Encouragement

Stretching Forward – And Not Giving It Away!

One of the first Oz expressions we heard on originally coming to the great country of Australia was ‘He (or ‘She’) has given it away.’ We soon learned that the ‘somebody’ had given up on something, usually something important.
Sadly it’s still a common happening, even among Christians and also worldwide.
Conversely, another saying that has been going up recently is Winston Churchill’s famous short speech to a graduation class. Coming to the podium, the great old man solemnly looked over the student body. A long speech, full of wisdom and challenge was expected but instead Churchill simply said, ‘Never give in, never give in.’ And then, with emphasis, in his unique attention-grabbing tone, added: ‘Never, never, never, never, never… in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in. ’
And what profound wisdom and challenge there still is in those words after 70 years!
Giving up too soon
Once, an errand of mercy late one evening found us searching for a particular destination on a very dark and stormy night. After driving up a dusty, unlit country road for some time, we were convinced we were in an old Hammer-type 60s movie and on the wrong road and so turned back.
After wasting precious time trying other roads, we returned to that first road, kept going on it and …guess what!…the place we were looking for proved to be just round the next corner from where we had first turned back!
The question arises…How many times do most of us miss out in life because we give up all too soon?
How often do we miss a great opportunity to achieve, to do something new, to strike a bargain, to exercise our talents and giftedness, to help someone in need, to honour our faith, to accomplish a desire or goal, to fulfil a promise, to further our destiny, to…whatever. Probably more than we care to admit.
Pushing forward
The Olympics are ended but still news items are circulating worldwide, particularly about successful Christian athletes and of course the recent paraplegic Olympics.
Personally we delight to learn of Christians who have pushed themselves to reach their goal, their destiny of winning through. I’m particularly impressed when we read of those who haven’t given up, haven’t given it away but have overcome adversity and crossed whatever finishing line they were inspired to reach.
We particularly delight to use the achievements of runner Eric Liddell as a challenge when preaching. We’ve always admired that great missionary to China, who was known as ‘the Flying Scotsman’ after the record breaking locomotive, and was highlighted in Chariots of Fire.
When still a young boy, he became very ill one time. Only his mother’s nursing devotion brought him through and he recovered, only to be extremely stiff in his legs. A well-meaning lady commented that he’d never run again. Little did she know of what Eric Liddell would later in life refer to as ‘the power within.’

One scene in Chariots of Fire shows Liddell competing in a certain race but being knocked aside. In reality it was ‘A Triangular Contest’ between Scotland, England and Ireland in July 1923. The depiction of him falling to the ground several strides into the race is accurate though. After merely hesitating, he got up and pursued his opponents, already 20 yards ahead. Incredibly he caught the leaders shortly before the finish line, collapsing after crossing the tape.
To onlookers it had seemed absolutely impossible Eric could catch up, never mind win. But he did, against all odds. One of his teammates rushed to his side, suggesting brandy to refresh the semiconscious Liddell. With his wry humour, Eric murmured, ‘No thanks, Jimmy, just a strong cup of tea.’
Eric Liddell believed strongly in one important thing in following Christ. He termed this never-give-it- away principle ‘the complete surrender of his will to God.’ It was a pathway he refused to deviate from all his life, no matter what. Closing on finishing lines, he would stretch forward in his determination never to lose, only ever to win.
Jesus’ declaration
In Luke 11:9-10, Jesus spoke strongly about not giving up: ‘Ask and you’ll get; Seek and you’ll find; Knock and the door will open.’ The verb tense indicates to go on asking, seeking and knocking. Someone, years ago, blocked people from fulfilling this direction and achieving in life through wrongly teaching that it’s enough to ask God only once.
Sounds spiritual – after all, God isn’t deaf. But we‘re human and need to persevere, go on asking, seeking and knocking to see our prayers answered otherwise we can easily give up and miss out. Does a child only ask once for something, especially coming up to a birthday or Christmas? Not likely! Even the most patient child subtly drops reminders.
God has an incredible father-heart, loving us to climb up on his knee (as it were) in our prayer time and knock on his heart’s door and ask away. In his wisdom he may not always grant or immediately grant every request. We learn to ask according to his will. He loves to bless us. After all, we’re his kids, spiritually born into his family though Christ.
Jesus’ own example
Despite every hindrance thrown at him by Satan, jealous religious leaders, misunderstanding listeners and doubtful disciples, Jesus persevered and ran his race to fulfil his destiny. He overcame every obstacle including death to become our Saviour.
We continue to live in a very uncertain world…and there’s talk about things getting blacker. But security, peace and a purpose in life can be found in Jesus Christ!
Christianity is about not giving up. God didn’t (and doesn’t) give up on us. If we’re already into something that we shouldn’t give up – then let’s neither give it away nor give up! Let’s be like Paul and press – stretching forward – on (Phi.3: 12-14).

