Our aim is to make the Lord visible and accessible, and the more we mystify Him, the more we are making Jesus inaccessible. I am not speaking about being sacrilegious, far from it, we definitely need to be reverent and honour Him. But it is more about presenting Christ as a God-Man.  A Man Who came and died for all of us – on purpose.

This is why I really recommend that we need to know the four gospels really well – everything we will need to talk about the Lord is in there. The more well-rounded our thoughts and ideas are about Jesus Himself, the easier it will be to talk about Him to others.  In my opinion, talking about the Lord should be so natural, it flows out of us. That takes practice, it doesn’t just happen and we all have to start somewhere. It should flow the same way as it would if you were talking about your friend, mother, father, brother, cousin. Christianity needs to be much more accessible in this world, less intense, and more natural. Also talk about what Jesus has done, recently in your life – that’s your witness.

Hubby told the people we’ve spoken to on this trip, about the Lord helping him to paint with his non-dominant hand. He explained that he is right-handed and he rarely if ever uses his left hand, except in conjunction with His right one! People were astonished simply because it’s a miracle. And if I were talking to someone about what God has done in my life recently, I’d tell them about losing my earrings, as well as looking hard for them, and then finding them on the floor in plain sight! Our experiences with the Lord and His great Grace, need to be repeated and we should brag on Him! Tell them that when He touches them personally, that Jesus sent you there to pray for them and/or help them. So it’s not you – it’s Him … making Himself known.

Our greatest strength lies in the fact that we know that we ARE the same as the people we are talking to. The difference between us and the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet is what Jesus did for all of us. We know about what He did… and they don’t! This fact is Christianity’s best kept secret and it shouldn’t be. Jesus died to open the doors for everyone. At some time somebody told us that truth, and now we are telling others. Christians and non-Christians are not on opposing teams – we have our humanity in common. 

Some of us grew into understanding what we believe and some of us encountered Him in a remarkable way but we all live our lives for Him now. It isn’t the experience or lack of it that matters – it is the real live Person that we know personally. 👋🏻

“But in your hearts set Christ apart [as holy—acknowledging Him, giving Him first place in your lives] as Lord. Always be ready to give a [logical] defence to anyone who asks you to account for the hope and confident assurance [elicited by faith] that is within you, yet [do it] with gentleness and respect.”  1 Peter 3:15