I’ve been catching up recently on some old sermons on my iPod. In particular I listen to Rob Bell, although admitting that might get me challenged by some. For some time now he’s been going through Philippians and he recently spoke on Phil 1:27
which says:
Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.
I’d not really noticed this particular phrase before, although I must have read it at some stage. However, in listening to this sermon the words really challenged me.
What sort of reaction do I have to certain situations? What do I say or do? How do I act? Are all these things consistently worthy of the gospel, or do I end up letting the gospel down? If I’m honest the latter is true. Too often in my own life my conduct isn’t worthy of the gospel. I’ve seen an improvement over the last 18 months, but I’m still quite a way from where I should be.
Can you imagine though what would happen if Christians were to act worthily all the time?
I’ve been working my way through Paul’s letter to the Romans over the last week in preparation for our corps’ Commitment Sunday this weekend. Now Romans is one of my favourite books in the Bible but something I’ve never noticed before is the sheer build up that is part of the whole book. Throughout the first 11 chapters Paul builds and builds showing how great God is and what He has done for those of us who choose to follow Him.
Paul seems to reach a climax to this discourse in his Doxology in Romans 11:33-36!
And then there is almost a long pause before he quietly says seems to say, “Therefore, what are you going to do in response?”
It’s a masterful piece of writing and when read like you would any other book, this is far more evident than the way we usually read the Bible, by chapter and verse!
Another thing I noticed is just how effective Paul is at putting some substance on the teaching of Jesus, not that His teaching really needed substance. Something I’ve been trying to encourage in the short time I’ve been here is the idea of being “Salt and Light” outside the church walls, because I believe this is where this is supposed to be done. Paul’s teaching in Romans 12 seems to take Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount and put substance onto the concept.
Maybe this is old hat to some, but for me this role that I am in is giving me new insights into the depth of scripture all the time, and I simply cannot get enough of it!
A couple of weeks ago I got a copy of the 10th March Salvationist from the UK. I don’t always read it all, but one article leapt out I thought it would be along the lines of something I feel strongly about. Basically it was about how one corps has changed the format of their Sunday evening meetings to help halt a declining congregation. Hurrah, I thought, finally someone from a larger corps talking about new strategies for developing their work.
It was not long before I realised that the writer was using the article to lament the lack of technically difficult brass band music for a select few, rather than writing a serious piece on how to halt decline. Oh there was a brief mention of Bible studies and evenings highlighting aspects of the Army’s work, but it was predominately about one of the major subjects that are actually minor ones.
As a response I wrote off to the editor, not something I do that often, and in the current issue the only very slightly edited response was published. I have an unfortunate suspicion that this may well cause a bigger stir than the current series of letters about ‘hell’ do.
This brings me to the real point! Last week, Patrik asked me a rhetorical question as to why we in the Army take ourselves so seriously. In the discussion on my previous post the issue was also raised about how we in the Army are almost obsessed with our uniqueness, rather than on the really important things like extending God’s kingdom. Why do we do this? After all we’re not really that special!
Is God really Omnipresent, or is He somehow limited in His omnipresence by the sight of Christians?
It seems to me that we’ve fallen into a trap of limiting the presence of God in some way! We know either in our heart or in our mind that God is everywhere at the same time in some way in which we can’t fathom, but our actions say that we don’t really believe it!
Over the years I must have heard countless testimonies about how people have seen God’s presence in the beauty of creation. I know I have given a few myself! Then we have the whole thing of being in a wonderful worship service and when talking about it say that we had great worship and “then God turned up!” as if in some way He wasn’t already there. We also talk about ‘taking Jesus’ to other communities, again as if in some way He is only where Christians are.
Now I know that the majority of this is more due to our use of language than anything else, but I do think there is an underlying problem. It really is as if we only see God where we expect to see Him! Consequently we fail to see Him amongst the very people that Jesus showed us we should work with. I sometimes wonder whether we actually have started to equate wealth and success with God as well, because we often celebrate those things as a sign of God’s blessing!