The Importance of Connecting

Taking a break recently, we were wandering along a nearby beach when unexpectedly we met an old friend. In the ensuing chitchat she expressed how difficult it was to connect with people in her church, that she had done her best in reaching out to various ones but, despite promising, they hadn’t got back to her.

The result is that no meaningful contact has been established and this friendly lady is thinking about finding a more amicable church.
Then, last week, when I was in our local library a lady from another church recognised me and shared something similar: ‘There are so many lonely women in church that can’t seem to make a close relationship. It is so hard.’
We’ve also come across men who haven’t been able to connect in church life and be able to share their feelings. Then there are ministers of busy churches who do not have real friends to confide with. Some wrongly feel they can’t even share with their denominational leaders in case the ‘upper echelon’ thinks they aren’t spiritual enough.
The biggest shock is when a precious child confides with you that he or she feels they cannot share their heart secrets with anyone, not even their dad or mum.
Uniting closely
The reality is that everyone needs a friend! We all need to connect meaningfully with someone or our lives, even as Christians, will indeed be very lonely.

Lonely…that’s a word meaning ‘sad because alone.’ Connect…that’s a word meaning ‘join together, unite.’

The words connect, connecting and connection are very scriptural. In particular the Message Bible uses connecting in the sense of closely uniting, especially in relation to Ezekiel’s vision of the temple (Eze. 40). 


For Christians, today’s temple is church with the understanding that we are the temple of Christ (1 Cor. 3:16). Therefore in church circles it’s so important that Christians relate by connecting with one another and building mutual and meaningful relationships.

Love is all-embracive
Jesus gave a clear direction on this important matter: ‘Let me give you a new (meaning fresh) command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another.’ He went on to explain why this is so important: ‘This is how everyone (the world, unsaved people) will recognise that you are my disciples – when they see the love you have for each other’ (John 13:34-35 [brackets mine])

He was talking about love that is open to everyone no matter what culture, nationality, colour, education, irritating habits, personal problems or faults! There are no excuses for not reaching out to Christian brethren even if we don’t fully understand them or even their language! We simply appreciate them as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Recently we had the delight of ministering in a church where the brethren are from the Middle East and speak Arabic. What a joy to find them so open to the word of God, the moving of the Holy Spirit and so desirous of receiving our messages and the touch of the Spirit through our ministry.
We have connected with them, even by my (Robert) willingness to be embraced in their custom of hugging and ‘sacred triple kissing males on the cheeks.’ And what an unexpected blessing as a young Iranian, who so desires to be a prophet of God as well as seeing people come to Jesus, boldly gave me an encouraging word.
Yes, even we need encouragements from those who will make it a point to be our friends!
Involves responsibility
Connect is a great word. Dictionaries will explain that as well as uniting and joining it also means binding, fastening together, linking, establishing communication between, associating with, attaching.
To achieve a meaningful linking such as Jesus inferred means going out of our way to befriend people. Yes, it’s true that some people are hard to get on with and as God directs us to make friendships there’ll be times when we really have to make the effort and go the second mile. We may even find we are led to people we normally wouldn’t mix with but a beautiful relationship develops. And as we care for such people, we discover just how much they care for us.
Today a lot of churches use the word ‘connect’ to name their weekly home groups, such as Connect Group South. Funnily enough when we first church planted 30 years ago (way before church planting was a regular tag and few were really into such ventures), we called our five home groups connect groups.
Those were great days when we ensured that everyone in our growing church was connected, that no one would ever feel unwanted or lonely, even on Christmas Day if they lived on their own. We were strong on relationships as connecting means accepting responsibility and, like real love, it’s an action word!
Meaningful connecting
Normally Pentecostal churches have a spot when the leader encourages everyone to greet one another. But, sadly, it’s so often a shameful case of the briefest of greeting, with flimsy handshakes and eyes staring around elsewhere. No real connecting and reaching out and, abruptly shortened by the leader, it’s almost a case of ‘Let’s get on with the service – quick.’
Recently while ministering in Baptist churches we were delighted to observe how the Baptos really took time to greet one another, and with strangers such as ourselves as well, during what they obviously considered an important time of their gathering together.
It was more than merely a rushed few moments – we thought they’d go on and on! But we saw real love demonstrated, caring and sharing together. And after the service and ministry time they were so anxious to fellowship further around the traditional cuppa.
These were more than catch-up times – people were meaningfully caring for one another and asking warm-hearted, concerned questions. Paul’s directions of greeting [ie. embracing in the arms]with a holy kiss fulfilled scripture (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 The. 5:26). 
God’s heart
Back in the very beginning God’s heart was expressed as he recognised that his creation was lonely: ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper’ (Gen. 2:18).
That’s a principle of caring that blesses each gender, both male and female, children, teenagers, adults and seniors. And what God intends for us, we must extend in connecting with one another. It’s so easy to go beyond church services and ‘do coffee or lunch’ with people, including the unsaved.
In 1 Peter 2:5, the apostle urges us ‘Don’t lose a minute in building on…’ and lists characteristics including ‘warm friendliness and generous love’ (v 7). He confirms in verse 8 that these qualities bring their own daily reward as well as maturity in Christ and desires us to have them ‘down in black and white’ (v15).

