Charting the journey of a Salvation Army Soldier
Well this is a total geek thing to admit but I am writing this post from a dedicated programme on my iPod touch! Only someone who loves technical things would understand why this is so cool, but it is!
It means that I can now post from anywhere that I can connect to a wireless network without having to have my notebook with me. Just have to cope with the ridiculously small keyboard!
Sorry that’s the geek alert over and done with now!
If you want to read one book on Holiness but can’t face the thought of reading Brengle or Coutts or even Wesley, then my suggestion would be ‘the uprising’ by Olivia Munn and Captain Stephen Court.
It is, quite simply, the best book on the subject that I’ve ever read, and I’ve not even finished it yet! The chapters are short and snappy and at the end of each are some quesitons you can work through to ask yourself or in a cell-group!
Some of my favourite bits so far are:
“…what needs to change is our view of normality. Normal humanity is looking out for yourself. Normal Christianity is living for the good of others, and doing anything for Jesus.”
“The holiness to which God calls us and for which he empowers us includes a perfection of intention and motivation that makes us blameless.”
“unless the Bride of Christ is holy, no one else in the world will meet the Lord. Without our holiness, they won’t see the Lord.”
The above are just a taster, to read more you’ll have to get the book yourself!
By the way, Stephen, if you don’t already know, blogs over at the armybarmy blog and Olivia does the same on her own blog.
The book is published by Australia Southern territory of The Salvation Army and should be available from wherever you buy your TSA stuff.
Here is the start of a Mission Statement that I saw recently in a church:
As a Christian Church and an integral part of the [denominational name] we offer…
I won’t go on to say the 3 things they offered because these in themselves are of significant difficulty to me. The real reason I raise the statement is to explore our attitudes towards mission.
Personally, I’m not sure whether I am comfortable with the word ‘offer’ being included in a mission statement for a church. It suggests a passive attitude in terms of the gospel. It suggests a come and see attitude towards church, rather than a get out into the world and live the life type attitude.
Following on from the last post, in Donald Miller’s ‘Searching for God knows what’ there is a section where Miller talks about how big we see God. Basically, he takes us to the burning bush encounter where Moses asks God who he should say sent him to release the enslaved Israelites. Of course God responds simply, “I AM who I AM”
Here’s what Miller says:
God did not answer, “I EXIST,” of offer one of His names, all of which are metaphors invented for humans, but rather, “I AM.” Climbing inside letters, God explains, I encompass, I am beyond existence, I am nothing you will understand, I have no beginning and no end, I am not like you, and yet I AM.
pg 147 - Miller, D., (2004) Searching for God knows what, Nelson Books
We try so hard to define God by adding to His name. Of course we have to try to make sense of Him as we learn about Him, but we should not limit Him to our own understanding or thoughts.
I suppose it comes down to what sort of God we want to have a faith in. Do we want to have a faith in a God that we can understand and doesn’t make a mess of our lives? Or do we want to have a faith that constantly challenges the boundaries of our perceptions; that is constantly stretched so that we grow deeper in our faith because the God we worship is always surprising us by revealing something new about Himself?
The other evening Zoe & I were sat up talking and at one point we were talking about God and how small some people’s image of God is. As we talked I got the memory of a song that I remember being sung by a guy who I really respected about 20 years ago. I have no idea whether it was a song written by him, or by someone else, but it was called ‘God in a Box’. I can’t even remember how the song goes, but the title has stuck with me ever since.
There really is a sense in which we have tried to stick God in a box in our faith. The size of the box varies from person to person and the contents vary on the basis of our theological and political worldview, but on the whole many of us have God stuck into a box like so much screwed up newspaper. I guess that this is some sort of defence mechanism in many ways simply because God is too big for us to understand.
If, by dint of some relevation we have managed to get God out of the box, many of us still manage to restrict our view of Him. We tend to look out of a set of windows that surround us and can see aspects of God. So some will look out at Him through the window of Wesleyan Holiness, others through the window of Pentecostalism, still others through the windows of Roman Catholism. To these we can add windows of conservatism, liberalism, progressiveism etc. But our view is still limited! It’s still an attempt for us to constrain a God that trancends constraining.
It reminds me of the Dougie Dug Dug song, “Have we made our God too small?”
The other day Zoe blogged on a quote from Bill Hybels that talks about being a Prayer Warrior! Hybels said this:
A ‘prayer warrior’ is a person who is convinced that God is omnipotent - that God has the power to do anything, to change anyone and to intervene in any circumstance.
We believe in the omnipotence of God, but subconciously I think we’re terrified by it. It is simply too big for us to comprehend and consequently our minds retreat into a safety net of boxing God in, or looking at Him through from the safety of a window.
What would our faith look like if, instead of trying to understand God from our point of view, we were simply to allow God to speak to us? Instead of us trying to fit God into a nice little box that suited our own ideas or looking at Him through the windows of our own liking, what would happen if we entered a dialogue with Him, with a totally open mind, that allowed Him to shape our views?
Back up and blogging again after losing my old computer and having to buy a cheap new one!
I’m afraid I won’t be posting for a few days because my laptop is in the repair shop as it won’t start on either the main power or battery! Hopefully I’ll get it back on either Friday or Saturday so I don’t have to write another post like this on my iPod Touch!
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