Yesterday was the farewell meeting of our current Regional Commanders and the first Bible Reading he used was Habakkuk 2:14, which to my mind sums up what I’m trying to get at.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
The knowledge of the glory of God! The key word there is knowledge as the glory of God already exists throughout the whole of His creation. Nowhere is there a place where God cannot be found if only we seek Him out!
So let’s stop limiting God through our careless use of language. Instead of talking about taking God to places, let’s talk about helping people see God where they are. Instead of only seeing God in the people we expect to see Him in, let’s search for Him in the most unlikely people and through them learn more about the glory of God ourselves.
At what point did it become acceptable to use the Bible in advertising non-Christian products?
Yesterday as we left the corps I glanced at the airBaltic (Latvia’s national airline) adverts on the advertising board outside the hall and noticed that at the top of an advert for flights to Paris a Bible verse. I did the automatic thing and opened my Bible and there it was Exodus 20:14. Clever I admit, but not really very good in a society that has a high divorce and seperation rate, and where men seem to only be real men if they have a lot of notches on their bedpost.
Checking out the others on the same hoarding showed an advert for Manchester with a very confusing first half of Ecclesiastes 11:1. Now I lived in Manchester for over 4 years and have to admit that I do not begin to understand the connection. If someone could enlighten me I’d be grateful.
However, worst of all was the advert for cheap flights to Istanbul in Turkey. airBaltic have used the verse Exodus 1:12 with thge emphasis on “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad”.
Now what you have to remember is that Turkish immigrants are seen by many in Europe as a major problem. They are deemed to be coming in and taking the jobs of hard-working local people and bringing their large families with them. For a reputable company to use this verse in their advertising is therefore playing on the prejudices of society and whilst it might be seen as clever advertising it is without a doubt racist behaviour. By using a verse from the Bible in such a way is against everything I believe.
Last night I sent an e-mail off to the person who may be able to do something, asking for their reasons for using this campaign and that they remove the posters and rethink their strategy. Will anything happen? I don’t know, but I can’t sit idlely and allow someone to abuse the Word of God in this way.
A few years ago I got my very first Palm Handheld Computer and have had a love affair with them ever since. That first little wonder succumbed to a particularly sad death due to being in the bottom of my bag as someone decided to step on it on London Underground. Quite amazingly my household insurance covered it and I managed to replace it with one which lasted for 3 or 4 years. Then 2 years ago I upgraded to my third which has served me well ever since.
Last year I finally got round to getting Bible software for it and I now have 5 (yes I said 5) Bible versions on a piece of software. It means that I always have my Bible with me wherever I go and can make notes, highlight verses and even read commentaries and daily reading notes. The only thing it misses is the ability to just thumb through the pages and read a highlighted verse at random.
You can see therefore that I am a sucker for new technology things and eBible.com looks to be an interesting development. According to the information it already has several Bible versions available (including my new favourite ESV) and various Commentaries and Dictionaries. All of this is aimed at helping the average person to study the Bible online. Its still in development at the moment and access is by invite only! I’ve joined the list today so once I get to join I’ll post more information and a review.
I was walking past the desk of one of my colleagues earlier and her desktop picture sparked a thought in my mind. The picture is of the view out of the car windscreen of the road ahead. What is not immediately obvious is that in the rear-view mirror there is a jet-fighter firing a missile.
The first thought that came was of the Meatloaf (sorry!!) song “Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are” and this in turn reminded me of a discussion that we had in our House group last Thursday! The discussion was around the theme of Temptation and how to deal with them, and logically we also covered the theme of sin! Although I couldn’t remember the exact verses at the time I made mention of the fact that we tend to hold onto our sin and go back to God time and again to repent of the things we have done! Yet Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 8:12 and Hebrews 10:17 all say the same thing! Basically that under the New Covenant that God gave us through Christ’s death and resurrection, that God chooses to not remember our sins.
All to often in our Christian lives we are hampered from moving forward because our eyes are fixed on our past sin, instead of having our eyes firmly fixed on the Him. Instead, we should be looking towards the destination of our lives, rather than on the jet-fighter in the rear-view mirror that is ready to destroy us! We must take hold of the promise that God gives us in the Bible.
Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are, but in reality they are simply a mirage put there to distract us from our goal!
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