Whether emails, visits, phone calls and whatever our differences may be… let’s all connect!

The God Particle!

The first week in July was a celebratory one. America’s popular Fourth of July  celebrations with the associated Star Wars golden oldie pun: ‘May the Fourth be with you!’, our 51st wedding anniversary (No puns here, please!) and the announcement that UK physicist Peter Higgs’ 1964 predicted but elusive boson – ‘The God Particle’ – had been found at last.

A Boson is one of two elementary particles. Higgs’  God Particle is about a binding field, a mass that binds as it were – without which particles would zip though the cosmos at the speed of light, unable to bind together to form the subatomic particles that make up everything in the universe, from planets to people. He predicted the existence of a three-dimensional ‘field’ that permeates space and drags on everything that treks through it. A ‘field’ is about subatomic particles gaining mass and becoming heavier. ‘Bosons’ refer to mass-imparting carriers.

Intricate stuff for most of us, so let’s have a break for a moment with a couple of puns that started immediately ‘amassing.’ Such as the Jedi knights’ one: ‘The field is everywhere.’ Or a boson walking into a church only to be barred by a priest who exclaims, ‘We don’t allow bosons in here!’ to which the particle responds: ‘But you need me, Father. Without me, how can you have mass?’

The origin of all matter
It was 48 years ago that Peter Higgs wrote his landmark paper hypothesising why elementary particles have mass. Then on July 4 just past it was announced that physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest atom smasher in Geneva, Switzerland, announced they had discovered a Higgs-like particle.

Newscasts and other media carried news along the lines of ‘Finding the Higgs boson will validate the Standard Model, a theory explaining how the universe is built, and could be a gateway to…’

All of this is over the top for most people until we do a Google search – and even then most of us will only understand a meagre portion of it all.

But I’m certain of one thing: Most Christians will be like me and just want to say, ’Gee, why don’t you whiz kids read the Bible? It has always, in the simplest terms, told us all about matter, where the universe came from, who created it, how it holds together, as well as revealing the greatest force of attraction ever – the Lord Jesus Christ.’

Scriptures amass (pun!) such as Gen. 1:1,31; Neh. 9:6; Job 12:10, 26:7-9,11-14, Psa. 104:10-14, 24-25; 65:9-11; Joh. 1:3; Col. 1:15-17; Heb. 1:3, 12 and other relative passages.

But of course one has to be willing to accept the Bible as a creator God’s revelation in the simplest of terms to we humans
who, although we can discover and create many things, will never have his mind or creative ability!

It’s interesting that Peter Higgs is not a believer and has never liked the God Particle tag as he considered it offensive to people. Evidently others in his field feel the same. The label came about because Leon Lederman, who wrote about this particle, thought it elusive and wanted to name his book The God D— Particle. His editor refused and the title The God Particle has become a catchphrase. Christianity Today Gleanings has an interesting article on this –http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2012/07/why-scientists-dont-like-the-term-god-particle-for-the-higgs-boson.html

Humans complicate things
Why do we, as Christians, so often complicate the things and mysteries of God? We like one article about this discovery that had a play on a famous Sherlockian observation to Watson: ‘Elementary, my dear God.’

What a great truth! God has always made what he wants us to know very simple. All the intricacies of the universe that we don’t need to know at this time, he’ll keep for our eternity with him. It’s enough to know who he is and that he loves us so much, even when we’ve offended him.

We’re in a time when God wants us to focus on his mission for us, for our churches, whatever it may be. Achievement is helped when we allow God’s love to flow from him to us and on to others. That’s the real amazing binding force that we just can’t get past as we seek to reach out to one another each day.

One other thought here: The noun particle means ‘a minute portion of matter, the least possible amount.’ But our God isn’t a tiny atom! He’s big! Christians believe in a big God who fills the universe, whom nothing can block, who seeks to bind his people together and make ‘his bosons’ – his carriers of the good news of the gospel and the powerful Holy Spirit.

An encouraging reminder: Psa. 138:3-6 (Mge), ‘The moment I
called out, you stepped in; you made my life large with strength.
When they hear what you have to say, God, all earth’s kings will
say “Thank you.” They’ll sing of what you’ve done: “How great
the glory of God!” And here’s why: God, high above, sees far
below; no matter the distance, he knows everything about us.’

God knows everything about everyone! That’s enough for us.

Sing o heavens                                                                                                                                                                                      
But we also feel to draw attention to the comments of the eminent Professor Michio Kaku (who once said, ‘We physicists are the only scientists who can say the word “God” and not blush’) about this God Particle matter.

He infers it is something that eluded the great Einstein and he
wrote about for the last 30 years of his life – Einstein’s theory of
the laws of harmony, that the universe is a symphony, that the
mind of God would be cosmic music resonating through
dimensional space. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl1ugxrgQ

Interesting how these learned ones are acknowledging that things in the universe wouldn’t hold together without some sort of force binding everything. And how Isaiah 44:23 and other
scriptures talk about the heavens being commanded to sing to
the glory of God who has done so much on the earth below!

Aren’t we glad that, to quote the old song, ‘He’s got the whole
world in his hands.’ And the cosmos!

Crossing Jordan!

The River Jordan features prominently in the early chapters of Joshua.

Jordan is symbolic of leaving the past behind …death to the old, farewell to disappointments, imprisonments, meaninglessness, hurts and such. It’s also symbolic of entering into new things and claiming the promises of God. Of crossing over.

The direction of God came to Joshua and, as Israel’s leader, through him to God’s people to leave the wilderness – the dry years, the times of non-accomplishment, aimless wandering, and unfilled lives – and enter into the Promised Land and an exciting new period of their existence. Joshua chapters one to three tell that time had arrived and God’s support was assured – if everyone would be courageous to cross Jordan!

Today’s Jordan?
A number of church leaders and everyday Christians have been aware for some months now that something – that mysterious ‘something’ that we just can’t put a finger on – has been happening or is about to happen in the church today.

The word ‘transition’ – ‘change from one state to another’ – comes to mind as it’s easier to grasp. For Christians with minds and hearts open to being true disciples and thereby willing to follow Jesus wherever he leads, we can understand the meaning of this simple word.

When Jesus challenged his first disciples, ‘Follow me…’ he didn’t explain everything or the ‘where to’ of it all. In fact, many times, Jesus left things hanging in the air as it were and those who were really prepared to follow him into unknown territory had to trust as they did so.

Every Christian, and particularly church leaders, should be aware of the times and what we should be doing, be involved in – as were David’s ‘men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do’ (1 Chr. 12:32).

An exciting, rewarding time
‘Issachar’ has the meaning of producing a reward. As Christians, and church leaders, hear from and obey the Lord, we will encounter amazing Promised Land rewards of various kinds not only for ourselves, but for others and for our local churches.

This is an exciting time to be alive – being aware that even though the world is in massive trouble all round, our God has incredible plans for every one of his children (Jer.29:11).

Why are we particularly emphasising leaders when we’re challenging all Christians in this month’s encouragement? Simple…churchgoers look to their ministers for Bible instruction and God’s direction, especially in times of personal challenge – times when they need to cross some kind of personal Jordan, to reach security, tranquillity and new life on the other side.

Full flood not a problem
Joshua 3 relates how Israel’s ministers – its priests – were instrumental in leading the whole nation across the Jordan when it was in full flood. Boldly they showed the way! We like how the Message Bible describes this crucial transition time when Israel crossed the Jordan en route to the other side, to the Promised Land – not one foot got wet!

‘When the priests got to the Jordan and their feet touched the water at the edge (the Jordan overflows its banks throughout the harvest), the flow of water stopped. It piled up in a heap–a long way off – at Adam, which is near Zarethan. The river went dry all the way down to the Arabah Sea (the Salt Sea). And the people crossed, facing Jericho. And there they stood; those priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant stood firmly planted on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground. Finally the whole nation was across the Jordan, and not one wet foot’ (Jos. 3:15/17).

May crossing Jordan be symbolic to all of us. Let’s now be afraid of getting our feet wet as we transition. Let’s take courage as we leave the first of 2012 behind and dare to embrace all that the next six months holds for all Christians with open hearts and a willingness to move ahead.

But… a question arises. Is there anything, any ‘wrong, distracting Jordan’ that we have to first cross…say goodbye to? Any hindrance that needs to be dealt with, anything that would hold us back from being an active part of all Promised Land involvements that God wants us into, as well as moving into living life to the full?

Maybe in our worship (not able to enter straight into it or stand in the anointing of Jesus’ presence), impotent prayer and Bible mediation life, marriage, relationship, witnessing, job satisfaction, dreaming in God…whatever?

If so, let’s deal with it! We all need to be aware of the times and ready to embrace this transition period, see the bigger picture and cross over!